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27 June 2008
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21:37
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I might have done this before, but for Molly I'll do it again. :) H/T to ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) lemonlye. (Who makes up these lists, anyway?)
Sayeth the meme...
The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. I've read 63 of them, going by this list anyway.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read, and/or hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own LJ.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible - God, et. al. (I've read all of it, like some of it, and hate some of it.)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (Read some, but not all.)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (This is the first volume of #33.)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (The book title is just "Corelli's Mandolin." The movie, which wasn't as bad as it could have been but is nowhere near as good as the book, added the "Captain.")
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (Brown is such a piss-poor writer that I am still stunned that anyone can list this miserable piece of hyena shit on a list of "great literature." If I owned a copy, I would burn it to prevent its being read by innocent bystanders. It is a bloody literary crime.)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Meh - overrated.)
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (This book is like having your head pushed slowly through a tub of Silly Putty.)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson (Bryson is a great writer but don't ever get an audio book where he reads his own stuff. He has a petulant, whiny voice with a faux English accent that makes me wish to disembowel him slowly.)
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (This is a classic case of Naked Emperor Syndrome. My idea of hell would be a comfortable armchair, a cold Bass ale, a footstool, and a bookshelf full of nothing but Joyce and William Fucking Faulkner.)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (Like his namesake, Toole would be a mere footnote in history had he not died young and tragically. This is not a terrible book, but it is a deeply banal and stupid one.)
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
current mood:  cranky
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(12 shots | Hit me with your best shot!)
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| 17 April 2008
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23:35 - Tagged!: Memeing when I should be sleeping
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| 29 March 2008
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21:29 - Writer's Block: No Laughing Matter
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Not a whole lot. I tend to joke according to the ability of my listener to laugh with me; however, I have been known to misread that and have had witty lines backfire on me.
There are things I will not joke about, because I don't think they're funny - racial "jokes" which are really thinly-disguised slurs, for example, and most scatological "humor," which simply doesn't amuse me. There are lots of good jokes about sex, but there are some really disgusting and tasteless ones that I don't find funny.
I think, however, that the whole question "What do I find funny, and what not?" is different than "What do I find too serious to joke about?" The answer to the latter is, "Nothing, really."
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| 4 March 2008
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23:07 - OK, I've chilled a little bit now.
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The Moose, #2 Son, got in a nasty accident with our large Ford Expedition this evening. His mom, little brother, and two little sisters were in the vehicle with him. He only has his learner's permit.
He was turning left coming through an intersection when the light turned yellow, and an oncoming car was apparently turning right - Moose thought the other guy was stopped, but he must have gunned it to make it, and his driver's side front hit our passenger's side front pretty hard. He basically smashed in our bumper and quarter panel and broke the tire, wheel, and front suspension clean off. When I finally got back from work and went down to the towing company yard to retrieve my (locked and secured) handgun from the vehicle, it didn't look good, but it remains to be seen whether or not it's fixable. Moose was pretty shaken and the little ones were hysterical, but everyone had calmed down by the time we got home with a large bag of McDonald's cheeseburgers and - thank God - no one was seriously hurt in our car or in the other, a much smaller vehicle also driven by a teenager.
The police officer must have decided that there was enough misery to spread evenly, because he decided not to ticket either boy.
Losing a family member like that is one of my biggest fears. My heart almost stopped when my cell phone rang and it was the Wonderbunny shouting something about having totaled the Expedition.
current mood:  relieved
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22:30 - Gygax, Arneson, MAR Barker, and early gaming
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I was going to mention something about the death of Gary Gygax, but everyone and his/her brother has already done so, and theferrett has even supplied a list of one-liners for use in commemorating the event. Nothing further need be said, I suppose.
But I will anyway. When I was in high school in the early '80s, and deeply into Dungeons and Dragons, they used to hold a gaming convention in the Minneapolis area - once it was somewhere downtown, a few times it was at the Earle Brown Center in Brooklyn Center. At any rate, it had a pretty good showing, all of it geared toward paper-and-dice gamers of one sort or another. There were numerous D&D games, full-scale miniature battles in historical or fantasy milieus, a decent marketplace where you could get nice crystal-type dice, D&D manuals, and so on - remember that in 1981, this stuff was not readily available on the (nonexistent) Internet, nor were there gaming shops all over the place where you could pick up cool stuff easily. I remember one year spending pretty much the entire weekend playing the artillery commander of a Byzantine army besieging some kind of castle.
But I digress. Some of the bright lights of Minnesota gaming, to the extent that's not an oxymoron, used to show up - folks like M.A.R. "Phil" Barker, creator of Tekumel and the Empire of the Petal Throne, and of course, Gary Gygax's former partner in creating Dungeons and Dragons, Dave Arneson. Although I never knew the details, and I never believed anyone who claimed to know the details (the court settlement forbade either Gygax or Arneson from discussing the terms), I still always kinda thought Dave got screwed, when you get right down to where the bear pooped in the buckwheat.
Anyhow, I played under Arneson in his famous campaign milieu Blackmoor, at a couple of MinnCons in the '80s. I later re-encountered Arneson at a Fort Snelling Civil War event in the late '90s, where he interviewed me and a number of another Minnesota CW reenactors for a project he was doing for the US Civil War Center at Louisiana State University. Dave is a longtime CW buff and an early member of the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry, Inc., a reenactment group dedicated to the memory of the original 1st Regiment of Minnesota Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War.
I also once had a chance to join a regular, weekly campaign group playing in the Tekumel world under MAR "Phil" Barker himself, at his home in Minneapolis, but I passed it up on the grounds that I was pretty busy with family and job and couldn't afford to get back into the gaming addiction and commit to an every-week game. I regret that, a little, although I think I made the right decision. Phil Barker is an interesting guy.
current mood:  nostalgic
current music: "Please Come to Boston," Dave Loggins
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| 3 March 2008
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21:25 - Away From The Roll Of The Sea - Alexander MacGillivray
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This song brings me peace. (I'm not happy with the awkward rhyme in the second verse, but I'll let it slide.)
Small craft in a harbour that's still and serene,
Give no indication what their ways have been;
They rock at their moorings all nestled in dreams,
Away from the roll of the sea.
Their stern lines are groaning a lullaby air,
A ghost in the cuddy, a gull on the spar;
But never they whisper of journeys afar,
Away from the roll of the sea.
Oh, had they the tongues for to speak,
What tales of adventure they'd weave;
But now they are anchored to sleep,
And slumber alee.
Come fair winds to wake them tomorrow, we pray,
Come harvest a-plenty to them ev'ry day;
Till guided by harbour lights they're home to stay,
Away from the roll of the sea.
current mood:  calm
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19:41 - Homeopathy and stuff and nonsense
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These days it seems that it's become trendy to call any non-traditional medicine "homeopathic," including things like herbal teas and remedies, natural concentrates and oils, and so on. I suppose this is because of the number of people pushing homeopathy as an alternative to modern pharmaceutically-oriented medicine. I have no problem with herbal, natural, and traditional remedies per se, and I use several and believe that many of them work as well as or better than anything Glaxo-Smith-Kline has come up with. However, I have a strong aversion to the word "homeopathy," not because of what it has come to mean, but because of what it originally represented - pseudo-scientific bullshit of the purest ray serene.
The basis of homeopathy is the dilution. There are many ways to do this, but one of the earliest and still a popular potency scale used in traditional homeopathy is the "C scale", diluting the substance 1 part in 100 of some fluid, usually water or alcohol, at each stage. Thus, a 2C formula requires the substance to be diluted 1:100, then some of that diluted solution is diluted 1:100. This works out to a 1:10,000 dilution of the original solution (1 in 100x100). A 6C dilution repeats the process six times, ending up with one part in 1,000,000,000,000 (one in one trillion, 100x100x100x100x100x100, or 10 to the 7th power) Other dilutions follow the same pattern. In homeopathy, a solution is described as higher potency the more dilute it is. Say what? The less of the useful substance, the more useful it is?
Samuel Hahnemann, the "father of homeopathy," advocated 30C dilutions for most medicines (a dilution by a factor of 10 to the 60th power) and a common homeopathic treatment for the flu is a **200C** dilution of duck liver. Per Wikipedia, where people with lots of time on their hands spend it doing comparisons like these,
"Comparing these levels of dilution to the number of molecules present in the initial solution, a 12C solution contains on average only about one molecule of the original substance. The chances of a single molecule of the original substance remaining in a 15C dilution would be roughly 1 in 2 million, and less than one in a billion billion billion billion (10 to the 36th) for a 30C solution. For a perspective on these numbers, there are in the order of 10 to the 32d molecules of water in an Olympic size swimming pool and if such a pool were filled with a 15C homeopathic remedy, to expect to get a single molecule from the original substance, one would need to swallow 1% of the volume of such a pool, or roughly 25 metric tons of water.
"For more perspective, 1 ml of a solution which has gone through a 30C dilution would have been diluted into a volume of water equal to that of a cube of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 metres per side, or about 106 light years. Thus, homeopathic remedies of standard dilutions contain, with overwhelming probability, only water (or alcohol). Practitioners of homeopathy believe that this water retains some "essential property" of the original substance, due to the shaking after each dilution. Hahnemann believed that the dynamisation or shaking of the solution caused a "spirit-like" healing force to be released from within the substance. He thought that even after every molecule of the previous substance has been removed from the water, the spiritual healing force still remained."
Now, that said, Zicam bills itself as a "homeopathic" remedy, but its dilution is only 2X - in other words, the zinc gluconate content of the gel, by volume, is about 1:100 (2 dilutions at a one in ten ratio). That's well within reasonable limits, and it's a sure thing that actual zinc gluconate gets into your nose and helps you get over your cold more quickly, at least according to clinical trials with different forms of zinc. I don't know if the Zicam folks do the shaking thing or not, which is essential to the purist approach to homeopathy, but it doesn't matter since the gel is actually an efficient delivery system for a clinically significant dose of zinc gluconate. Give me all of the antioxidants, herbal cleansers, Emergen-Cs, etc. in the world, but spare me the super-dilute homeopathics.
If I ever have the flu, I'll just go out and slay a duck and eat its liver rather than try to drink the volume of water necessary to snag one random molecule of duck liver in a 200C homeopathic dilution of "Oscillococcinum," the most popular homeopathic flu "remedy." I don't believe that modern medical science has the answers to everything, but there are limits to my credulity.
current mood:  cynical
current music: Some stupid game show
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| 20 February 2008
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22:09 - Eclipse News
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I suppose if I were a real whiner type, I'd be complaining that it's -15° in my front yard right now where I have been viewing the lunar eclipse for the last 45 minutes or so. However, since it will be another 2.5 years before it happens again, it would behoove me not to protest. For once, weather in Minnesota is ideal for an astronomical phenomenon. Saturn came in clear as a bell, and I watched the moon get "eaten" by the Earth's shadow from about 2015 to 2105. I had my best spotting scope (a Brunton 12-36x50) out there on a tripod as a makeshift telescope, and it really worked well. Usually I'm out there trying to hold binoculars up with my hands shaking.
The night is crystal clear, the stars are sharp - I even spun the scope around to the west and got a really nice view of the Pleiades, which is kind of rare. Usually even a little overcast will fuzz them up good, but tonight they were very clear.
Well - the moon passed totally into the umbra at 2101 (CST), and will be at its "deepest" in about 7 minutes (2126), then begin to emerge again at 2151. It won't clear Mother Terra's shadow completely until about 2316, which event I will not wait up to see, but I am going out now to see the "deepest" part . . .
(2135) . . . it's a little darker and more orange than it was when it first slipped behind the shadow. The online weather stations say -2°, but in my front yard it's more like -15°. It always surprises me to see how fast the temp drops as I move away from the more heavily-paved and populated parts of my suburb up to my little bucolic corner. I took Mr. Boogers to his airgun class tonight and when we left the archery range where they shoot, the car thermometer said -2°. By the time we got home, some 6.5 miles north and out of the heart of the compost site, the intersection of several major county roads, and the City Hall/YMCA complex, it was down to -13° in my driveway. It has not warmed up any in the intervening 90 minutes.
I'll go out again about 2150, watch Luna start to emerge, and then pull in my little improvised observatory.
In other news:
The Wump tried out for the Zac Efron part in his school's production of High School Musical ("Troy" or whatever the little twit's name is). I saw the DVD with the kids recently and was not too impressed. Not only was the whole thing too slick and affected, too pop-like, for my taste, but the sound quality was not great. It really sounded as if all of the music had been dubbed, which frankly wouldn't surprise me. What did surprise me is that it was so obvious and fell so flat. In comparison, another recent musical I've seen on DVD and on the big screen, Hairspray, was phenomenal. The music was energetic and "real"-sounding. The music in HSM lacked that vibrant and interesting zing you should get from good movie music. It sounded as if the performers were doing it by rote for the 400th time and they found it dull.
For the record, Ashley Tisdale is much cuter with her original nose.
At any rate, I fear he may be in for another disappointment like he had with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. He simply wasn't right for the Joseph role, but he had his heart set on it and there was hell to pay when he didn't get it. I think he kind of has his heart set on this one, too, although he's been careful not to be too outward about it. But the Troy role calls for a cutesy teen heartthrob and the Wump is more of a manly man at 6'1", 240lbs. Although some good will come of it - he shaved that horrible-looking, ratty goatee off.
Okay - it's 2149, time to return to the Astronomy Channel. Back in a bit . . .
(2210) . . . Well, I'm sure this will come as good news: it seems that the Gods have decided to spare us, and they haven't eaten the Moon after all. It's begun to come out from behind the Earth's shadow, and a goodly thumbnail is emerging from the lower left edge. Presumably, in another hour or so, the full moon will be back to normal. I, however, will probably be asleep.
As should you be, Gentle Reader. Good night.
current mood:  happy
current music: Mozart's Requiem
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| 26 September 2007
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15:09 - Apropos of nothing much . . .
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_katiekaboom_ posted a succinct and on-target bit on diversity today, prompted by an NPR report. I have to agree with her, that we tend to be a bit too narrow in our definitions.
I once fired an Asian woman for a fairly egregious violation of client privacy rules. What she did should have been a "tripwire" event - i.e. she should have been escorted from the building that day. Instead, it took an extra three days for HR to allow the firing (plus pages of extra documentation, two HR specialists, 3 levels of review - me, boss, boss's boss - etc.) because of her race.
The catch? She is an ethnic Korean, born in Korea but adopted as an infant, who was raised in the US. In Iowa.
IOWA, for heaven's sake.
In real terms, she's about as Asian as Teddy Roosevelt. Nonetheless, to the corporate geniuses who come up with "diversity" policies that have to be equally applicable to everyone, the only possible way to measure diversity is by the outward things - skin color, gender, race, national origin - or by identifiable traits, preferably ones that are politically sensitive, like sexual orientation. Never mind real diversity - the real and fascinating differences that each of us brings to the table due to our unique backgrounds, personalities, and experiences.
I understand that it is very hard to administer a policy that defines diversity in that way. A white Anglo-Saxon male like me might have a wider range of experiences than, say, an ethnic Korean raised on an Iowa farm. Who's to say what's "diverse"?
The answer, of course, is that everyone is. That's why diversity policies in most large corporations make very little sense, and in some cases, paradoxically, actually discourage the free sharing of experiences and information that would make living in a diverse world interesting and edifying. There are people out there afraid to ask others about their national origin, when a frank question like "Where are you from, and what was life like in your country?" could open the door to some really cool discussions. But, you know, someone might take offense and report me for asking, because I might be implying that furriners ain't as good as real Americans, don'tcha know.
A couple of months ago I saw a family in a local Culver's. They were of (dare I say it?) Middle Eastern appearance. The family was dressed in Western clothing - this guy had on jeans and a T-shirt, and his wife was a little better-dressed than he, like mine usually is. Wife wore a head wrap/veil. Two daughters, probably in the 7-10 age range, did not. They looked like any other "normal Minnesotan" little girls. So as we were filling up our drink cups, I simply asked him: "I notice your wife is wearing a veil, but your daughters are not. What are the rules or customs about that?" He was quite cordial and we had an interesting talk. He smiled and explained that the girls would start wearing them when they reached puberty and were of an age when they'd start being attractive to men. He and his wife and the girls had talked about that and would continue to talk about it so that the girls could help make that choice and help decide when the time is right. I was able to point out my own daughters, the eldest of whom turns 11 today, and remarked wryly that it seemed like a pretty good idea to me in some ways, since Fluffy was fast approaching that age. We talked about encouraging our daughters to dress and act modestly, and laughed together as fathers with growing daughters will, and I thanked him and left. Fathers with daughters seem to have the same worries everywhere, whether you veil your girls or just load up your shotgun. That allowed me to see the common ground we shared, to learn something, and to marvel at both the differences and the similarities between us. To me, that was a real "diversity" moment. I hope he felt good about it too.
I would have been reluctant to ask that question of a co-worker, lest it be misconstrued - not by him, but by the overly-sensitive and mechanical enforcers of the corporate "commitment to diversity." And that would have been a shame.
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| 17 September 2007
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17:27 - I KNEW IT!
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I told you, and I told you repeatedly that he would do it.
The son-of-a-bitch died before he finished Wheel of Time.
Someone let me know when the "piss on his grave" party is. I'll be there with bells on.
CRAP!
current mood:  pissed off
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| 2 August 2007
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09:41 - Minneapolis Bridge Collapse - Check-In
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I crossed the bridge twice yesterday; once going south at about 1330 CDT and then going back north about 1500, three hours before the collapse. That is a major north-south artery into Minneapolis and re-routing traffic will be a bear.
No one I know was involved, at least as far as I am aware at this time. My sister in South Minneapolis was still at my grandma's apartment in Anoka, so she's safe.
[Grandma probably won't last the week - she hasn't taken any nutrition or liquid to speak of since Sunday. She's 94 - she deserves a peaceful death, and she's getting it. There will be plenty of company waiting on the other side.]
current mood:  thankful
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| 4 July 2007
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15:17 - Let Freedom Ring
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Last Sunday, one of the older gentlemen in my ward spoke up about what he sees as a threat to our freedom. There is a movement, he thinks, to remove "In God We Trust" from our coinage. I didn't have the heart to tell him that Madalyn Murray O'Hair has been dead for more than ten years. At any rate, it got me thinking. If people who are concerned about American liberty spend their time sweating irrelevant crap like the motto on the coinage while at the same time we're being sold down the river by an ever-growing number of regulations, laws, and real limits on personal exercise of freedom, we deserve what we get.
The US is not one whit more a religious, God-fearing nation with that motto on our coinage than without. God is not so stupid that he can be fooled by what he reads on the back of a quarter. But I believe that he is, and we should be, concerned by the real erosion of individual liberties in this country. That process of erosion began about ten minutes after the Constitution was ratified, because there is always someone who, given a little bit of power, wants to use it to lord it over others. That process has been accelerated by the War to Extend Federal Domination (or "Civil War" [sic]) in the 19th century, by the Cold War paranoia in the last century, and especially by so-called "national security" concerns in this century post-9/11.
People in this country do not own their real property (it can be forfeited for nonpayment of property taxes or taken away when the city decides it can make more money on it by giving it to someone else), or their labor (the government decides what hours they can work and what price they can charge for their services and in some cases whether they can work at all).
Most of these restrictions do not affect most Americans on a day-to-day basis. But a country is only free when everyone is free; if this stuff doesn't affect you, it just means you're one of the relatively-privileged (thus far). Your ox may not have been gored yet, but as Pastor Niemoller put it (in one version):
They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
Will you speak up?
From 9thmoon, some food for thought:
Today, [my friend] and I are going to celebrate our freedom by exercising our Second Amendment rights. We're going to drive my (licensed, inspected, registered) car on (inspected, taxed) public roads to the (licensed, inspected, insured) private indoor range, shoot some (registered, inspected, taxed) ammunition, and then go enjoy some third-world cuisine and (taxed, regulated, controlled) booze at a local, privately-owned (licensed, inspected, registered, insured, taxed) restaurant.
Freedom is great!
current mood:  worried
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15:11 - Blown Away By The News
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In today's RedStarTribune:
A Veterans for Peace float pisses some people off:
Deanna Mickelson, a parade director in Biwabik, said some veterans and mothers who have lost sons in Iraq have told her that they "are just mortified by the float," as well as by some of the signs held by Veterans for Peace members. Among the more offensive signs, she said, is one that reads "Our troops -- misused abused."
Misused and abused? Well, they were volunteers, and once you sign on the dotted line, you give up your freedoms to do certain things - like pick and choose the specific belligerent manifestations of American foreign policy in which you will participate. So I guess I don't have a lot of "micro-sympathy" for the servicemember who is complaining about an overseas deployment because he doesn't believe in the war.
( Cut for rant )
current mood:  pensive
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| 16 June 2007
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14:16
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A lot of libertarian-leaning folks are looking with favor upon Ron Paul, a former Libertarian Party candidate (1988), who is now seeking the Republican nomination for President. He's getting some media time, which is heartening, due in part to the fact that he's refreshingly straightforward and very quotable. He's also drawing some criticism and mudslinging, which means he's at least rocking the boats of the more traditional marionette candidates. He's probably the only Republican candidate who has a hope in hell of attracting any of the left-wing anti-war vote, especially since he is not looking to ram morality laws down people's throats.
BUT - but-but-but. . .
The question is whether those same liberty-leaning types are willing to help Paul get the nomination. Business as usual won't cut it. snowowl points out a few interesting stats in this post - she points out that he has more YouTube subscriptions than all the other candidates from both parties combined, that his name is the second most Googled item ever, the number one Wikipedia search, and according to Technoblog, the most blogged about.
That's all well and fine, in fact it's great. But YouTube, Google searches, Wikipedia, and blogs don't get people nominated for President. Primaries, in some states, or caucuses in states like mine (MN), are how a candidate gets delegates committed to him/her and thus secure the nomination before the party convention. Major-party conventions in recent years have become media events, not real decision-making processes.
In other words, people who like Ron Paul are going to have to get off their butts and enter the Republican nominating process, by working for Paul prior to the primary/caucuses or at the very least, showing up at the caucuses (in applicable states). If the guy stays well back of the Big Three front-runners and remains a mildly-amusing sound bite, all those bloggers, Wiki mavens, YouTube vid-watchers, and Googlers will never get a chance to vote for him because he won't be running.
So - pass the word along to all those folks who may not know when their primary or caucuses are (Minnesota's caucuses are Tuesday, 4 Mar 2008) or who may not be aware what the requirements are to participate (you must be a registered party member in some states, to play) to put up or shut up. Standing back and scoffing at the "corrupt system" is pretty much a guarantee of the same old shit. Give it a shot, and if we can't get the Republican nomination for Paul, then and only then we can go back to sulking.
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| 23 May 2007
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23:04
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A recent commenter who felt a little bit under fire has been taking a number of comments from others about her comments on a couple of my recent journal entries. She said:
Please freeze those threads or delete the post, or at the very least, inform your friends that I cannot respond to the now-constant flow of comments in my inbox.
Most of you know me well enough to predict how I responded:
If you regard people's challenging you about your views as "uncharitable," I can't help you. That's a choice you make, as you have made the choice today to refuse to respond to any logical point I or anyone else has made, to refuse to even try to think through your positions and defend them, and to essentially complain that you're being attacked when you're merely being challenged to back up what you're asserting. If you can't or won't hold your own in the discussion, just face up to it, but stop complaining about how everyone is being mean to you.
And I will not, ever, freeze comments or delete a post to censor my friends and commenters. This is a kitchen of ideas. Kitchens have heat. If you can't stand the heat - well, you know the expression.
Just so you know, I will not ever delete an honest comment. (Some obvious troller posting anonymously, well, that's different.)
current mood: Weary
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17:44 - Some simple ground rules about politics
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1) I am a small-l libertarian. I oppose most of the policies of both major parties, and I tend to be personally conservative and politically laissez-faire. I think, in short, that the Republicans are hypocrites and the Democrats are criminals. Or is that the other way around? People who espouse the specific policies of one or the other major parties can expect some flak, if not from me, than from the other respectors of freedom who read and comment here. Just keep it reasonably civil.
2) "Reasonably civil" means no name-calling or personal attacks. A strongly-worded disagreement is fine. "You're an idiot!" is bad; "You don't understand this issue, and here's why!" is OK.
3) I don't indulge in logical fallacies in argumentation and will call your bluff if you choose to do so. Thus, a comment critical of the Republicrats which is answered by a comment asserting that "the Demicans are just as bad!" is going to come under some none-too-gentle scrutiny unless it's backed up. "You're mean" is not a legitimate comeback.
4) If you catch me doing something like #3, call me on it. Hopefully I'm just fired up and will see the error of my ways. I don't mind being wrong but I hate arguing poorly.
5) The words "argue," "argument," and "arguing" are used in their debate sense, not in the sense of personal animosity or disagreement. I love lots of people I disagree with. Even you. And my dad.
There may be other rules but these'll do for starters.
current mood: Resigned
current music: "Will The Circle Be Unbroken," The Carter Family
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14:31
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Stolen From theferrett, who kiped it from icyphoenix
Hillary Clinton is, apparently, asking the Internet to vote to select her next campaign theme song. None of her supporters must have much familiarity with the Net (or its users).
Click the link above. Then enter "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air Theme by Will Smith" in the box at the bottom right. Click enter. Note that you can copy the text in the quotes above (highlight and hit Ctrl-C), then go to the Hillary site and paste it into the box (Ctrl-V). Vote, hit "Refresh," Ctrl-V, vote again. And again. And again.
I might suggest a different song (maybe the Internationale), but if this is the choice that the masses are demanding, I'm jiggy widdit.
You can vote more than once. Please do.
Edit: One of theferrett's readers has suggested "My Ding-A-Ling" by Chuck Berry, if you get bored with the Will Smith option. of course, that maybe should have been Bill's campaign song, but . . .
current mood:  devious
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| 6 December 2006
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16:57
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Well, they've found James Kim's body.
I kind of thought yesterday, when they announced that they'd found his trousers, that this would be the outcome. Delirium is a very common symptom of hypothermia and victims are often found partially or mostly unclothed. Once a person gets to the point where he's shedding layers in the winter wild, he's usually done for unless he's found very quickly. The ability to make rational decisions goes away very quickly and panic sets in rapidly as core temp drops. Although the news outlets were trying to paint this as a good sign, indicating that he was trying to mark a trail, I'd bet that most of the experienced hikers/hunters/campers in the on-scene search parties were looking at each other and quietly shaking their heads. When full details come out, I would not be surprised to hear that there were additional shed articles of clothing that helped lead searchers to his body.
Ultimately, of course, he should have stayed with the vehicle. When we teach the survival portion of the Minnesota DNR firearms safety course (which is heavily oriented toward the hunter), we emphasize that when lost in the woods, the first and most important thing to do is to stop and make a fire, then find or make shelter. Stay put - wandering around just uses up energy and makes it harder for anyone to track you; besides which, wilderness navigation is a pretty specialized skill. It isn't rocket science, but you don't head off cross-country to find help with a Rand McNally highway map and no compass. Kim and his family had shelter and the means to heat it. His wife and kids survived what was an uncomfortable and terrifying ordeal, but they lived. As would he, had he stayed with them.
Once when I was young, about nine or ten, my dad and I went with a friend up to a hunting cabin on the Gunflint Trail in Minnesota's north woods. Late in the evening on our way up, it began to snow and we slid off the road. We had almost a full tank of gas and ample warm clothing and we were on what passed for a major road up there. A logging company vehicle stopped by and told us not to worry, the pole truck would be by in the morning and could pull us out. Well, being young, I was pretty scared - I hadn't yet realized that "it couldn't happen to me." My dad did his best to reassure me, we kept the car warm and the windows and exhaust clear, and in the morning the pole truck pulled us out.
Sometimes there isn't any pole truck.
I never take a winter trip without a few basics for survival in the vehicle, and a larger kit for long trips. That always, always, always includes a compass, some way (or two ways) to start a fire, and something to eat. I've never had to use it, but I have to remind myself that there isn't always a pole truck.
I think that most of us have done so much to remove ourselves from the real environment in which we live that it somehow seems surreal to us. It bears remembering that there is usually only a thin skin between us and nature, and we are generally less ready to deal with it than we would have been 150 years ago. Imagine, for example, your car breaking down in the middle of Death Valley in August. Yes, you could die out there (and people do, every year, there and in similar places). Every year, people overestimate how long they can walk in the cold, how much clothing they're wearing, how far a mile is; how well they can swim, how far their cell phone coverage extends, and so on. And many of them die. I suspect that somewhere in our modern padded, heated, air-conditioned, car-driving espresso-drinking brains is a conditioned response that tells us we aren't really stuck out here miles from anywhere in the middle of the Oregon mountains in a snowstorm; that Donner Party stuff is for the Late Show. And so we say, "Hang on, honey, I'll go for help," and we get out of the car. James Kim was not a stupid man, nor was he an exception. What happened to him could have happened to many of us. He was simply inexperienced, and it cost him his life. We tend to think that things like this don't happen in the 21st Century.
But they do, and the results are often tragic. Nature can be a wonderful place to spend time, but lack respect for it and you will pay the price. The natural world is utterly indifferent to whether you live or die, and you don't get many mistakes. There are no mulligans in the Coast Range of Oregon in December.
current mood: Somber
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| 22 November 2006
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12:25 - Pass the stuffing, please
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theferrett had an entry this morning on Bruce's secret stuffing recipe, that made me a bit nostalgic.
I always miss my mom the most at Thanksgiving.
She died on 20 December 2002, right before Christmas (hard to believe it'll be four years this year), but it's always at Thanksgiving that I miss her the most. Thanksgiving was the perfect Mom holiday. When I was young, we'd always get together with her side of the family. She was one of seven kids, and there are 19 cousins in my generation, so they tended to be big gatherings. In later years, the circle expanded by the spouses and kids of us kids, as such circles do, and after Grandma died, the gathering was almost always held at my parents' home since it was big enough to accomodate the crowd. We had big Christmas gatherings, too, but they always seemed to be more busy and distracted and there were attractions other than the meal.
Mom always made the turkey and the stuffing. (Always "stuffing," never "dressing.") And it was always perfect. Dad, my cousin Leslie, and I would fight over the turkey skin as it came out of the oven, and then the stuffing would come out of the bird and we'd all eat ourselves stuporous.
Anyway, after the Wonderbunny and I got our own home, we volunteered to have Thanksgiving one year, and I made the turkey and the stuffing. I think it was hard for Mom to let it go, but she toughed it out. I called her and asked how to make the stuffing, and she walked me through it - especially the critical question of how much sage needs to go in. I was finally satisfied with the mix, stuffed the bird, and put it in the oven.
(As a side-note, I took out the neck and that little bag with the giblets. My wife left that in one year because she didn't realize it was in there. But I digress.)
Everyone arrived, the kids began yelling and screaming and tearing up the basement, the cousins were catching up on one another's lives, the football game was on the TV, and then came the magic moment when the turkey was ready. I forked it out of the roaster and onto the cutting board, and opened it up to take out the stuffing. Hmm.
My mom was laughing so hard she could hardly stand. You see, I had stuffed the bird - not loosely placed some stuffing inside, but crammed in as much as the turkey's inner cavity could possibly hold. Stuffing is made with bread, eggs, and so on - it expands slightly - and my stuffing had swelled and baked into a lump the size of a football and the consistency of particleboard. To serve it, I actually had to shave off pieces with a knife. It tasted fine, and if you soaked it in gravy for some time while you polished off your wild rice and cranberries you could actually chew it. It was not light and fluffy and spicy by any stretch of the imagination.
Every year since then, my cousins make a point of asking me how my stuffing turned out.
Every year, I stand there mixing stuffing in a large bowl. Every year, the thought flashes through my head, "I have to call Mom and ask how much sage to put in." And then I remember that I cannot. But I like to think that it isn't entirely my voice that whispers to me, "Just stuff it in there loosely."
current mood: thankful
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| 14 November 2006
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15:02
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Note on the Vocabulary Quiz:
I found the definition to the word "peruse" somewhat confusing, and I had to stop and think. I'll bet most of the folks who pulled an "A" instead of an "A+" missed "peruse." The word is frequently misused in literature and conversation to be synonymous with "skim." The American Heritage Dictionary has this to say:
Usage Note: Peruse has long meant “to read thoroughly” and is often used loosely when one could use the word read instead. Sometimes people use it to mean “to glance over, skim,” as in "I only had a moment to peruse the manual quickly," but this usage is widely considered an error. Sixty-six percent of the Usage Panel finds it unacceptable.
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| 12 November 2006
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22:37
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Some details of an early 20th-century duplex at Fort Snelling in the Twin Cities. These were married quarters for officers and their families. This particular dwelling was last used by a certain Wilbur G. Grippen, whose fading name is still outside the door.
There was a Wilbur Grippen born in 1855 in Durand, WI, and another who graduated from HS in Durand in 1940. On a website dedicated to veterans of WW2 from that part of Wisconsin, there is a brief note that states, "TANKER FLEET: Private Alvin E. Zillmer, 506 Bellinger Street, and Corporal Richard A. Welter, 1015 North Seventh Street, both of Eau Claire; Corporal Orval E. Vanderburg, Baldwin; Corporal Merle A. May of Cornell; Warrant Officer (junior grade) Wilbur G. Grippen of Durand; and Captain H. L. Linton of Elroy are with the bulk tanker motor transport service in Europe, hauling gasoline for mechanized and aviation units through artillery fire, enemy planes and snipers." No date, but clearly post-D-Day. This last could be our man.
( Read more... )
Hope you enjoy!
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| 11 November 2006
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22:36 - "New" Fort Snelling
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Fort Snelling was originally constructed at the juncture of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers (present-day Saint Paul, MN) to keep white settlers out of fur trade country, keep the peace between the Dakota and Ojibwe, and extend American influence past the Great Lakes. The original walled fort has been restored as a historic tourist site, but in the years after the Civil War, the post expanded beyond the old walls. There were several major building booms, in the 1870s, 1890s, and 1920s. Between the World Wars, the post was known as a "plum" assignment for the Army and had a popular polo grounds. It closed for good in 1946 as a permanent installation but some buildings were used for Reserve and Guard purposes and as adjunct clinics for the nearby VA Hospital up into the 1980s.
The later buildings are falling into disrepair. Much of the west end of the post has been taken out by Minneapolis/St Paul Int'l Airport,and no one has lived in some of these buildings since the early 1970s. I took a bunch of pix in the summer of 2005. Various schemes to use and renovate some of the old post buildings have come up, but none has come to fruition and I fear someday the bulldozers will do what time and Minnesota climate have not done. I'll stick a couple shots up here and try to get a few others out over the next few days/weeks.
( Read more... )
If you guys like this stuff, I have a number of other pix of buildings at Fort Snelling.
current mood: nostalgic
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| 7 November 2006
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15:00 - Voting
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There's a sci-fi novel in the TEOTWAWKI genre (I think it might be Lucifer's Hammer) in which one of the groups of bad guys threatening the Last Outpost of Civilization is comprised of cannibals who make a sort of sacrament and initiation rite out of the consumption of human flesh. Once the disoriented, confused, starving survivors are browbeaten and bullied into eating other people, they become convinced that they have committed an unpardonable act and can never be accepted by anyone else again. This justifies all sorts of horrible atrocities by people who are only partially aware to what they are doing.
This morning it occurred to me that voting in this system sometimes feels like partaking of the forbidden food. Like it or not, I'm now part of the problem. How can I ever be clean again?
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| 1 November 2006
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10:22 - Well, no kidding.
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This thing is actually pretty perceptive. For the record, however, I do speak standard English, straight out of the dictionary. The rest of you have accents.
| What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Minnesota?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop." | | The Midland | | | The Northeast | | | Philadelphia | | | The South | | | The West | | | Boston | | | North Central | | | What American accent do you have? |
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| 30 October 2006
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15:22
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