blogs don't die - they just fade away slowly.

I'm finally sick of complaining. I start my job on Monday, and maybe I'll post here if I have something to say after work, but otherwise enjoy the day.

I want these - I have always wanted them

I think every toy has been called "too dangerous" for one reason or another. Skateboards, snowboards, rollerblades, those rollerblade scooters, pogoballs. OK, maybe pogoballs were never considered that dangerous.

The bottom line is that kids are kids and you can't grow up a kid being scared of getting hurt all the time. More importantly, you will turn gray very quickly if you are that worried over your child. We are people - animals. We used to live in the wild and we made it this far. If a kid falls and bangs his head on the ground, she'll probably cry and feel pain, but it is highly unlikely that anything that bad will happen. Broken arms and wrists are not fun, but they are part of growing up.

At any rate, I want these shoes. They make them in adult sizes, so it's just a matter of time.

Something for the Fleet of Foot
Shoes With Built-In Wheels Are All the Rage -- and the Source of Some Angst

By Fredrick Kunkle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 21, 2007; B01

They're hard to spot, those Heely kids.

Although millions of Heelys have been sold around the world, turning the sneakers with wheels into a must-have accessory for the grade-school set, you seldom notice a child wearing them until . . . THERE'S ONE! . . . Over there, b y the giant fridge !

Like magic, 8-year-old Anthony Viera has shifted from walking to rolling on the wheels inside his shoes. It's as though he's floating as he zigzags past kitchen appliances, fishtails down another aisle where his grandfather is pricing air conditioners and then -- aye yi yi -- swerves near a display of big-screen, big-ticket TVs.

No one pays him any mind on a recent night at the Fair Oaks Mall, which is fine by him.

"One time, when I went to Home Depot, they told me to stop rolling," said Anthony, a third-grader at Cub Run Elementary School in Centreville. "They think you're going to knock things down."

A fad for some and an annoyance for others, Heelys have hit their stride just in time for summer. Last year, the company, Heelys Inc., had more than $188 million in sales, compared with $21.3 million two years earlier. But, alas, a backlash has set in as some worry whether the sneakers-on-wheels are safe. Some schools, malls and other public places have banned them.

For a company with about 40 employees, Texas-based Heelys has created a worldwide craze since the shoes hit the market in 2000. Many sporting goods and shoe stores carry them. A pair of multicolor Gelato-style Heelys at Finish Line in the Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax will set you back $99.99.

"When they first came out, they hit the market just fierce," said Finish Line assistant manager David Holy, 20, of Manassas. "I've had people in their 30s come in and ask to buy them."

But malls aren't just places to purchase the shoes. They're considered awesome places to wear them.

Look around the average shopping center and you're liable to see a child between 6 and 14 gliding along on wheeled sneakers, perhaps in tow as her mother holds her hand and dashes around on errands.

At Potomac Mills mall in Prince William County, security guards hand out warnings to children who are heeling recklessly. Those who continue heeling wildly are asked to leave. The mall adopted the policy in February after some customers complained about children rolling into them, spokeswoman Caroline Barry said.

World Against Toys Causing Harm, a Boston-based nonprofit group, puts Heelys on its 2006 "10 Worst Toys" list, and two medical studies, including one this month in the journal Pediatrics, have warned of their possible hazards. A 12-year-old Massachusetts boy died in March 2006. Two boys elsewhere were critically injured while wearing wheeled sneakers, though it is not clear whether the shoes were to blame.

The Pediatrics study also put its finger on the tricky thing about wheeled sneakers: Their appeal rests on their versatility, which allows children to be walking one moment and zooming around on wheels the next. How can a kid be sly about his new James Bond-like sneakers if he's armored head to foot like a hockey goalie? And so they forgo helmets and pads, despite warnings by the company and safety advocates.

"Nobody wears any of that stuff with Heelys," fretted Lenore Gelman, the mother of two sons -- Teddy, 11, and Sam, 8 -- who successfully lobbied for Heelys. Gelman, a special education teacher from Gaithersburg, said she had never heard of the shoes until her older son began begging for a pair.

"I saw them on other kids and I said, 'I gotta have those,' " Teddy said. "It just looked like a shoe with wheels. At first, I thought it was strange, but after more people started to get them, I knew what they were."

For those without a 10-year-old in the neighborhood, a word of explanation: Heelys come with one or two wheels in the heel so wearers can go from walking to rolling just by shifting their weight. The wheels are not retractable; they do not spin when a person's weight rests on the front of the shoe. The wheels can be easily removed, however, transforming a Heely into a pedestrian set of sneakers.

To keep from falling when heeling, the wearer is advised to stagger the feet, placing one ahead of the other for stability.

Some backlash was inevitable.

The journal Pediatrics highlighted the shoe risks. A study conducted by the Temple Street Children's University Hospital in Dublin reported that 67 children ages 6 to 15 had been injured on wheeled sneakers during a 10-week period last summer. More than 80 percent of the injured children were girls, and the most common injuries involved broken wrists, arms and elbows. There were no head injuries, and none of the injuries was life-threatening.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that 1,600 emergency room visits a year are caused by wheeled sneakers. But the commission also reports that scooters send about 44,000 children annually to emergency rooms.

"The recommendation to parents should be, if you're going to buy wheeled sneakers, you should buy a helmet after that," commission spokesman Scott Wolfson said.

Some Fairfax County schools have banned them, but there is no districtwide prohibition, spokesman Paul Regnier said. Montgomery County has reported a few problems, but no districtwide policy is in place, spokeswoman Kate Harrison said. The D.C. schools' public relations office did not return calls seeking comment.

The only reported fatality of a Heelys wearer occurred when Ryan Carmichael of East Bridgewater, Mass., was hit by a car while crossing the two-lane road in front of his house to collect the mail. Police Chief John E. Cowan said last week that there was no evidence the boy was heeling at the time of the accident and that the circumstances suggest that he had been walking. A 12-year-old English boy and a 10-year-old boy from Jersey City, N.J., suffered critical head injuries while wearing wheeled sneakers after they fell and were hit by cars.

But the shoes' fans, which include parents, say that heeling is no worse than many other outdoor activities.

"It's in the same league as table tennis, billiards and bowling," Edward J. Heiden, a Washington-based consultant who, at Heelys' request, analyzed more than 2 million incident reports compiled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Between January 2001 and September 2006, Heiden found, sneakers-on-wheels had a better safety record than bicycles or skateboards or playing basketball, soccer or tennis.

Scott Freedman, medical director of the pediatric emergency department at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville, said the hospital has treated about 10 children injured while using wheeled sneakers in the past 12 months. "It's not a number that's astoundingly alarming," he said.

Still, Freedman urged users to wear helmets and other protective gear. And he advised parents to use common sense.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/20/AR2007062002361_2.html

$ & the power

“Power, not reason, is the new currency of this [Supreme] court’s decision making”

- Justice Marshall, on the final day of the court’s 1990 term. Two hours later, he announced his own retirement"

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/21/washington/21memo.html

water conservation

Dear person in front of me filling up your big water bottle at the water fountain:

I hate it when you refill their one liter water bottle while I stand in line waiting. For one thing, it takes forever to fill your bottle - more time than you are actually supposed to spend at the fountain. You are like those people who go to the ATM and check the balance in each of 10 accounts while people wait behind them. Or maybe they are actually applying for a mortgage.

But the worst part is that after I have waited for 5 minutes while you and your buddy chat it up, I finally get to step up and grab my 2 second sip of water to wet my whistle. And what do I get? A mouth full of pee-warm water.

If you need indications that water fountains are not designed to fill water bottles, it's that they don't hold enough cold water in reserve to fill water bottles in succession. They DO have enough cold water to let people come through and grab a sip of water.

Besides, if they were intended to fill water bottles, don't you think the spicket would be higher so that you didn't have to use advanced geometry to get your bottle wedged under the stream of water, which still only allows you to fill it 2/3rds of the way?

money at work

This is an example of what I guess I'll call moral capitalism. Kellogs isn't doing this because it's the right thing, and they aren't doing it because some government regulation says they have to. They're doing it because in the long run this will be better for them financially, and that is just fine with me. As Walmart unveils its line of organic food, we can all be confident knowing that we make a difference and send a signal every time we spend a dollar. That is why it is important to know where your money is going.

Adult-Only Froot Loops

Childhood obesity too often starts at home — in front of the television set. Children are defenseless against the wiles of Madison Avenue, and studies show most cannot understand the difference between an advertisement and the rest of their television fare. Even worse, these snappy ads directed at the young help create bad eating habits for life.

Now, the Kellogg Company has added its heft to those trying to address the growing national concern about young waistlines. The $11 billion company has established nutrition standards and promised that by the end of next year, many of its less-healthy items will either be healthier — “reformulated” to cut down on fat, salt and, particularly, sugar — or will not be advertised on children’s television shows.

The company’s new standards allow advertising for products with up to 12 grams of sugar per serving. That means if Pop-Tarts, Apple Jacks, Cocoa Krispies and Froot Loops keep their current contents they’ll be off the cartoon circuit. Frosted Flakes, with 11 grams, will still be pitched to the young.

Kellogg is now the latest corporation to respond to growing efforts by educators, parents’ groups, pediatricians and experts on obesity to cut down on advertising junk foods to children. A threatened lawsuit from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and two Massachusetts parents also helped nudge the company in the right direction.

Kellogg’s plan to limit advertising — like Walt Disney’s promise to stop using Mickey and his pals to sell sugary treats or Kraft’s limiting Oreo ads aimed at children — is only one small move in the right direction. The sugar content for Kellogg’s new list is high, and there is concern that more effort will now be made to sell these fattening treats to moms. There is still a lot more that these big, powerful companies could do to make products that lead to healthy profits and even healthier customers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/16/opinion/16sat4.html

resurrection

This is one of the best movie scenes of all time. For any of you out there who may have gotten laid off today, enjoy:

(contains explicit lyrics)

defeatism

I don't know if I should be more surprised that proponents of staying the course in Iraq continue to use amorphous and simplistic terms of "victory" and "defeat" without ever explaining what they mean, or that I continue to expect them to put meat on the bones and enable true dialog.

This is not an issue of victory or defeat, or supporting the war or not. In order to have an informed and intelligent discussion about the best way to proceed in Iraq, as a political society we have to use words that have actual meaning.

No one advocates accepting defeat or rejecting victory. What they disagree about are actual specific actions - those are what we should discuss.

As much as I love a good conspiracy theory, this article from today's NYT suggests that the Russian invasion of Afghanistan was because of American defeat in Viet Nam. If only America had stuck it out until victory, there never would have been the Khmer Rouge genocide.

Accepting defeat is speaking in amorphous terms that remove the opportunity for meaningful discussion and suggesting that support for a single action or decision will mean the end of the world. Victory is embracing confidence that our American system of democracy will prevail; the people will ultimately make the right decision, and trusting that your ideas will stand on their merit rather than hollow rhetoric.

Defeat’s Killing Fields

By PETER W. RODMAN and WILLIAM SHAWCROSS

SOME opponents of the Iraq war are toying with the idea of American defeat. A number of them are simply predicting it, while others advocate measures that would make it more likely. Lending intellectual respectability to all this is an argument that takes a strange comfort from the outcome of the Vietnam War. The defeat of the American enterprise in Indochina, it is said, turned out not to be as bad as expected. The United States recovered, and no lasting price was paid.

. . .

The 1975 Communist victory in Indochina led to horrors that engulfed the region. The victorious Khmer Rouge killed one to two million of their fellow Cambodians in a genocidal, ideological rampage. . . .

The defeat had a lasting and significant strategic impact. . . . [the Soviet] of Afghanistan was one result.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/opinion/07shawcross.htm

Tan-credo

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this republican debate. Tancredo just said the we need to stop immigration until we can assimilate the ones we have, and we'll know when that happens because the phone menus will no longer say 1 for English & 2 for Spanish.

I understand that this early in the primaries, there are always fringe politicians, and I always cringe when Dennis Kucinich gets his turn at the mic. But I'll take a wacko love hippie over a hate preaching fear monger xenophobe any day.

pick one

Which of the following is the real The New York Times quote of the day:

(A) "If you want to scare the American people, what you say is the bill’s about partial birth abortion. That’s empty political rhetoric trying to frighten our citizens."

(B) "If you want to scare the American people, what you say is the bill’s an amnesty bill. That’s empty political rhetoric trying to frighten our citizens."

(C) "If you want to scare the American people, what you say is there's a war on terror. That’s empty political rhetoric trying to frighten our citizens."

(D) "If you want to scare the American people, what you say is there's a gas shortage. That’s empty political rhetoric trying to frighten our citizens."

Answer: who cares? It's all empty political rhetoric and that's the way we like it. We're Americans. OK, it was B. Full story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/washington/30immig.html

Personal Responsibility

An article in today's Times sets forth scientific research into obesity that indicates being over weight is determined by your genes. The article is quite interesting and provides some useful insight into how the body works and how it responds to changes in eating habits and weight gains and losses, but it is clearly an example of science in a vacuum. The sample sizes may be large enough enough and may provide results that are consistent enough to be statistically significant, but the fact is that they simply don't account for the public health realities of obesity.

There is no doubt in my mind that genes play a large role in determining your body type, including your metabolism. In some areas that role is probably exclusive and in others it is probably much weaker. There are most likely people who are genetically predisposed to have extreme problems with obesity. But genetics cannot explain the demographic trends of obesity.

Genetics cannot account for the disproportionate effect that obesity has on the poor, or for the increase is obese children. These are cultural and societal problems, not just genetic ones.

Genes Take Charge, and Diets Fall by the Wayside

"There is a reason that fat people cannot stay thin after they diet and that thin people cannot stay fat when they force themselves to gain weight. The body’s metabolism speeds up or slows down to keep weight within a narrow range. Gain weight and the metabolism can as much as double; lose weight and it can slow to half its original speed."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/health/08fat.htm

happy mother's day

There is nothing more inspiring than when you are out for a jog feeling pretty good about your fitness level & performance when a woman passes you . . . going uphill . . . pushing a jog stroller . . . with twins.

The Fire is Burning

The Arcade Fire is no longer an underground sensation or one of those bands where people say "oh yeah, they sound familiar." I first heard of them in the fall of 2006 and they didn't immediately grab me. At the time I was more skeptical of semi-electronic sounding music and preferred being able to listen to each instrument in turn. They vocals on the songs I heard also seemed a bit obscured, which doesn't generally suit me.

It was the following spring or summer that I learned - listening to their first full length album "Funeral" on the metro to and from work and internships. Their music has something special and I still can't quite put my finger on it.

Friday night I saw them in concert for the first time. They played DAR Constitution Hall here in D.C., which is not one of the better places to see a show. Having come up on the Allman Brothers and then Phish and Widespread Panic, I am accustomed to seeing concerts where there aren't a great deal of stops between songs and the songs are generally between 6 and 8 minutes, so it was difficult to adjust to shorter songs with longer stops after each song. The 80 minute set is what I'm used to being the first set, not the whole show.

But all that said, the show was great. The energy in the room started to coalesce about half way through and the band did a nice job building momentum into the end of the show and the encore. If you have a chance to see them live, I highly recommend it.

Their records, however, absolutely must be on your shelf. No collection is complete without them. This could be the best band of the decade.

Even more taken than I was, a writer from the Washington Post characterized the band as "a sort of modern-day art-rock answer to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band" and found "an undeniable grandeur and a thrilling vastness to the songs . . . but it's no empty bombast: In the studio and especially in concert, Arcade Fire's emotional music plays as deeply meaningful, soul-stirring art."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/05/AR2007050500995.html

Here are 2 mp3s from their show in New York on February 17 of this year. The first is a bit slower and close to spoken word. The other is not:

My Body is a Cage

Keep the Car Running



* I should recognize that the brothers who lead the band are from Texas, although they moved to Canadia before forming the band.

tit for tat

I'm not sure what Ms. Goodling expected to happen when she declined to go before Congress and lie for her boss, but we all could have seen this one coming:

Justice Dept. Announces Inquiry Into Its Hiring

By ERIC LIPTON and DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, May 2 — The Justice Department has begun an internal investigation into whether a former senior adviser to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales improperly tried to fill vacancies for career prosecutors at the agency with Republicans loyal to the Bush administration, department officials said Wednesday.

The inquiry focuses on whether the former adviser, Monica Goodling, sought to determine the political affiliations of job applicants before they were hired as prosecutors — potentially a violation of civil service laws and a break with a tradition of nonpartisanship in the career ranks at the Justice Department.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/washington/03attorneys.html


And I sure am excited to learn that the biggest richest most complex tax evaders don't get audited because they are too big rich and complex. Now that's something to set your sights on:

I.R.S. Curtails Many Audits in Tax Havens

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, May 2 — The Internal Revenue Service is curtailing audits of many people who use offshore tax havens, even when agents see signs of tax evasion, because agents fear they cannot meet a three-year deadline for finishing an examination, Congressional investigators have found.

In a report to be released on Thursday, the Government Accountability Office found that I.R.S. agents are so hobbled by “dilatory tactics” by offshore taxpayers and other problems that it takes almost two and a half years to complete a typical audit.

Many I.R.S. agents told the G.A.O., the investigative arm of Congress, that the “safest way” was often to stop an audit prematurely and sometimes to refrain from starting one in the first place.

The I.R.S. reported that almost $300 billion in investment and business income was moved out of the United States in 2003. Analysts at the Joint Committee on Taxation have estimated that the annual outflow has shot to more than $400 billion since then.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/business/03tax.htm

not as easy as it seems

at first blush, even the NRA agrees that people who have been involuntarily committed and deemed mentally ill or a danger to them self or others should not be able to purchase guns. Indeed, it is a rare thing that the NRA supports a restriction on gun sales, or individual's right to purchase guns, so this must be a no-brainer right?

I'm not sure. Of course, it is already illegal for people falling within these categories to purchase guns. The problem lies in reporting by state agencies who are bound by state privacy laws. With the events at Virginia Tech fresh on everyone's mind and conscience, there is a new push to enforce these laws by creating or giving full effect to the national data base against which background checks are performed. That is something I do not support.

There should not be a federal law that preempts state privacy protections, especially for the mentally ill. There should not be a federally centralized list of all the crazy people in the country. If you want to buy a gun, then I think you give up certain privacy protections and one of those is being forced to divulge your mental health history.

But I do not want to buy a gun, and I do not want my name or anyone else's name in that database. Being put in a database is an infringement on your privacy, and you should not be forced to do that so that other people can buy guns more quickly. This returns us to the world of a couple day waiting period - it could even be an overnight or several hour thing. Each state would be networked and when you want to buy a gun, the dealer sends out the request and any states that have you on their list respond.

Privacy Laws Slow Efforts on Gun-Buyer Data

By MICHAEL LUO

WASHINGTON, May 1 — Momentum is building in Congress behind a measure that would push states to report their mental health records to the federal database used to conduct background checks on gun buyers.

But a thicket of obstacles, most notably state privacy laws, have thwarted repeated efforts to improve the reporting of such records in the past and are likely to complicate this latest effort, even after the worst mass shooting in United States history at Virginia Tech last month.

Federal law prohibits anyone who has been adjudicated as a “mental defective,” as well as anyone involuntarily committed to a mental institution, from buying a firearm. But only 22 states now submit any mental health records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, against which all would-be gun purchasers must be checked.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/us/02guns.html

see also http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/02/AR2007050200282.html


in other news, this is why I try to stick with Organic foods as much as possible:

Millions Of Chickens Fed Tainted Pet Food
Risk to Consumers Minimal, FDA Says

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 2, 2007; A01

At least 2.5 million broiler chickens from an Indiana producer were fed pet food scraps contaminated with the chemical melamine and subsequently sold for human consumption, federal health officials reported yesterday.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/01/AR2007050102071.html

These Gray Days

The funny thing about spring time is that you oscillate between days of gray skies and rain, wishing for the sun to come out, and then the sun comes out for a couple days and all you want is some rain to wash away the pollen.

These Gray Days
Lyrics by Jerry Joseph

It's a thin line hanging on the wall
Strike a little balance, shattering a fall
A thin line between charity and greed
What I want, what I need
Lately I ain't had much to say
Something seems to tie my tongue
On these gray days

A thin line between loneliness and crowds
Talking till you're burning, baby
A thin line between heaven and catastrophe
Who we really are, who we really want to be
Lately when things don't go my way
I'm taking comfort in these gray days

These gray days are better than others
It's a thin line between the oven and the sun
Thank God for giving me the cover
These gray days are better than none

Thin line hanging on the wall
Strike a little balance, shattering a fall
Lately I've tried to learn to pray
To see the miracle in these gray days

These gray days are better than others
It's a thin line between danger and the fun
Hold tight, my enemy and lover
These gray days are better than none

Lately I try to understand
Am I acting like a child or acting like a man
Do we take each other hostage
Or are we simply holding hands
Who's to say, on these gray days

Download an mp3 of this song from The Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh NC, April 21, 2007.
Full show from http://bt.etree.org/details.php?id=506103

Sidetrack hijacked

I remember in college a good portion of my friends had prescriptions to ritalin or other ADD drugs. They would doll them out when people had tests or papers, or honestly sometimes when people just had a hair up their ass and wanted to snort some pseudo cocaine I guess.

The trick that people learned was that when they took the stuff, they had to go study before it kicked in because if they didn't, they'd end up totally focused and zeroed in on something other than their books. I can't count how many times the house got cleaned up because someone forgot that rule, or I'd come home during spring exams and the grass that hadn't been cut in months would not only be perfectly mowed (with the diagonal checkerboard no less), but the clippings would be raked, the sidewalks edged, and the hedges trimmed.


What made me think of this? Well, it's 10:00 on a Thursday night. I have my first exam of the season on Saturday (which is also happily my second to last exam of all time, assuming all goes well). I put the coffee on around 8:30 and so far I know a lot about lawn striping and the failures of previous Carolina Panther drafts, but I don't know much more about Conflicts of Law than I did when I dropped an extra sugar cube in my java.

prologue: based on my google searches, I have discovered that the lawn care term of art is not "diagonal checkerboard" but that the effect is a variation of "lawn striping"

All my Ex's live . . .

Over a year ago I started a serial topic called "Texas is Great," but it never got off the ground. Well here is the latest installment. You can check out previous posts here, or by scrolling down a little and clicking on the "Label" list at right.

Texas Legislators Block Shots for Girls Against Cancer Virus

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

HOUSTON, April 25 — A revolt by lawmakers has blocked Gov. Rick Perry’s effort to make Texas the first state to require sixth-grade girls to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer.

In a 135-to-2 vote that appeared veto-proof, the Texas House gave final passage on Wednesday to a Senate bill that bars the state from ordering the shots until at least 2011. Even many supporters of the governor resented Mr. Perry’s proposal as an abuse of executive authority.

“There was no public testimony — why we were jumping so fast into a vaccine that was not for a true communicable disease,” said Senator Glenn Hegar Jr., a Republican representing a district just west of Houston who sponsored the Senate bill to overturn the governor’s order. It passed 30 to 1 on Monday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/26/us/26texas.html

The worst thing about this episode is that the Gov. was trying to do something that is truly progressive and what I think is a wonderful expenditure of resources. I understand that to many people an STD may not be a "true communicable" disease, but legislators need to look at public health realities rather than their personal sense of morals when deciding how to address medical issues.

The reality is that girls are sexually active at a young age. They are unlikely to ask their parents for the vaccine and many of the highest risk families probably can't afford it anyway. The government is in a position to save their lives, and the Texas legislature voted almost unanimously to let them die instead.


on the iPod:
Ryan Adams, Jacksonville City Nights

marching one by one

Today the ants are busy
beside my front steps, weaving
in and out of the hill they're building.
I watch them emerge and—

like everything I've forgotten—disappear
into the subterranean, a world
made by displacement.


These are the first words of Natasha Trethewey's poem Monument, from her Pulitzer Prize winning book Native Guard. She was on the News Hour this evening. Check the MP3 and more of her poetry here: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/entertainment/poetry/profiles/poet_trethewey.html


News of the Day

People like this give good normal liberals a bad name. When Nancy Pelosi thinks you're focusing on the wrong part of the story, that should make you stop and reevaluate the reasons why you're doing what you're doing and why you get out of bed every day.

Democratic lawmaker seeks to impeach Cheney

Reuters
Tuesday, April 24, 2007; 7:44 PM

(Corrects day of the week in lead to Tuesday)

By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Democratic lawmaker opposed to the Iraq war initiated a bid on Tuesday to remove Vice President Dick Cheney from office that even his own party leaders dismissed as futile.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio introduced three articles of impeachment in the Democratic-led House of Representatives against Cheney, accusing him of having misled the country into its 2003 invasion of Iraq and, more recently, threatening Iran without cause.

"I believe the vice president's conduct of office has been destructive to the founding purposes of our nation," said Kucinich, who is making a long-shot bid for the White House.

Shortly after Democrats took control of Congress in January from Bush's Republicans, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would not consider impeachment, a highly divisive issue that could tie Capitol Hill into knots.

"Nothing has changed. It's off the table," said Nadeam Elshami, a Pelosi spokesman. "We're focusing on tough issues like bringing the war in Iraq to a responsible end."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/24/AR2007042401963.html

$$$

This is the time of year that everyone hits up everyone for fund raising support for a good cause. Tina is my fourth friend to send me such an e-mail - I've already contributed to a charity that rescues homeless animals, a ride for research into childhood diabetes (that's the one you're born with, not the one you earn by eating like shit for years upon years), and my cousin's Relay for Life team, which earned over 20k.

Soon I'll be sending my own e-mail trying to raise money for the Race for a Cure breast cancer run/walk here in D.C.

I know that receiving these e-mails can get tedious, but after participating in the Race for a Cure last year, I can attest to how meaningful it is to see someone contribute to your cause and support your efforts. So - don't blow your whole wad on the first e-mail that comes across your in-box. The important thing is giving something, not giving a lot. Drop a 10 or 20 spot and the person will feel huge.

I kept a mental list of everyone who contributed to my fund raising and thought of them all as I ran my race.

So, if I did it right, I added a $ tracker on the side of my blog for Tina's efforts to go work with children in Costa Rica. Costa Rica - I know, that was my reaction, but what are you gonna do? She's my friend and I support her. You can too.

OCD Much?

The people that live above me vacuum a lot. I mean like, WAY too much. They are vacuuming right now - 10:17 on a Tuesday night. I hear them vacuum about 4 times a week, and I'm not home THAT much.

I don't know what to tell them. It doesn't bother me that much, but that's only because I am a student and it isn't that loud. I figure I just shouldn't say anything in case I ever start playing music late at night and they try to complain.

"What? You think my music's too loud?!!? Shouldn't you be vacuuming anyway?" And then they will suddenly realize that I am right, they should be vacuuming, and run back upstairs having forgotten that my music was too loud.


NEWS OF THE DAY:

I'll start working for the government next year, making less money than I could if I were working for the private sector. I hope these clowns don't ruin what really is a good benefit for me - and a program that probably goes a long way to getting commuters off the road.

U.S. Employees Selling Transit Passes Illegally, Investigators Say

By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON, April 23 — To save gas, cut air pollution and unclog roads, the federal government gives its workers about $250 million a year in bus and subway passes. But many of the employees drive to work anyway and sell the transit passes on the Internet for cash, according to Congressional investigators.

“The metro cards are brand new, never used and do not expire,” read one online description for subway passes in Washington, where many of the sales originate. “I am selling these because I receive them monthly as part of my benefits at work, and I now have too many.”

Government employees who resell the passes are committing fraud, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office, scheduled to be released Tuesday by Senator Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/washington/24perk.html

the bad fight

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the Supreme Court upheld the abortion ban, but it is still troubling when we see an issue that is so clearly decided by the composition of the court rather than anything else.

While I generally don't agree with them, I understand what motivates anti-abortionists who view a fetus as a life as worthy of protection as all of ours. I think this most recent case really misses the target by focusing on late term pregnancies where the pregnant woman has demonstrated a serious commitment to caring for her child, but by some tragic misfortune is faced with a significant risk to her own health or the possibility of giving birth to a child with substantial debilitating physical or mental defect. In many ways, the early term abortions present a much more compelling moral argument for regulation. But that is neither here nor there.

What really troubles me is that this law doesn't actually save any life - it doesn't prevent a woman at a certain point in pregnancy from getting an abortion. All it does is prevent a woman who has made that difficult decision from getting the safest available treatment - she will still have an abortion, just with a procedure that presents a greater risk to her health. That is something that anti-abortionists are not talking about, and that is why this particular law looks more like paternalism designed to restrict women's freedom than a law motivated by saving fetal life.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/18/AR2007041802253.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/washington/19scotus.html

drugs are good

I would be remiss to fail to mention the shootings yesterday, but even though I am never anything more than a voice in the wind, I hate writing about the same thing that everyone is writing about. I will say only that this country is screwed. Things like this don't happen in other places. To be sure, Iraq has it's own problems with violence, but that does not mitigate what happens here. These types of things will continue.

On more upbeat note, until last week it had been well over 5 years since I last took antibiotics. Faced with the over-prescription of drugs in our society, I decided to fight the trend and not contribute to breeding the super-bacteria. But last week over the course of 2 days I entered an accelerating decline that left me hacking up things of unspeakable size and color. Unable to do what I normally do (which is shut down for 2 days and eat drink & sleep until I get better) I went to the doctor and grabbed a prescription for amoxicillin. It took all of 15 hours for me to start feeling extremely better. I have 2 days left on the prescription, and have been pretty much back to full strength for a while now.

I figure that since I feel better, I can stop taking the drugs.


SIKE!

Only your hatred can destroy me

If you want to know something about someone, check out who they are sleeping with. In case anyone is under the impression that Google is still part of a counter culture free internet revolution >>>

Google Reaches Deal With Clear Channel to Sell Radio Ads

By LOUISE STORY

Google will begin selling advertisements across all of the stations of Clear Channel Communications, the No. 1 radio station owner in the United States, at the end of June, the companies will announce today.

Google has been working for months to expand its ad sales operation into traditional media like newspapers, radio and television. To do so, it needs traditional media companies to allow it to sell some of their ads, and it had seemed to be making little progress in radio.

But the partnership with Clear Channel represents a step forward for Google. The deal will run for several years, and will give Google access to just under 5 percent of Clear Channel’s commercial time. That will include 30-second spots on all of Clear Channel’s 675 stations during all programs and all times of the day, executives at both companies said in interviews yesterday.

The companies did not disclose the financial details of the arrangement, except to say that Clear Channel would receive the majority of the ad revenue.

“It represents an opportunity to put what is arguably the hottest sales organization in the world to work selling our inventory, and we’re very excited about that,” said John Hogan, the chief executive of Clear Channel.

Mr. Hogan said that Google would bring new advertisers to his stations and would work with those companies rather than with Clear Channel’s existing advertisers. But, he said, the Google advertisers would have access to premium inventory — in contrast to some of Google’s deals with newspapers that are allowing Google to sell only leftover ad space. And, he left the door open for a broader deal.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/technology/16radio.html


on the iPod:
Daniel Johnston

little did he know. . .

Remember that movie trailer that you saw a while back and thought to yourself "man, that looks pretty good. I should go see that when it comes out." That movie was called Stranger than Fiction. If you haven't seen it yet, it's on DVD now and waiting for you at Blockbuster, Hollywood, or Netflix. You should see it. I don't see a lot of movies, but I will say that this is one of the best movies I've seen in a while.


It is not a Will Ferrell vehicle. It is a funny and dark and life affirming all at once. Dustin Hoffman is all that you would expect from him, and Maggie Gyllanhaal and Emma Thompson are perfectly cast. Mix in direction by Marc Forster of Monsters Ball and Finding Neverland and you have an impeccably acted film that is not too intense but not too bubble gum.


news of the day:

Lawyer Says Rove Assumed E-Mail Was Kept
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Karl Rove, the chief political strategist for President
Bush, did not intentionally delete e-mail messages to avoid
creating a paper trail, his lawyer said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/14/washington/14emails.html

This is actually not that surprising to me and while it is difficult for me to believe anything that comes from anyone associated with the Bush administration, when I interned at a government agency I remember being shocked that each individual was responsible for retaining their own e-mail.


on the iPod:
Paul Weller, Days of Speed

written just for me

With just one week of classes left in my law school career, to be followed by a summer studying for (and hopefully passing) the Virginia Bar exam, and a cozy desk at a federal agency already waiting for me, I wonder what that high school me would think. I wonder what the college me would think, or even the post-college me that put everything I owned in a storage unit and drove cross-country for 10 weeks one summer.

Kurt Vonnegut

By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

If you read Kurt Vonnegut when you were young — read all there was of him, book after book as fast as you could the way so many of us did — you probably set him aside long ago. That’s the way it goes with writers we love when we’re young. It’s almost as though their books absorbed some part of our DNA while we were reading them, and rereading them means revisiting a version of ourselves we may no longer remember or trust.

Not that Vonnegut is mainly for the young. I’m sure there are plenty of people who think he is entirely unsuitable for readers under the age of disillusionment. But the time to read Vonnegut is just when you begin to suspect that the world is not what it appears to be. He is the indispensable footnote to everything everyone is trying to teach you, the footnote that pulls the rug out from under the established truths being so firmly avowed in the body of the text.

He is not only entertaining, he is electrocuting. You read him with enormous pleasure because he makes your hair stand on end. He says not only what no one is saying, but also what — as a mild young person — you know it is forbidden to say. No one nourishes the skepticism of the young like Vonnegut. In his world, decency is likelier to be rooted in skepticism than it is in the ardor of faith.

So you get older, and it’s been 20 or 30 years since you last read “Player Piano” or “Cat’s Cradle” or “Slaughterhouse-Five.” Vonnegut is not, now, somehow serious enough. You’ve entered that time of life when every hard truth has to be qualified by the sense of what you stand to lose. “It’s not that simple,” you find yourself saying a lot, and the train of thought that unfolds in your mind as you speak those words reeks of desperation.

And yet, somehow, the world seems more and more to have been written by Vonnegut and your life is now the footnote. Perhaps it is time to go back and revisit that earlier self, the one who seemed, for a while, so interwoven in the pages of those old paperbacks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/opinion/13fri4.html

I wish this was a surprise

It should be fully clear by this point, with all that has been coming to light in D.C., that the administration really sucks. Not because of their political positions, but because of their underhanded back room corruption and sense of entitlement.

But I know I am wasting my time with this post. Everyone who has half a brain and an ounce of integrity knows how insulting and embarrassing the Bush Administration has been - regardless of your position on Iraq.

Turmoil Grows for Wolfowitz at World Bank

By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, April 12 — Paul D. Wolfowitz’s tenure as president of the World Bank was thrown into turmoil on Thursday by the disclosure that he had helped arrange a pay raise for his companion at the time of her transfer from the bank to the State Department, where she remained on the bank payroll.

In a chaotic day of revelations and meetings at a normally staid institution, Mr. Wolfowitz apologized for his role in the raise and transfer of Shaha Ali Riza, his companion, to a few hundred staff members assembled in the bank building atrium, only to be greeted by booing, catcalls and cries for his resignation.

Earlier, the bank’s staff association had declared that it was “impossible for the institution to move forward with any sense of purpose under the present leadership.” The association had helped spearhead an investigation into Ms. Riza’s transfer and raise, details of which came into the open in the last 24 hours.

The events injected a new ugliness into what had already been a bitter rift between Mr. Wolfowitz and many of the bank’s employees, who have questioned his suitability for the job as a former deputy secretary of defense and architect of the Iraq war, and have challenged many of his policies at the bank, especially those cracking down on corruption in which he suspended aid to several countries without consulting the board.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/world/13wolfowitz.html

and so it goes

Kurt Vonnegut was my first favorite author. Well, my first favorite author was the collection of people who wrote the Black Stallion books, but I gave up on being a jockey some time in late elementary school and didn't latch on to anyone again until we read Slaughter House 5 in highschool.

I'm not sure if people can understand the significance of finding a true counter-culture rebel with a cause in something that was being shoved down my throat unless you too found yourself trapped in a hoity-toity southern private school where everyone thought they were better than you but smiled to your face and focused on the most materialistic popularity oriented aspects of life, never thinking to see if they would like you because you weren't like them.

I wanted to be Kurt Vonnegut. I wrote my papers that semester in a copy-cat style that probably allowed me to get a passing grade only because my teacher was happy to see that I finally gave a shit about anything in school. I read other books that criss-crossed characters from that one. His work solidified my affinity for books and movies that deal in time travel. Not just going back to the past, but loops where your actions that haven't happened yet change what happens in the now.

One of the most memorable things I read by him in the last ten years was a piece in Playboy's millennium edition. He told the story of being a young boy riding down an old dirt road when his father pulled their Studebaker over to the side of the road and he and his sister leaned forward and they all looked at the odometer as it stroked 100,000. Just because. If we shared nothing else on the millennium, we shared a collective pause to stop and look at the odometer.

And now we can stop to share a collective pause and reflect on Kurt Vonnegut's contribution to our lives and our society.

I searched Google for a photo to put up here. There is no lack of selection, but it was difficult to find just the right one, with the right mix of anguish and mystery and "I know something you don't know" and happiness and love for life. I think this is the one:



Links:
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/04/12/vonnegut/index.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/12/AR2007041200164.html
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/achenblog/2007/04/kurt_vonnegut.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/12/books/12vonnegut.html

"Astronaut had Bondage Photos"

I'm glad I'm not the subject of that headline. Based on stereotypes though, doesn't it make sense that a control freak power trip astronaut would get off on being dominated? Here's the article: http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/04/10/astronaut.arrested.ap/index.html

Even the Washington Post ran this story. Embarrassing for them if you ask me. But I think we are missing the real issue here - why is this taking up valuable new space when we should be focused on the father of Anna Nicole's baby?

Forever testing the theory of "there's no such thing as bad publicity," I wonder how Target feels about this picture:

mo money

"Many experts have concluded that the nation's real estate boom of recent years was fueled in part by weakened lending standards that sparked excessive demand and drove up prices."

Everyone knew that interest rates were really low, and that the "interest only" mortgage structure was risky unless you expected to see a marked increase in your income - but people still decided to prospect on property. I was the beneficiary of the low rates for a while and exited the market earlier than anticipated.

To tell the truth, I am glad that the housing prices have chilled out while I finish school and get ready to find my home. It is completely likely that in a year or two if I buy property, I could buy some 5 year old construction previously owned by someone who couldn't afford it.

I don't feel that bad for people who made risky decisions, but I do feel bad for people who were swindled like this:

"In Atlanta, entire neighborhoods and condominium developments, especially those in affluent areas, were hit by organized fraud rings. Initially, these schemes pumped up housing values for everyone as artificially high appraisals helped the swindlers get inflated loans. Legitimate home buyers rushed in to get a piece of what they thought was a soaring real estate market. Now as the fraud is being exposed, their home values are taking a hit.

As more of these cases come to light around the nation, the question is: How much did an epidemic of fraud contribute to the frenzied housing market of recent years?"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/09/AR2007040901463.html

You say you want a what?

A while back I wrote about Nike's AC/DC add.

Why is YouTube so great? Because you can watch the commercial that changed it all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztSYJNO4kac

This is also my first attempt at embedding a YouTube video in my blog.

Talk to the Hand

Walking back to school from grabbing a few fish tacos at Baja Fresh the other night, I came to an intersection where people regularly cross the street against the cross walk.


I was 3/4 of the way through the intersection when a woman drove by behind me and yelled "That's a red hand sir!"

It didn't even register that she was talking to me. I was rockin out to something or another on my iPod, and didn't flinch when she yelled. Once I realized she had intended her parenting for me, I wished I'd given her the bird or yelled something back.

Then I realized that my seemingly oblivious reaction was probably even more frustrating to her.

Stadium Arcadium

The Red Hot Chili Peppers have been up and down several times over the last several years - they are smart enough and good enough to pen at least one single per album, guaranteeing that they can keep some fans, sell concert tickets, and sell records. But in my estimation, these records have often lacked depth. Californication and Scar Tissue were both very good songs, but the record didn't do it for me as a whole.


When I saw RHCP on Saturday Night Live performing the first single from Stadium Arcadium, I was throughly disappointed and sad to see that such a great band was in continued decline. But the single eventually caught my ear, as did the next one.

I've now listened through the double disc several times. This is no return to Blood Sugar Sex Magic or Mother's Milk, but those are some of the best albums of our generation. But to put together two full discs of songs is a big challenge, and this was not a product of trying to put out bulk and refusing to distinguish one poor song from the next. There are other very good songs on there, and while the sound may not be as revolutionary as their earlier work, the RHCP continue to advance the funk and hip-hop influences in their brand of (somewhat punk) rock.

Here is their Grammy performance of Snow (Hey Oh). You'll have to excuse the squealing girls at the beginning. This is a wonderful song and while it is too bad that Anthony Kiedis has spent so long battling addiction, at least we get the benefit of his troubles.

p.s. - it should come as no surprise that Rick Rubin produced this record. He was all over everything at the Grammys

sleep a little easier

It's good to know that the Attorney General throws more weight when it comes to the war on terror than the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State combined:

Mr. Gates’s appeal was an effort to turn Mr. Bush’s publicly stated desire to close Guantánamo into a specific plan for action, the officials said. In particular, Mr. Gates urged that trials of terrorism suspects be moved to the United States, both to make them more credible and because Guantánamo’s continued existence hampered the broader war effort, administration officials said.

Mr. Gates’s arguments were rejected after Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and some other government lawyers expressed strong objections to moving detainees to the United States, a stance that was backed by the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, administration officials said.

As Mr. Gates was making his case, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined him in urging that the detention facility be shut down, administration officials said. But the high-level discussions about closing Guantánamo came to a halt after Mr. Bush rejected the approach, although officials at the National Security Council, the Pentagon and the State Department continue to analyze options for the detention of terrorism suspects.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/washington/23gitmo.html

Fight the Power

I've been on Spring Break, but rather than bore you with tales of 50 degrees and blue skys at Vail, I figured I'd pass along this treat.

the band moe. recently covered Guns of Brixton, originally by the Clash. I'm not sure how long moe. has been playing it, but it's a great choice if you ask me.

When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun

When the law break in
How you gonna go?
Shot down on the pavement
Or waiting on death row

You can crush us
You can bruise us
But you'll have to answer to
Oh, the guns of Brixton

The money feels good
And your life you like it well
But surely your time will come
As in heaven, as in hell

You see, he feels like Ivan
Born under the Brixton sun
His game is called survivin'
At the end of the harder they come

You know it means no mercy
They caught him with a gun
No need for the Black Maria
Goodbye to the Brixton sun

You can crush us
You can bruise us
Yes, even shoot us
But oh-the guns of Brixton

When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun

You can crush us
You can bruise us
Yes, even shoot us
But oh-the guns of Brixton

Shot down on the pavement
Waiting in death row
His game is called survivin'
As in heaven as in hell

You can crush us
You can bruise us
But you'll have to answer to
Oh, the guns of Brixton

Here's moe.'s version (7.3MB).

I added transition & fades

In case you were wondering . . .

In Virginia:

A character combination may violate the personalized plate policy if it contains a combination of characters that could reasonably be seen by a person viewing the plate as:
A. Profane, obscene, or vulgar in nature.
B. Sexually explicit or graphic.
C. Excretory related.
D. Used to describe intimate body parts or genitals.
E. Used to describe drugs, drug culture, or drug use.
F. Used to condone or encourage violence.
G. Used to describe illegal activities or illegal substances.
H. Socially, racially, or ethnically offensive or disparaging.
DMV reserves the right to refuse to issue a character combination that violates the personalized plate policy. All personalized character combinations are screened by DMV to ensure that they do not violate our policy.

I swear to god, I once saw Georgia plate that was "Deznutz"

Long May You Run

As far as I know, the Houride is still in my parents driveway. I may be "grown up" but apparently I am still a slouch in some ways. Well, probably a lot of ways, but that is neither here nor there. At any rate, my mom gave me her car for my birthday and today the hand-off was completed when I ordered the permanent plates from the VA DMV.

My new plates are a lyric from the Neil Young song "Long May You Run" as a homage to the Houride, which was a loyal steed that served me well for many changes in my life. I love the car more than I should, but I couldn't love the memories any more than I do.

LONG MAY YOU RUN

We've been through some things together
With trunks of memories still to come
We found things to do in stormy weather
Long may you run.

Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Although these changes have come
With your chrome heart shining in the sun
Long may you run.

Well, it was back in Blind River in 1962
When I last saw you alive
But we missed that shift on the long decline
Long may you run.

Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Although these changes have come
With your chrome heart shining in the sun
Long may you run.

Maybe The Beach Boys have got you now
With those waves singing "Caroline No"
Rollin' down that empty ocean road
Gettin' to the surf on time.
Long may you run.

Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Although these changes have come
With your chrome heart shining in the sun
Long may you run.

Mississippi Burning

I am not exactly sure why I had never seen Mississippi Burning until last night, but I am glad I finally did. If you haven't seen it, you should. Being from the South, I didn't really need a lesson on how terrible things were - and are. But the movie is good and would be even if it were fiction. It's chock full of actors who you know and will recognize and enjoy seeing at a relatively young age.

On top of that, it reminds you of the deleterious effect that hatred has on people and society.

I can never pretend to know what it is like to be black in the south (or the north) today, much less back then. But I can imagine what it is like to be a white racist and have that kid of hatred in your soul. What a pitiful existence that must be - to devote energy to negative and exclusionary goals and feelings. I don't think you could ever truly love when your heart is broken with that much anger and insecurity.

The most powerful scene for me was when Gene Hackman's character recounts a story from his childhood when the black sharecropper down the road got a mule.

Save the Cheerleader . . .

In case you didn't notice, Rolling Blunder stopped rolling a while back when the heroes of the story landed in Denver, CO. But as they say, the end of one adventure is the start of another and they promptly began doing their part to save the world.

Check out their new blog (at least new to my list), which tracks the green renovation of their home. It's been going on for a while, but scroll to the beginning of the blog to start where they did.

More importantly, scope out their contracting business at http://www.suvillage.com for your renovation needs & ideas.

on the iPod:
hopefully the Grammy performance by Christina Aguilera

wash your mouth out

Insulated travel coffee mugs are great, but the "do not put in dishwasher" thing is a pain. I'm half way through my coffee and I just pulled a big swig of soap because I apparently didn't rinse the lid well enough after hand washing. Dang.

tougher than leather

I was way too young to fully appreciate the significance of RUN-DMC & the fact that, on top of everything else, they also made a commercially successful rap movie.


It's funny how you feel tough when you wear leather. I was on my way out last night, sporting my leather jacket & rocking the iPod on the train. Forget that I am a middle aged white male law student - the point isn't whether I am tough or even look tough. The point is that wearing a leather jacket makes you feel tough. How could it not?

But that feeling quickly fades away when you reach into your pocket and find a tube of Blistex. It's hard to feel tough when you have Blistex in your pocket.

you're not wearing enough clothes

When it's 17 degrees outside and the wind chill is 4, it doesn't matter whether you wear long johns, or layer an extra fleece, or do whatever you plan to do to beat the cold - after walking to the grocery store, your face will still be so numb that you won't realize your nose is dumping gallons of snot onto your upper lip until you taste it running in your mouth.

At least that is what this guy told me.

. . . and for the record:

It's Snot Lunch
Boogers are those hard, crusty globs that get stuck in your nose. They form when dirty snot dries out. What ever you do, don't eat that booger! Not only is it really gross, it's also bad for you cuz boogers are full of germs and other yucky things. However, you can't help eating a lot of snot cuz you're constantly swallowing the stuff. The average person swallows about a quart of snot a day. Yummy.

To learn more, check out http://www.kidzworld.com/article/3267-bone-up-on-boogers

Frogs

At the risk of relying too heavily on the news for my inspiration, I direct you to this headline from the NY Times:

Chirac Unfazed by Nuclear Iran, Then Backtracks
By ELAINE SCIOLINO and KATRIN BENNHOLD
France's president said that if Iran had one or two nuclear
weapons, it would not pose a big danger. A day later, he
retracted many of his remarks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/world/europe/01france.html

This is how he back-tracked:

Mr. Chirac said repeatedly during the second interview that he had spoken casually and quickly the day before because he believed he had been talking about Iran off the record.

“I should rather have paid attention to what I was saying and understood that perhaps I was on the record,” he said.

That is not exactly a statement that he was wrong, but that he shouldn't have said what he said. This is why people in America don't like France. Don't get me wrong, our president says and does stupid horrible things. But if there is one thing that the world (at least the west) should be unified about, it is that Iran with nukes is very very bad. This is not complicated.

I can't help but think that part of the reason Chirac can have such a nonchalant attitude is that if Iran ever did do anything, it would be the US that has to respond. When Iran launches a nuke at Israel, do you think it is going to be France that initiates the counter strike? Obviously Israel is pretty capable of retaliating on their own, but these kinds of things inevitably fall at the feet of America. I don't remember North Korea holding out for bi-lateral talks with France.

All of this responsibility is due to the way we have positioned ourselves in the world, and is fine with me. It's just frustrating when the people who are supposed to be our allies are so blind to realities of world hegemony.

A horse is a horse

The America fascination with Barbero has really been interesting to me. This article from today's Post is pretty good take. In the end, we all want heroes that we can idealize and hold up as examples of perfection. With a horse who won the Derby so dominatingly and then fell on hard luck, we have the perfect hero. And this hero won't go out and get in a gun fight or get caught using drugs. We can make him everything and anything we want to, and that is what we have done. May the ideal that he embodied persist . . .

this image is copyright(c) cindy pierson-dulay and copied from http://www.thestickhorseracing.com/headline60.html

A 'Bottomless' Heart

By Sally Jenkins
Tuesday, January 30, 2007; E01

In diagnosing the public's unreasoning love for Barbaro, maybe it comes down to the fact that he never lied to us. Human nature seems like a sorry, wastrel thing, compared to that horse. No doubt, we idealized him, but the fact is, we could have used a happy ending for Barbaro, given some of the Gilded Age characters who parade safely through public life into retirement. His survival seemed like one good thing, a balm for foreign wars, domestic deceit, and the bimbo cocktail party circuit, ruthless wealth-swappage, and cross-entouraging that we lately call American culture.

Barbaro was an honest, blameless competitor. Our ridiculously soft feeling for him was based at least partly on that fact. Unlike so many people in the sports pages, he was neither felonious, nor neurotic. He let us place burdens on him, whether a saddle, a bet, or a leg brace, and he carried them willingly, even jauntily.

On the track, his trainer and jockey reported that there seemed no end to what he was willing to give. "Bottomless," was how they described his heart. He obviously raced for pleasure, and he ran with such dynamic abandon that he made circling a track seem an impetuous act. His effort was always sincere and supreme, and when he won the Kentucky Derby by 6 1/2 lengths, the largest margin in the race since 1946, it was less of a surprise than an affirmation to the people who had reared him. "Why shouldn't we have felt that way? Every time he had run before, he never let us down," trainer Michael Matz said to the Thoroughbred Times. "His will to win was obvious in whatever he did."

Also, he was handsome. On display in his stall, he had the calm expression of an inveterate star, and a preening stance that suggested he'd heard the roar of the crowd and knew he'd won the big one. Even his doctor, Dean Richardson, who hardly saw him at his best, noticed this. When he was asked why Barbaro excited such affection from perfect strangers, a choked Richardson replied, "He was good looking."

We followed his medical reports like they were our own. Phrases like "laminitic area," and "deep subsolar abscess" became familiar, as did the anatomy of his horribly damaged hind leg, the shattered pastern and sesamoid, and the pinned cannon bone.

There have been continual attempts to analyze why Barbaro's fight to survive so captivated the public, but maybe it's fairly simple: He had both innocence and greatness and it's not often you find those ephemeral qualities alive in the same creature. What's more, anyone who watched Barbaro run in the Derby felt that they saw traces of a distinct character: He was winsome. This gave his suffering specificity. We felt we knew him.

Possibly, this is anthropomorphic, and some have rightly pointed out that we should care as much about human beings. But it's not anthropomorphic to say that horses are irreproachably benevolent creatures, and this is surely one of the causes of our grief over Barbaro. It's a fact that of 4,000-odd animal species, only a very few are tame-able, none more so than horses. They are peaceful grazers by nature, and willing by disposition. Despite their considerable size advantage, they tolerate us and even bear burdens for us. While thoroughbreds can certainly be fearsome, their misbehavior is a flight response, not sadism, or outlawry. They have followed us, and favored us with their gifts to an extent that few other animals do, and partnered with us throughout history, from Persia to the Pony Express. "Gallant" is a word often applied to them, and it's apt.

Barbaro seems to have had all the virtues of his breed, and a few more besides. His character wasn't a matter of wishful projection, it existed, and was quite vivid to those who cared for him. He was indefatigable and had a high tolerance for pain. He was mettlesome without being spiteful -- and how often do you find that? He was expressive. In a lovely piece a few weeks ago by John Scheinman of The Washington Post, one of his night nurses described him as "mouthy." He befriended another patient at the University of Pennsylvania's New Bolton Center in Kennett Square, Pa.: a cow. When he slept, his night nurse would pet him.

Despite pain and confinement, he wasn't mean. Among the things that caused his owners, Roy and Gretchen Jackson, to give up hope yesterday was that, in the grip of wounded exhaustion, he finally tried to bite the hand of his doctor, Richardson. It was a first in eight months of treatment.

Novelist Jane Smiley wrote a strange and wonderful book a couple of years ago called "A Year at the Races," in which she explained, with an articulacy missing here, that the human engagement with horses is nothing less than a love story. If you were wondering why the death of Barbaro hurts so, there is the answer:

"A love story, at least a convincing one, requires three elements: the lover, the beloved, and the adventures they have together," Smiley wrote. "If the lover isn't ardent, then the story isn't a love story. If the beloved isn't appealing, then the lover just seems idiosyncratic or even crazy; and if they have no adventures, then their love is too easy, and they have no way of learning anything important about themselves and one another."

Barbaro was appealing, and he was obviously beloved by the public, and by his owners. If the public learned anything from him, it was that with enjoyment of thoroughbreds comes responsibility for doing the right thing by them. One of the few consoling results from the Barbaro tragedy was an anonymous gift of $500,000 for the establishment of the Barbaro Fund, for animal care at the hospital where he died. Yesterday, it was Gretchen Jackson who best summed up the public outpouring for a horse. "Certainly, grief is the price we all pay for love," she said.

article at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/29/AR2007012902109.html