Dollar games

Once in a while in my change I'll get a dollar with a message written or stamped on it. It beats a message in a bottle I guess, but I don't think it'll catch on with advertisers for a while.

Hmm. Imagine advertising on currency. I wonder how much marketers would be willing to pay for something like that. I'm sure someone would do it. I'd think the main substantive objection would be about potential for counterfeiting.

Maybe nanotechnology would provide a way around that. Imagine images changing on the currency, powered by the heat of your hand. Or have I read too much science fiction lately?

Down a few rungs on the technology/currency/entertainment hierarchy is Where's George. I found out about this one when I got a marked-up dollar bill in my change. Anyway, the idea is that you're supposed to go to the site and enter the serial number of a bill and where you found it. Then you turn it loose and see if anyone reports on it again. Don't hold your breath on that one, but the site claims that $141M worth of currency serial numbers have been recorded, and one particular dollar bill has been found and entered 13 times. If you ever run into a singleton numbered C04549318H, it was in St. Louis on 11/13/02. (You're writing that down, right?)

Other strange things get written on bills. My favorite was one that claimed that my dollar wasn't "real" money, and pointed me to the Constitution for details. There have been many others, but I can't think of any good examples right now.

Of course you can have fun with money just as it comes if you know how to play liar's poker. I learned it on construction sites - at one, the minute there was a break all the steamfitters would whip out their wallets and start playing. Some of them kept special dollars with oddball numbers around to "stack the deck".

So now you know what you can do to entertain yourself on a rainy day. May it never rain that hard.

Did he talk them out of it?

NRODT quotes Bill Clinton on Black Entertainment Television:"I've been terribly concerned that a lot of younger people who didn't go through the civil rights movement might have been so turned off by what happened in Florida...by all the black votes that weren't counted, that they might just throw up their hands and say 'What difference does it make?'"

Well Slick, you're part of the gang that's spreading this nasty fable. Wouldn't that be funny if the Dems talked a lot of their black voters out of going to the polls?

Will the real Blogs of War please stand up?

The traditional? Or the newbie?

Welcome back, Dr. Frank.

Snuffles the dog

A few days ago several of us were wracking our brains trying to remember this cartoon dog. All I could remember was that if you fed him a dog biscuit he would float up in the air and slowly float back to the ground.

I asked several people if they could remember the name of this character and nobody could help. I was about to ask my highly exclusive readership if they knew when I gave it one more chance. Voila - I present you Snuffles.

We don't all have uncles, you know

If you have any money left over after visiting Bill Quick, you can check out Modest Needs. If you need a few bucks, send him an email and a story and he might send you the money. Or you can donate money for him to distribute.

Does anyone remember Percy Ross?

Sometimes a very small amount of capital can make all the difference (sheesh, I even needed a few bucks to start when I got my paper route eons ago). To address such needs there's a practice called microlending, pioneered by Grameen Bank of Bangladesh. If you're interested, there are a number of related links here.

Grameen Bank apparently is having some problems with repayments. Of course lefties are dying to prove that microlending can't help the poor, so it's no surprise if the bank is criticized. But even if they go bust tomorrow, IMO they'll still have done more for the poor with the money they lost than the same amount of govt giveaways would have.

This deserves a better title

The North American Wife-Carrying Championships. You can't miss the pictures.

Such a great target, and here I am without a snarky comment or even a worthy title. Help!

Monday night isn't complete without Dennis Miller

Relax, this isn't about football:

We gotta assassinate Saddam Hussein. Why have we taken assassination off the table as a viable political tool? And yet they'll tell you the collateral damage of civilians is acceptable. But you're not allowed to assassinate the main pain in the ass. My theory is if you have trouble with your conscience, pretend you're trying to kill the guy next to him, and think of him as collateral damage, alright?! If that will allow you to get to bed at night.

From the Weekly Standard

The Weekly Standard is recognizing the elections by making all Articles and Features open to the general public for this week. If you're not a regular, you're missing something.

Don't take my word for it

Not if you can get the same thing from James Lileks:

I am not religious myself, but people who are don’t bother me in the least. Sometimes I envy their conviction; sometimes I wish I could lend them my doubt, and I flatter myself to think we would each profit from the exchange. I’m more comfortable on this side because the people who take emotional satisfaction in trashing religion just annoy the piss out of me, and I want nothing to do with them. I’m not talking about atheists - at least they believe in something. I’m talking about those preening sneerbots who lack the capacity for spiritual contemplation, and think that anyone given to theosophical disquisitions is akin to a small boy expecting Superman to fly through the window and help him tie his shoe.

There's far more, and I didn't begin to do it justice - read it all.

Justice begins at home

William Sjostrom recalls the Emmett Till murder and says "The South needs the Klan purged" (despite the fact that there was no evidence of Klan involvement).

That's all right as far as it goes, but I have to ask: Mr. Sjostrom, have you ever lived in the South?

I lived there for quite a while - most of the 70's and early 80's. In all that time I met one person who supported the Klan (and he was a teenage wannabe). Whether the Klan has been "purged" there or not, I never saw any evidence of their influence. And I lived in a number of places in the South, including Scottsboro, AL, a fine town which was the site of a gross miscarriage of justice 70-odd years ago. And Lake County, FL, home of Willis McCall.

The Klan was found throughout the US. In the 1920's the membership got up to 4,000,000. There were even auxiliary organizations for the women and girls - see this describing New York.

Of course the Klan isn't the only hate group. Tolerance.org has maps of hate group distribution, such as this one for Massachusetts.

And where is Mr. Sjostrom writing from? Ireland. Gosh, do you suppose they have any hate groups over there?

We all need all of the hate groups purged. And we'll do a better job of it if we attend to our local problems first.

Mail Call

One of these days you might check out the History Channel's Mail Call series. R. Lee Ermey plays your standard over-the-top Marine DI caricature and answers emails about military topics.

Here's a sampling: Making arrows American Indian style. Semaphore flags. Shooting a mortar. Refueling an F-16. What's better - straight swords or curved swords? Personal effects carried by WWII soldiers. Land mines. Machine guns. Daisy Cutters. Crossbows. Combat rations/MREs. And about anything else you might think to ask, complete with demonstrations.

Got a question, maggot? Visit here.

Casting call in St. Louis

From KTVI:

Filmmakers are holding tryouts right here in St. Louis for a shot at a main role in a major motion picture. The movie, "Game of their lives", is the true story of the 1950 U.S. World cup soccer team. That team consisted of just eleven players five of them from St. Louis. The producers are looking for men between 18 and 30 with sufficient soccer skills. If you're good enough, you'll be asked to come back for an audition. Tryouts are Wednesday November 13, at the Soccer Dome, but you need to register first. You can call toll free at 888-507-4263.

Another good cause

From here:

You can assist the NFL, Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and the Ladies Auxiliary VFW in bringing American troops around the world closer to home for the holidays.

Join the NFL in helping the VFW provide pre-paid phone cards to America's Armed Forces stationed all over the globe.

What we're fighting for...

This one probably isn't work safe. Anyway, Robyn and a number of other blogging women are raising money and more for breast cancer research. Most of them clearly don't need our support (you too, Yvonne), and they certainly aren't flat busted, but send them some money anyway.

Call me dense, but I looked in vain for a way to donate on the site. But you can donate to the designated charity, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Fund, right here.

Congratulations to Katherine Harris...

...for winning her House seat in Florida. You might recall that she was the target of a vicious slander campaign by Al Gore's goons in their attempt to steal the election in Florida in 2000. She's doing well, and you can read more about her here. Or you can buy her book, "Center of the Storm", here.

Biodegradable shape memory polymers

Shape memory alloys have been around for a while - you may have heard of nitinol.

Likewise polymers that can be absorbed by the body have been around for a while, for use in sutures.

But now we have shape memory polymers:

It sounds like an attraction from a circus sideshow: It can morph into virtually any shape, squeeze freely into tight spaces, and even pull a disappearing act. But the miraculous performer here is not a person. It is a novel type of plastic, technically a biodegradable shape-memory polymer, which could literally change the shape of tomorrow's medical instruments.

Materials with shape memory have been studied since the 1950s, and absorbable polymers that slowly dissolve inside the body have been approved for medical use since the 1960s. But now Robert Langer, a biomedical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his former postdoctoral student Andreas Lendlein, who now teaches at the University of Potsdam, Germany, and is the managing director of mnemoScience GmbH, have combined the two attributes into one material.

File this one away for future investment.

Why I need an editor, part 2409

Boing Boing is subtitled "a directory of wonderful things". And from all those, I picked these:

"Sphincterine". I wish I knew this was a put-on. Perhaps it will sell well with ex-Gitmo prisoners, who have been known for their innovative use of toothpaste.

German condom market researchers have descended upon Kenya and determined that light-brown vanilla-scented condoms are most popular there:

Standard white latex just didn't do much for his African testers, it turns out.

I suppose a good lefty would say that it reminds them of their colonial oppressors. IMO it just makes them look smaller.

Little pitchers

Long before Bill Cosby, Art Linkletter had a TV show called "House Party". Early on he learned he could get plenty of great material from kids. Some of the stuff the kids would say would send parents over the edge.

Likewise, long before Calvin and Hobbes there was Dennis the Menace (follow the link - I'll bet you didn't know Gina's last name, or that his dad was an engineer). I haven't seen it lately and I know that creator Hank Ketcham is dead, so I'm not sure if it's still around or not. Anyway, Dennis could mortify his parents at will, and he gave me lots of ideas to suggest to younger relatives.

But kids don't need any help from me. For instance, a while back I was on the phone with a woman I know. She's been having some health problems, including occasional bouts of asthma which began after some surgery about a year ago. She happened to mention that the last three bouts had begun during sex.

Unfortunately her preteen daughter was listening, and I could hear her in the background: "You had sex three times this year?". She said it as if her mother were a sex maniac. I'm sure this will all be the talk of her school.

Alright, who has some more stories like this?

Roe vs. World

In none of the races where Fox News conducted exit polling did a candidate benefit from their support of abortion. The result is two more solid pro-lfe votes in the Senate: all five retiring pro-life Senators were replaced by pro-lifers, three pro-life challengers beat pro-choice Senators, and Hutchinson was the only pro-life candidate to lose to a pro-choicer. Advantage: inalienable rights.

Avenge Woody Jenkins

Suzanne Terrell is running against incumbent Democrat Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, and there will be a runoff in December. She can use contributions - by the time you see this, you might be able to donate online here.

All contributors to candidates for federal office must confirm that the following statements are true and accurate.

* I am a citizen of the United States or a permanent resident alien.

* This contribution is not made from the general treasury of a corporation, labor organization, or a national bank.

* This contribution is not made from the treasury of an entity or a person who is a federal contractor.

* The funds I am donating are not being provided to me by another person or entity for the purpose of making this contribution.

* I am at least 18 years old or the funds I am donating are my personal funds and I am donating these funds knowingly and voluntarily.

* Federal statute does not allow anyone or any entity to collect personally identifiable information from minors under the age of 13 via the Internet.

* I am at least 13 years of age.

Suzanne Haik Terrell for U.S. Senate Campaign
PO Box 44298
Baton Rouge, LA 70804
(225) 218-8683

I have nothing to do with her campaign, and can't vote for her legally anyway. I'd just like to see some judges confirmed pending the day that the Democrats in the Senate start acting like adults again.

Bondage on a budget

Don't leave me alone on the Web or there's no telling what I'll find. Consider "Bondage on a Budget". That's a book that's available from Good Vibrations, a woman-owned cooperative that sells all manner of sex-related products. (Amazon carries the book too - I'd give you a link, but I don't want it and its brethren showing up on my recommendations for the rest of my life). Alright, let's look around a little more.

Here's another intriguing title: "Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation". Does this mean that animals have issues with sex too? We've certainly heard plenty about bonobos, and some claim that there is much homosexuality in the animal kingdom. (IMO about all the critters could learn from dogs - what with that knot thing, nobody's finished until Mama's finished.)

Ah yes, there are videos too, thoughtfully characterized as "drama", "all sex no plot", "Lesbian, bisexual, Gay male, Transgender", "Sex Education", and "Specialty" (?!).

Other than in a tasteless joke involving prominent Republican couples, I was always under the impression that the mechanics of sex were pretty much the same from race to race. But GV offers "Better Sex for Black Couples", volumes 1 and 2, so maybe there's something to those stories, eh? And there are Spanish-language movies too.

Enough media, now let's see some practical products. They don't let us down. For feminists, there's the "Jill Off" kit. Collectors might prefer the deluxe "Hello Kitty" massager. For those of you who demand more discretion, there's the "I Rub My Duckie" rubber duck - squeeze it and it starts vibrating. For a political statement you can buy the "Alabama Slammer", named in response to the recent overturn of an Alabama law against sex toys.

Products are rated thoughtfully with various icons. Some are quite intuitive - see if you can guess what * means.

History buffs can enjoy it too - there is an Antique Vibrator Museum. There you learn interesting medical facts, such as how doctors once treated "female disorders". The cure was to induce "hysterical paroxysm", aka orgasms. Allegedly doctors did this manually - a time-consuming process that probably led to carpal-tunnel syndrome. In response, an American doctor developed and patented the original steam-powered (!) massager in 1869. Relax guys - they still don't have one that will take out the garbage.

If some of the above offends you, maybe you should read this instead.

Know-nothings

In his post I cited below, Eric Raymond invoked "know-nothings" with reference to the Republicans. Hmm. Well, the Dems are fond of referring to Republicans as "reactionaries", and that's what the Know-Nothings were.

Let's take a look at the Know-Nothings:

The Know-Nothing party was an antiforeign, anti-Roman Catholic political organization that flourished in the United States between 1852 and 1856. Nativism had been growing since the mid-1840s in response to massive immigration, especially from Ireland and Germany. Many of these immigrants had become part of urban DEMOCRATIC political machines, much to the resentment of non-Democratic old-stock Americans.

In other words, they were a reaction to the political exploitation of minorities.

Then as now, political bosses knew they needed votes, and they knew how to get them. They'd extort money from criminals and businesses and use it to do favors for votes. Immigrants were a bargain compared to other groups - they were needy, and a few cheap favors could buy their votes forever. (Organized crime figures were known for doing exactly the same thing. For one, Al Capone operated soup kitchens during the Depression as part of a PR offensive to keep the heat off).

There have been some big Republican political machines, but most of them, and the most notorious of them, have always been with Democrats (Richard Daley's Chicago, Tom Pendergast's Chicago, and the New York City of Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall were three prominent examples). They all had their ways of corrupting voters, especially immigrants.

And IMO, rightly understood, that's exactly what govt social programs are. Despite the claims of goo-goos and other useful idiots, they're nothing but the traditional Democrat political machine's voter corruption process gone national. Only this time they're buying their votes with your money.

Maybe they knew something after all.

So close, but...

Eric Raymond writes an interesting post here.

But the theophobe in him will not be denied - we have to suffer this:

[Republicans have] have their own loony fringe (abortion-clinic bombers, neo-fascists like Pat Buchanan, and the Christian Coalition) to cope with

Yup, those Republicans sure couldn't win an election without the abortion clinic bomber vote, now could they? Surely he knows Pat Buchanan has bolted the Republican Party, and IMO the door was locked behind him. And the Christian Coalition - horror of horrors!

In my experience Christians don't have a tremendous appetite for politics - they enter only when extremely provoked. And about anywhere you look you can see gratuitous provocations for Christians and other believers. So it's no surprise that some are politically active. Anyone who finds that scary can simply quit provoking them. That they don't suggests that the provocateurs either are stupid, or that they know very well that nothing is going to happen.

Christians certainly don't agree with each other on everything. No single group has enough clout to impose its own will, and the others will oppose any attempt to do so. So they'll always cancel each other out on all but the broadest issues, and IMO they really don't ask for much.

In short, don't fall for the Democrat propaganda - you'll never see a theocracy in the US. It wouldn't even have happened in Afghanistan without massive outside interference, and that's with a different religion that inherently fails to separate church and state.

Then there's this:

Right-wing statism is not an improvement on left-wing statism; a smug and dominant GOP could easily become captive to theocrats and know-nothings, a very bad thing for our nation and the world

It appears that Mr. Raymond believes that the theocrats are already in the Republican Party. And IMO it's pretty clear that the Republicans can't impose "right-wing statism" or "theocracy" without getting more votes than they're getting now. Alright so far?

Well, the only way for the Republicans to get those extra votes they need to impose their will is to absorb a lot of people who are not theocrats or right-wing statists. In fact, expanding the Republican "big tent" can only dilute the influence of the theocrats (such few as might exist). So if you want to reduce the influence of theocrats, you might well have more influence working with the Republicans than working against them.

It's a shame these blemishes had to occur in an otherwise excellent post.

Time to clean up voter registrations

OK, it's about a year before the next major election in most places now. So there's plenty of time to clean up voter registration.

What would be wrong with simply destroying whatever registrations there are now and requiring picture ID for all future voter registrations?

In case there was any doubt...

"It is the soldier, not the reporter who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us the freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who gives us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag." ~Father Dennis Edward O'Brien, Sergeant, USMC

By way of Neal Boortz.

Did we throw a tantrum again?

Was it the angry white males? Did the Republicans intimidate black voters?

The WaPo says

"Democratic National Committee Chairman Terence McAuliffe told the Associated Press that Bush was the critical factor in the Democratic losses. "I pin a lot of it on that this is a president who has had very high approval ratings," he said. "He's had the longest sustained approval ratings of any president in modern history."

Hmm. What do "approval ratings" measure, TM? I'll bet you're trying to figure out how he did it without bribing bums with cigarettes, enlisting the dead, and suing to have them reversed, huh?

The WaPo continues:

"Republicans turned history on its head last night, thanks to an aggressive White House strategy to put the president into the most competitive House and Senate races in the final weeks of the campaign, superior financial resources in the battleground contests and, apparently to a revamped GOP voter turnout operation."

I guess the WaPo thinks it's important to understand that none of this has anything to do with anyone's positions on issues.

Of course it's not over. The Dems are sure to turn to the courts to evade the will of the voters, just as they do when they govern.

Unless they've finally learned something.

Many happy returns

Well just look what happens when George W. Bush campaigns in the last weekend before Election Day. I guess this means Lincoln Chafee will be a Republican for a couple more years.

Keep a cell ready for Rod Blagojevich, newly elected governor of IL. He's a Democrat, and the previous two Democrats elected governor of IL wound up in prison.

Expose yourself to Erin O'Connor

Sorry pal, I can't help you with your Google query for "Erin O'Connor nude". Although she's a blogger, apparently she's not an exhibitionist - her old blog was named "Cant Watch".

The woman is a miracle. Somehow she has emerged from the English Lit. departments at Berkeley and the University of Michigan without succumbing to political correctness, and currently she's an associate professor at Penn. To top it off, she maintains a blog with Maurice Black called "Critical Mass".

I'm not sure where the name comes from, but it sure isn't about nuclear technology. Critical Mass is a succession of observations about life in academia, with its courses in things like "Rich White Males". Good grief.

If nothing else, keep checking in with her. Maybe someday she'll post some pictures...

Street money

If you watch TV talking heads shows much you've probably seen Larry Sabato. He's a professor at the University of Virginia and he studies American politics. In 1996 he and Glenn R. Simpson wrote a book called "Dirty Little Secrets-The Persistence of Corruption in American Politics". It's out of print now. What a shame, because I don't know of another popular market book that assembles so much info about corruption in elections and politics in the US.

The book is about 350 pages, with another 70 of reference matter. I can't do it justice in one quick and dirty blog item, but the part that I found the most interesting was about street money.

Sabato notes that "It is no exaggeration to say that the Democrats would almost never win a presidential election, and only occasionally win major elections in many states, without minority Americans." The Dems know it, and spend a fortune to get-out-the-vote (GOTV). Allegedly Douglas Wilder spent $1,000,000 in 1989 to get the vote out in black communities in his successful campaign for governor of Virginia.

Hustlers know the game though, and demand their tribute. Allegedly black ministers and other activists are notorious for insisting on "gifts" or "honoraria" of around $3000-$5000, in return for membership lists, a few phone calls and other non-burdensome services.

The worst excesses supposedly happen in Democratic primaries. As one quote puts it, "Many times people go to both sides and say, 'This campaign has given us money to have donuts for the volunteers and we're going to work hard for them. Now if you give us money for donuts, our people will be too busy eating donuts to go out and work."

Republicans are no angels, and Dems say they catch Republicans paying to suppress minority voting. But as it happens, the most celebrated case was not true. After Christine Todd Whitman's successful campaign in NJ in 1993, consultant Ed Rollins bragged about paying off ministers to suppress the vote. Later investigations concluded that Rollins made this up.

Other Republican stunts include making bids for the black activists, who turn around and shake the Dems down for more yet - this increases the costs to the Dems. Or in SC, state vehicles were tied up with inspections on Election Day so they wouldn't be available for GOTV.

Sabato notes that much of the money supposedly does go to people canvassing voters and driving people to the polls, which is a significant cost (hundreds of "flushers" and "haulers" at $20-$50, plus supervision for every couple dozen or so of those at ~$100 each). The only case of outright vote-buying he cites in the street money chapter dates back to 1888 with Benjamin Harrison, when the going price for "independent" vote was as much as $20 (in 1888 - imagine how much that would be worth today).

There's much more in the book, if you can find it. I enjoyed it, anyway.

UPDATE: Look at what's happening in Maryland.

Shock treatment

I'm OK with voting Republican, but I'd like to have an alternative that didn't make me hold my nose. As long as Clintons, Terry McAuliffe, James Carville, Paul Begala, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, John Sweeney and others unworthy of polite company continue to have any influence with the Dems, I won't even consider voting for them. So I look forward to the day that the Dems clean house.

And the only way I see that happening is for them to be routed at the polls. Democrats need to pop the party leaders upside the head but good, by staying home in droves. Or by voting, but not for Dems (so the bosses know you were there and still didn't vote for them).

Am I trying to con Dems? Well, I sure don't want them to win. But really, do they need a housecleaning or not? And if so, how else are you going to make it happen?

Election grab bag

Dean Esmay is right on here. Link stolen from Susanna, who apparently got it from The Dodd.

I am 100% for a test of voter competence. If it's discriminatory, that's OK with me.

Or at least make the stupid ones use a second-class ballot. Then in case of close votes, you throw out the ones from the stupid. (Arguably we already have that system, which accounts for Al Gore's loss in FL - just how !@#$ incompetent do you have to be to foul up punching holes in a ballot, anyway?).

What would be more fun would be to give legislators pop quizzes on legislation they voted for. I understand that when Clinton and the Dems tried to inflict socialized medicine on us, they were passing around a bill that was still marked up with yellow Post-it notes. Sorry folks, but if you haven't even had time to type up the changes, print and distribute the bill, there hasn't been enough time to evaluate it.

History lesson...

Given the >>>>>>>>>forwarded this deep email I got this from, I don't know how much I should trust this, but I like it anyway:

In the heyday of sailing ships, all war ships and many freighters carried iron cannons. Those cannon fired round iron cannon balls. It was necessary to keep a good supply near the cannon. But how to prevent them from rolling about the deck? The best storage method devised was a square based pyramid with one ball on top, resting on four resting on nine which rested on sixteen. Thus, a supply of 30 cannon balls could be stacked in a small area right next to the cannon.

There was only one problem -- how to prevent the bottom layer from sliding/rolling from under the others. The solution was a metal plate called a "Monkey" with 16 round indentations. But if this plate was made of iron, the iron balls would quickly rust to it. The solution to the rusting problem was to make "Brass Monkeys."

Few landlubbers realize that brass contracts much more and much faster than iron when chilled. Consequently, when the temperature dropped too far, the brass indentations would shrink so much that the iron cannon balls would come right off the monkey. Thus, it was quite literally, "Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey!" (And all this time, you thought that was an improper expression, didn't you?)

Enquiring minds want to know...

Alright, first I posted the above, then I decided to look this up. You know, those Snopes folks are no fun at all. They say

Somebody's fanciful imagination is at work cooking up spurious etymologies again. In short, this origin for the phrase "cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey" is nonsense because:

They seem awfully sure of this - why?

For one, they say they didn't find such usage in the Oxford English Dictionary. Hmm. Something allegedly dating back ~150 years ought to have made it there by now, but I wonder what Snopes would say to a claim that the OED was complete.

They offer this:

When references to "brass monkeys" started appearing in print in the mid-19th century, they did not always mention balls or cold temperatures. It was sometimes cold enough to freeze the ears, tail, nose, or whiskers off a brass monkey. Likewise, it was sometimes hot enough to "scald the throat" or "singe the hair" of a brass monkey. These usages are inconsistent with the putative origins offered here.

Not really. Once brass monkeys became the standard for durability it wouldn't surprise me to see people sanitize the expressions or extend the concept in various ways.

Next we get this:

Warships didn't store cannonballs (or "round shot") on deck around the clock, day after day, on the slight chance that they might go into battle. Space was a precious commodity on sailing ships, and decks were kept as clear as possible in order to allow room for hundreds of men to perform all the tasks necessary for ordinary ship's functions. (Stacking round shot on deck would also create the danger of their breaking free and rolling around loose on deck whenever the ship encountered rough seas.) Cannonballs were stored elsewhere and only brought out when the decks had been cleared for action.

OK. But cannonballs had to be stored somewhere, and this storage had to keep them from rolling around. I don't know whether sailing ships fought much in rough weather or not, but they'd still need storage of cannonballs near the guns to achieve any sort of fire rate.

Similar logic applies to this:

Particularly diligent gunners (not "masters," who were in charge of navigation, sailing and pilotage, not ordnance) would have their crews chip away at imperfections on the surface of cannonballs to make them as smooth as possible, in the hopes that this would cause them fly truer. They did not leave shot on deck, exposed to the elements, where it would rust.

Actually it seems to me that they could make cannonball restraints out of wood. It would be a lot cheaper, lighter and easier to fabricate, if not as durable. I'll have to make it to Boston and tour Old Ironsides one of these days and see for myself.

Is it too much to ask...

...that Greenpeace and similar antinuclear idiots refrain from bitching about radiation in the environment until they cease to be radioactive themselves?

I want candy

I'm a little late, but I can't wait until next year to tell you how trick-or-treating is better than sex.

Via Spoons.

Jury nullification?

Spoons writes an excellent item against jury nullification here.

As for me, I like it that the option is available. But IMO it ranks right up there with secession as a radical thing to do. If every jury can judge laws as well as defendants, we're getting to the point where we're missing the point of passing laws in the first place, i.e. this is our social policy and it's a closed issue. And if you think our courts are backed up now...

The American Spectator is back

Yes, the bane of the Clintons is under the original management again, in print and on the web.

I wonder what this means for The American Prowler?

Digital Blue

On one of my very infrequent trips to Toys R Us I spotted some products from a company called Digital Blue. They make high-tech toys, and they claim to be "the antidote to the video game".

They have a number of products. The one that caught my eye was a little movie camera that can make up to 4 minute long movies and download them to a PC with a USB port. It also provides some digital editing software.

Then I saw a problem. Somewhere out there a kid will propose something to his teacher for show and tell, and he'll say he's making digital blue movies with his parents.

Paranoia on the left

Right here. A choice excerpt: "Dick Cheney would have his grandmother tortured to death for a dime, and for a nickle, he'd do the job himself."

There are many, um, remarkable things about this item and the rest of the blog too. But what astounds me is just how effective these various conspiracy theorists think their enemies are. To this guy it's the Republicans, to the al-Qaeda types it's the Mossad, but either way these types attribute a strange combination of omniscience, omnipotence and incompetence to their enemies.

According to this guy, apparently the Republicans decided that the greatest threat to their govt hegemony was Paul Wellstone, and they just took care of business.

But it must be so: "People are always asking why the left is in such disarray, and why the leaders of the left are such buffoons. One reason is that any leaders who have any charisma and any tendency to lead in any sort of progressive direction are simply slaughtered by the right." This guy must live somewhere where there's socialized medicine, or else maybe he'd have a prescription to control this.

I guess the part that amazes me the most is the idea that Republicans are particularly effective. Hardly. IMO most of them are a bunch of wimps. When it comes to nasty street-fighting politics, they're not in the same league with the Dems, with their Terry McAuliffes, James Carvilles and innumerable others. We'll see plenty of examples between now and Election Day.

For Halloween...

I need a monster. So I stole the link to Mike the Headless Chicken from Dr. Weevil.

The text that accompanies the stolen link on Dr. Weevil's site offers further head related material.

Are you sick of pumpkin yet?

You aren't the only one.

Courtesy of none other than Last Page - accept no substitutes, even if her Weather Pixie is kind of slutty.

UPDATE: Alright, I'm changing the link to this. The old one didn't work for some reason, and this way you'll miss LP's not-suitable-for-work beefcake picture. (aside to LP - you can look, but they might not let a woman touch). At least she woke up the Unablogger, who serves the kind of cheesecake you probably can't have at work.

Hot air on climate change

David Appell is a science writer who maintains a blog called Quark Soup. He takes issue with Kim DuToit, Toren Smith and Robert Prather here about global warming.

The bloggers I mentioned are big boys and can take care of themselves. If they saw this post they probably have, but alas despite their permalinks to the left I haven't seen everything they have written. So I'll take a few whacks at this myself.

What got me were passages like this:

You can lead a skeptic to data, but you can't make them think.
Toren Smith repeats the flat-earther's mantra that "the whole global warming scenario scarcely counts as science and is based primarily on computer models that can't even accurately predict past climate, much less that of an unknown future."
Toren, Toren, Toren. Have you looked at the scientific studies? Have you read them? Have you read anything that doesn't agree with your ideology? As I just pointed out to Kim du Toit, many climate models have predicted past climates.

It is possible to disagree with someone without crap like this.

But let's get more substantial. OK, maybe many climate models have predicted past climates. That might be impressive until you realize that there is an infinite number of models that could do this in principle. So the existence of a number of them is not impressive in itself, and in fact makes me wonder why they can't decide among them.

Here's another item:

Let us continue our corrections of du Toit.
He rants , "I also need to see proof that human activity (eg. releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere) has had a more profound effect on climate change than have volcanic eruptions...."
OK.
The global warming effect of volcanoes is not close to that of man:

"Volcanoes contribute about 110 million tons of carbon dioxide per year while man's activities contribute about 10 billion tons per year," according to the Volcano Information Center operated by geologist Ronald Fischer at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

That's 1%, Kim.
However, what volcanoes do do is spew a lot of sulphur aerosols into the atmosphere, but that causes cooling , not warming.

Mr. DuToit said "climate change", not warming. Mr. Appell offered nothing to prove that man's impact is greater than that of volcanoes, and noted that volcanoes had impact on the climate. From this he concluded that "The global warming effect of volcanoes is not close to that of man". If he's right, he hasn't made his case in the post. I propose that he should do so before he resorts to such condescension.

He's not through. Before he gets around to referring to "climate change flat-earthers", he notes the following:

"Several coupled models are able to reproduce the major trend in surface air temperature, when driven by radiative forcing scenarios corresponding to the 20th century. However, in these studies only idealized scenarios of only sulphate radiative forcing have been used.

Many atmospheric models are able to simulate an increase of the African summer monsoon in response to insolation forcing for the Holocene but they all underestimate this increase if vegetation feedbacks are ignored."

Interesting. In both cases he's noting known flaws in the models, yet that's what he uses for his support.

Elsewhere he refers to the period from 1951-1998. I wonder why he chose that period. I will note that aboveground nuclear weapons tests were common in the earlier part of this period. These might have led to abnormal levels of particulates in the atmosphere (a miniature "nuclear winter"). This in turn would have caused the beginning of the period to be cooler than the later part entirely independently of other anthropomorphic influences. I don't know how strong that phenomenon was though, so, unlike Appell, I won't make any claims.

The problems involved with measuring and modeling the relevant parameters would make a long post in itself, but let's assume that these scientists, with their big grants from organizations that want budget increases, are immune from conflicts of interest and are in fact doing everything right. Alright, what would they have to measure or evaluate in the course of developing models?

Atmospheric temperatures. Atmospheric composition. Land temperatures. Ocean temperatures. CO₂ concentrations. Ice sheet/glacier coverage/volume. Depth of permafrost. Albedo (a measure of how much solar radiation is reflected back into space). Insolation (the power from the sun, which is not constant). Large fires, such as forest fires or Saddam's stunt of setting oil wells on fire in Kuwait after the Gulf War. Volcanic activity, both atmospheric and beneath the ocean. Non-anthropomorphic biological influences (cattle, termites, wetlands, forestation...). Economic activity (affects power consumption, thus coal/petroleum burning)...

That's just a few things off the top of my head. Some could be trivial, and I could be omitting major influences. The point is that the scientists who produce climate models are biting off a big chunk, and the pressure to produce results that will keep the grants coming is huge.

Now suppose they have data for all of the relevant phenomena above - now what? They have to model more than just the atmospheric temperature - they basically have to model all of the things I mentioned above too. Why? Because nothing happens in isolation. Heat up the atmosphere, heat up the ocean. Then the ocean absorbs more CO₂, which allegedly lowers the atmospheric heating effect and at least provides negative feedback. More water will evaporate into the atmosphere, lowering ocean temperatures, changing the transport properties of the atmosphere and increasing greenhouse effects. Plants will grow more, soaking up water and CO₂ and changing the transport properties of the land. I'm not convinced we even know all of the interactions and their significance, yet without them how can we model accurately?

Yet the scientists build the models anyway, based on data from a 50 year period which amounts to 0.000001% of the alleged 5 billion year life of the planet. They know full well that we have had a number of major non-anthropomorphic climate changes over that period that to date have not been modeled successfully.

Yet in their vanity and greed they attempt to do their science in the newspapers instead of in the labs, as Eric Lindholm notes here. (Appell doesn't like that post much either).

Enough for now. Let's see if Appell has choice words for me too.

Jimmy the Red

Thanks to John Weidner and Bob Ballard, I found this about our latest Nobel Peace Price winner, ex-president Jimmy Carter.

Would Carter work with the Soviets against the election of Ronald Reagan? IMO there's no doubt about it. He'd tell himself that he was working for world peace, which of course would be a higher goal to him than anything so trivial as national sovereignty. Jimmy knew best.

What would you think if it were shown that Saddam Hussein were giving money to Democrats to oppose the war? IMO bringing up that possibility is no more inflammatory than the recurring chant that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are pawns of the oil companies working against our national interests. The only question is whether Saddam is bright enough to try it - the Dems would take the money in a heartbeat and bury the bodies later.

Another thing I'd like to see investigated is whether French, Russians, Chinese or others are slipping money to the Dems. All do a lot of business with Iraq. It would be worth a lot for them to influence American policy against war, especially if Saddam owes them money. And it's not as if the Chinese don't have a relationship with the Dems.

I'm betting that this guy would have been a Democrat. All he had to do was deliberately weaken his defenses, put on a show of resistance against subsequent threats or attacks, surrender, and take the money and run.

Wireless power?

Well, it's a start. Now you can recharge your small gizmos without wires.

Stolen from Boing Boing

The Atkins Media Diet

Food for thought - just read it.

And scroll down a bit for the dog and cat haikus. Groan.

Attention wannabe hunters

You might want to bag an elephant or a tiger, but it's probably better if you start smaller. How about cats?

The news is telling me about a Feral Cat Initiative.

An alternative to the “trap and remove” method of dealing with the cat over-population problem is TNR (Trap, Neuter, Return). Entire feral colonies are humanely trapped, tested for feline leukemia, vaccinated for rabies, spayed/neutered and ear tipped to identify those altered. Socialized cats and kittens are put up for adoption while healthy feral cats are returned to live out their lives under the watchful eye of neighborhood caretakers. TNR is a non-lethal method of controlling cat population....TNR is making an impact. The Feral Cat Initiative has helped to significantly decrease the number of cats arriving at our shelter. Since the initiative began, more than 1000 cats have been treated, resulting in a 15% decline in euthanasia. Plus, participating neighborhoods have reported fewer problems with cat spraying, noise and number of kittens. Our program has been recognized by Alley Cat Allies, a national feral cat advocacy group.

I hope the feds aren't listening. If volunteers want to do something like this, they can have a ball (so to speak). But if it polls well...

With friends like this...

Glenn Reynolds posts this about reasons why the French and the Russians might be opposing us re Iraq. It's about oil all right - for our opponents.

Dr. Khidhir Hamza's book, "Saddam's Bombmaker", has a number of examples of how Europeans and others cozied up to Saddam for big money. My favorites were the French, in conjunction with the Osirak reactor that the Israelis took out in 1981. Here's a passage from page 130 of the paperback edition:

[Saddam] well knew, however, that we'd fought hard to put the reactor underground, where it would have been safer from attack. But the French would not agree. They were prepared to go along with our bomb deception only to the extend that they could plausibly deny it. And the only reason to put a nuclear reactor underground, considering the huge costs required, was to manufacture plutonium in secret and protect it from a military attack. The French weren't going to take the fall for that.

Another passage from page 129:

...the antiaircraft unit had been taking a dinner break at six every evening, shutting down its radar. Surely it wasn't a coincidence that the strike came at 6:25....The day before the strike, in fact, I'd been walking by the facility with a colleague and noticed a closed van parked next to the tunnel. When I asked what it was, he said it contained radiation detection equipment the French had just delivered. In the aftermath of the bombing, investigators reportedly found a guidance transmitter inside.

And you thought planned obsolescence was bad - these guys are the world's champion cynics.

Hamza doesn't have much good to say about the Russians either - from page 120:

To us, with a few exceptions, the Russians were a joke - badly trained, often drunk, sluggish at work, more interested in buying clothes and electronic goods unavailable in Moscow and sending them home than doing their assignments.

Gosh, do you suppose Susan Sarandon knows about this?

Not the Million Man March

My kind of guy:

H.K. Edgerton is a proud black Southerner who has no grievance with the Confederate battle flag.

And he's willing to march 1,500 miles across the South from Asheville, N.C., to Austin decked out in a gray Civil War uniform and waving the Rebel flag to bring attention to the issue.

Stolen from Chuck at Redneckin.

But what will the clowns think?

Check out the Ville for an excellent candid of Al Gore.

Aside

I guess the Raiders don't like Missouri very much, eh Dodd?

Bush wins again

In Iraq.

Most popular Halloween costumes

It appears that police and firefighter costumes are the winners this year. Challengers are Spider-Man, Josie & the Pussycats, Batman, the Power Rangers, SpongeBob Squarepants and Scooby-Doo.

In Brazil Osama bin Laden is winning over challengers Yassir Arafat and George Bush. Of course he has an unfair advantage, being a ghost too.

It's late in the game, but you can find lots of masks here. This outlet in the UK has a Saddam Hussein mask.

These are scary.

Small town Halloween

Whatever happened to Halloween? Yeah, I got older. But it seems like it's not as much fun for kids nowadays either.

I was in a small town where everybody knew everybody, at least in the neighborhood. You could start a day early and keep going a day late with most houses. For atmosphere, we even had a graveyard nearby stretching for several blocks and a couple of ill-maintained houses that for our money could well have been haunted. Oh yeah, we had the scary old lady who had to talk through a hole cut in her throat.

No parental escorts for us - we just marched up and down the streets, probably covering about a 20 block area of modest single-family homes. Daylight saving time gave us plenty of time after dark, and we'd stay out pretty late for a bunch that usually had to be in bed by 8:30 or so.

For loot there were a lot of popcorn balls and fruit, an occasional grab from a bowl of hard candy, or oddball stuff from those who had forgotten or had been sucked dry already. But most of it was miniature candy bars.

Groups of kids would cross paths once in a while, but there wasn't any trouble that I recall. Until we got older, that is, and that was when you figured the harvesting was over.

But then whole new opportunities arose for mischief bordering on delinquency. We'd go to the neighbors and note that we sure could use some eggs, toilet paper, shaving cream, soap et al, noting how it would be dishonorable to use them on the people who gave them to us (they knew if they didn't supply us, their neighbors would). We figured out about how much of the stuff we could carry without attracting suspicion ("No sir Mr. Officer, we haven't seen anything"), where we could ditch it in a hurry, and where we could stash it along the route. Thus did otherwise dead-end kids learn negotiation, game theory, procurement, logistics and project management (no, this isn't on my resume).

Old-timers (other than our parents) had classic stories of mischief. About all of them told stories of tipping outhouses. Usually this was done with a Model T, which subsequently got stuck in the "honey" (it must have been honey, because the guy who scooped it out and carried it away drove the "honeywagon"). Others told us of filling a paper bag with "honey", putting it on someone's doorstep and setting it on fire, in hopes that the resident would come out and stomp it out. We loved that idea, but never had the nerve to try it.

At some point many of us were dragooned into escorting the youngest kids, who of course would try to escape supervision ASAP. For the rest of us came cars, alcohol and girls - Halloween was for kids.

Alas, Halloween just isn't the same. And probably never was.

Google lust

I haven't mentioned her for months, but I keep packing them in with "Megan Morrone nude". In case you don't know, she's one of the Women of "The Screen Savers" - the darkheaded married one, probably wearing a tight T-shirt that says "got root?"

Listen, I have no problem with lay research of comparative feminine anatomy. But of the cast I'd pick Morgan Webb first, and I don't get anywhere near as many hits for her. Morgan, if you're feeling neglected, my email address is above under "Feedback".

This and that

Someone has hit this site querying Google for "Ann Coulter breasts". Good luck, pal.

Chris Johnson sums up the Chechen crimes in the Moscow theater. Keep going down for more.

My condolences to the Wellstones.

Vain expression

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - Arthur C. Clarke

The Gene Expression crowd seems to be incapable of taking any religiosity seriously - a typical reference is to "magical thinking". And of course this would all imply that religious people just aren't too smart. Thus from Razib we get this:

This is a rough measure, but I think my point holds, the further you go up the bell curve the less reliance there is on magical thinking, ergo the variations of Creationism.

An alternate interpretation is that the farther you go right on the bell curve (ie toward higher intelligence), the vainer the thinkers are. They don't want to be told answers or have to accept any divine authority - they figured it out themselves.

What is the point of teaching evolution in schools? It depends on how it is presented. If it is presented as preempting or disproving religious faith, it has overstepped its bounds. Or rather replaced existing religion with one that denies it is a religion - atheism.

Well, what will they teach in biology classes instead? Ecology. Anatomy. Epidemiology. Public health. Agriculture. Genetics. More health-related topics that are directly related to citizenship, as opposed to some intellectual exercise in figuring out which critter allegedly descended from what by blind chance. Just what value does evolution have to offer the average citizen?

Or maybe they can teach some real science. They certainly can show that it evolves. When I took high school biology, the taxonomy of the time had only two kingdoms, the animals and the plants. Nowadays we have the same critters as before, but at last count there were 5 kingdoms.

Here's some more vanity, from the same post:

Now, the fact remains that a large minority continue to accept Biblical literalism, but let's keep going up the bell curve. A 1996 study by Witham & Larson showed that 40% of scientists with doctorates were theists.

I suppose possession of a doctorate is solely a function of intelligence? Hardly. But it does show that they have been hazed by higher-ups in their faculty, and if they deviate too much they won't get their tickets punched.

Want to hear a story about magic? One day there was nothing at all, and then the next there was a universe! It doesn't sound any the less improbable IMO if you throw in deities. But scientists cut out the deities with Occam's Razor and place their faith in things as error-prone as objective observation and reason. They have faith that they'll find the answer eventually, and in the meantime would everyone please renounce their religious faith?

Can't predict the positions and momenta of subatomic particles simultaneously? Don't confess eternal ignorance, postulate an Uncertainty Principle.

You can't predict something's behavior? Don't admit you don't know - call it "random" or "chaotic" to cover the failure.

Your physics theory upon which you built theories of the beginning and the end of the universe is failing? Postulate the existence of new phenomena like "dark matter", hold out your hand for a few $millions more, and buy time to conjure up the next story.

Science has many wonderful achievements. But it will remain useful only so long as it remains humble. Don't let anyone make it into a religion, or displace existing religions.

UPDATE: And don't...well, we'll let Quana tell it.

They all look the same!

I'm lily-white, from a largely lily-white (mostly German, Irish and a little Italian) small town in IL (around 10,000 population). There's a very light sprinkling of nonwhites, but not enough to teach us to recognize one group from another. Without external media coming in and various generations of military veterans, we'd probably do little better than to be able to distinguish blacks from Hispanics from Asians.

I've covered a lot of ground since then and I'm doing better at telling different groups apart. But it looks like I'm not the only one who has a heck of a time distinguishing Chinese, Koreans and Japanese.

Let's see how well you do. Har har - I did better than Razib...

Stolen from Gene Expression.

Wish you were here

...to behold that incredible meeting of the minds that happened in St. Louis this past Thursday. Tim Blair was passing through, and Charles Austin, Juan Gato, Chris Johnson and I were there to help spare him the torments of sobriety. We made short work of the world's problems, but I didn't think to write it all down.

Filling a much needed void

Did you forget to make out your grocery list? No problem - use one of these.

From Dan Pink

Can't they do better than this?

Surely no Bush administration official gets more undeserved flak than John Ashcroft. Such as this from Robert Prather:

Oregon voters passed an assisted suicide law via referendum -- twice -- and John Ashcroft, with no constitutional basis to do so, has tried to revoke the medical licenses of the doctor's who prescribed the lethal doses. The first judge to review the case over-ruled Ashcroft and it's on appeal.

The article in question says this:

The Death With Dignity Act, which allows a physician to prescribe a lethal dose of barbiturates to a terminally ill adult patient, was first approved by the voters of the state of Oregon in 1994. Assisted suicide opponents mounted a vigorous campaign against the law, delaying its implementation until referendum in 1997, when it passed again.

The federal Drug Enforcement Administration immediately stepped in and sought to overturn the law on the grounds that it violated the Federal Controlled Substances Act, which prohibits the use of certain drugs except for a "legitimate medical purpose"—which, the DEA said, did not include aid in dying. Then-Attorney General Janet Reno, however, overruled the agency, and the law was allowed to remain in place.

Under Attorney General John Ashcroft, however, all of that changed. In November 2001, the attorney general took time out from cracking down on terrorists to crack down on physicians who prescribe lethal drugs to the terminally ill. He authorized the DEA to revoke their licenses.

There's nothing controversial about the idea that causing death is a "legitimate medical purpose"?

Listen, I'm all for state's rights. IMO people should see the Civil War as a gross abuse of federal power too. But surely there's a better case for dumping on Ashcroft than this.

Prather offers this:

John Ashcroft has stretched every conceivable aspect of the constitution since his term started. The assisted suicide law is presumably being challenged using laws based on the interstate commerce clause. What assisted suicide has to do with interstate commerce is a mystery to me.

The first sentence suggests that we are dealing with something other than objectivity. As for the rest, if the Reason article cited is accurate, it doesn't seem so farfetched that Ashcroft is totally within the bounds of the law. As Prather's cite shows above, the initial DEA determination predates Ashcroft. Can the DEA revoke medical licenses? Does the DEA report to Ashcroft? If so, then what is left to say? IMO the US District Court judge who made the decision (who is based in Portland, Oregon) was the one who overstepped his bounds, and my money says Ashcroft wins in a later round.

Remember all the crap Ashcroft heard during confirmation? How Democrats claimed that he would impose his own views upon the law, especially wrt abortion clinics? It looks to me like he's enforcing the law just as he pledged to do when he was confirmed. If there's something wrong with the law, then let's fix the law.

Prather continues with this:

The 4th amendment means nothing to him as well given his support for the TIPS program. I want the guarantee that I'll be secure in my person, papers and effects. I don't want it compromised for the War On Drugs™ and I don't want it compromised for the war on terror.

The War on Drugs long predates Ashcroft, and it's his job to enforce the law. And he inherited the cowboys at DEA, BATF and whatever you call what we have at the FBI, who have all sorts of institutional and civil service defenses against housecleanings. And given his late confirmation, the unending personal attacks and the subsequent frenzy after 9/11, just when was he going to be able to do that?

Let's hear something positive for a change. Who would have been better than Ashcroft? What should he have done differently that was consistent with the responsibilities of his job? And what is needed to clean up these rogue organizations?

Just for the record...

I'm late to this party, but I offer the following:

idiotarian - n. 1. Anyone who would claim that Charles Johnson's site is racist.

Radioactive litter

Cat litter, that is.

A man who ignored a veterinarian's order to flush his cat's radioactive waste down the toilet was hit with a $2,800 bill. ...Jenness' cat, Mitzi, an 11-year-old shorthair, was treated with an injection of radioiodine after developing hyperthyroidism, which is common in cats her age.

The treatment makes the cat radioactive for weeks, so special care is required, including limiting snuggling time, keeping the cat away from children and pregnant women and using protective gloves when flushing the cat litter......Mitzi's mess was discovered at an incinerator in Rochester when alarms detected radioactivity. Workers traced the waste to Jenness after finding mail with his name on it nearby.

My job is looking better all the time.

Radiocat's Web site says the amount of radiation from a radioiodine shot is probably less than the amount a person receives on a long plane flight or a day at the beach.

But Thomas Burnett, a Whitman public works commissioner, said any radiation in trash is too much.

Radwaste eventually becomes harmless, but stupidity is forever. With sensitive enough instruments, he'll find radiation in all of the trash in town.

The first rule of government

Governments don't collect taxes so they can pay for services. Governments perform services so they can collect taxes.

MisManners

I had an older relative who was fussy about manners. She would visit once in a while and I would be on pins and needles wondering what else I was doing wrong. Little did I know I could have used a dozen more like her.

Hey, we men have always been animals. Some of us believe that whenever civilization happens, it's because some women put their pretty little feet down. But women in particular, outside the South, seem to have lost most of their manners. Some of the younger ones are appalling.

I don't mean which fork goes with the salad - we're talking basics here. For instance, if you're wearing jeans there are still some ways you probably shouldn't sit, unless you want us to think your herpes is in bloom.

And if you're in a short skirt there are fewer options yet, I don't care how much you spent at Victoria's Secret. Or on depilation - I read somewhere that Hillary Clinton once caught an impromptu exhibition and issued a memo instructing White House staff to wear panties at work.

Never mind the conflict of interest - if a man points out such things he's likely to be accused of harassment just for acknowledging it. Where are the women?

Iran: going from the dogs

How will they top this?

Beauty from the Beast

Of the millions of things I'm not qualified to do, giving beauty tips has to be close to the top. But sometimes even I can give a hint or two.

Tip #1 is to smile once in a while. You know, a real honest smile, not one of those reflexive masks we see on politicians and spokesmodels.

Alright, some of us aren't blessed. One minor celebrity I met usually looked sultry, but when I caught her smiling once she looked kind of goofy and rustic. They can be gummy or horsy or otherwise fubar, but there really aren't so many of these.

Another minor celeb had a nice smile because I had seen it on occasion. Then she stopped. When I asked, she told me she didn't smile for cameras because it made lines in her face. Heaven forbid.

One woman who worked in the same office with me was in her early twenties, and I would have sworn she had had a stroke. She would talk or blink, and once in a while she must have eaten, but other than that her face almost never moved. Then again, with the amount of makeup she wore it probably wasn't easy - near as I could tell her skin was fine. All the obvious effort she put into her face, but in a year or two I think I caught her smiling twice.

Another was a girl who must have been about 18 at the time. This one at least would smile, and she was very pretty, but she too wore makeup as if she were on stage. At her age and with her skin, I'd think lots of foundation et al would be more likely to cause problems than to cover them. I have to wonder if it wasn't intended almost like a mask to hide behind.

What do I know about makeup, anyway? Well, I've had to wear it before. But I had to quit - those lights and cameras put weight on you, and I've been trying to lose it ever since.

Shut up and blog

I have a particular blog in mind, but this works in general.

If you are going to be sensitive to nasty things people might say, maybe blogging isn't for you.

And if you're going to come out and say you're gay, well, where have you been living? Fair or not, you're begging for nastiness from the "God hates fags" crowd.

Shrug it off and tell them all to go to hell.

The 5th wheel

Curse that recliner. I have one that points straight at the TV set, and nothing short of drugs puts this historic insomniac to sleep sooner. The result is that at odd times I wake up with the TV on. So hours after the World Series game ended, I got to watch "The 5th Wheel", from the cultural savants who brought us "Blind Date".

At the beginning of the show we're shown two men and two women (Rana and Amanda). They get a chance to talk to each other as a group, then each man is paired with each woman. Of course the voyeuristic camera following along, with goofball editing, and each gets to make comments about each of the others.

Then another woman (Angelina) is introduced, and she is paired with each guy. After this apparently no holds are barred, and at the end all five participants select which partner they'd like to keep. Pairs that pick each other apparently are the winners, and the rest are "5th wheels".

It takes a, uh, special kind of person to perform on these shows. Amanda lost her bikini top with one of the guys. Rana was into biting. Angelina was the hottest. Each guy had a turn with two girls at once, then Angelina and Andrea paired off. Finally all of them met in a small space, and as the door closed on them a graphic appeared warning of "orgy in progress".

Then the finale - the naming of partners. Both guys picked Angelina. So did Amanda. And Angelina picked Amanda. Ha! - three fifth wheels.

Alright, I did sit still to watch an episode. No voyeurism here though, nosirree - purely detached observation and intense contemplation with the intent of adding my profundities to the sum of human wisdom. Yes, this was a study in human relations, evolving social norms, game theory, TV production...

Barf.

Science vs. science

I'm thinking of getting a camcorder in the near future. Then, being me, I'll have to jack around with video editing and production.

Video editing takes lots of computer resources. And that's for a fairly narrow field of view. If you could use it to capture everything your eyes could see in every direction it would be far worse. And your eyes can't see everything.

Conclusion: we're missing most of what is happening around us all of the time. And that goes for the other senses too.

Of course human vision is inherently limited by the properties of our eyes. We can't see the radiation from a hot object until it starts emitting enough red radiation (by which time it's well beyond hot enough to burn us), and it would be nice if we could see predators at night by their body heat. We can't see ultraviolet rays, so we don't know to take cover when they are bad. Likewise our other senses have a limited "bandwidth".

Let's just say we had access to all of the observations made by all the people on the planet. Even then, they don't cover the entire biosphere,
and there's lots more stuff going on within the earth or in outer space. Even if everyone were a well-equipped, talented scientist, we'd still miss all but the tiniest bit of the data that is available.

And who says that we couldn't use more senses? Being capable of detecting radioactivity would be handy, as would detecting pathogens like anthrax or whatever else Saddam has been cooking up. There could be entire undiscovered phenomena out there that even our measuring instruments can't detect and that we don't even know to look for. And the instruments we do use generally work over a narrow range (just as we might use micrometers, rulers, and tapes to measure different length ranges), so you can miss things at each end. The result is that we don't even know all of what we're missing - we can't even place an upper bound on our ignorance of our surroundings.

And this whole process repeats forever, while our oldest quantitative observations might possibly date a millenium or two back out of the alleged 5 billion year age of the earth. I'm easy, let's call it 5000 years of science. That's one millionth of the life of the planet, and even less of the universe.

That tiny sampling of information we do have cannot be dealt with as is though, and it is subject to misinterpretation. We've all seen optical illusions to show how our senses play tricks on us. We invent all sorts of new illusions when we use optical devices like microscopes or even something as simple as a voltmeter. And we use categorical perception, which is a rich source of misunderstandings.

Yet somehow we get by. We learn to prioritize. We use external instruments for their presumed objectivity. We repeat experiments under differing circumstances. We use statistical methods to reduce information into its most useful forms, betting that we haven't found those uncommon but possible situations when the methods will lead to error.

That incredibly tiny, heavily processed sliver that remains from the original perceptions, taken from that absurdly short period of time in the life of the universe, is what is used by scientists to make claims about the beginning and the end of the universe.

One millionth of the life of a 70 year old man is less than 40 minutes. Imagine some alien coming here seeing Earth life forms for the first time, studying a human for 40 minutes, and claiming that he could predict every stage of development that had occured at conception, and what would happen until death. Good luck.

But there are people who find this credible, and scorn creationists.

Creationism is not science. As such it should not be taught in schools as science.

However, science should be taught warts and all. Ignoring its limitations is not scientific, and cosmology like the above makes an excellent example of just how expansive scientific predictions have been relative to actual observations. Believing the resulting predictions is very much an act of faith.

Further, It should be acknowledged that scientific theories are here today and gone tomorrow. For an example, curricula should include the flip-flops such as when global cooling predictings of the 70's gave way to the global warming predictions of the 90's.

It should be noted that science is influenced by personalities and politics, as it was with the theories of Trofim Lysenko.

Finally, it should be noted that science is subject to fraud. A classic example is Piltdown man, but there is much more than that.

Above all, it should be emphasized that science is not antithetical to religious faith. Otherwise we're introducing religion into schools in the form of atheism.

No Watermelons Allowed: the Next Generation

So what is it about this blog that could be improved?

Sorry, nothing I can do about the author - he's the only one who works this cheap. If this is 'free ice cream', I refuse to speculate on the flavor, and it has yet to receive a documented sniff from Silflay Hraka. Hmm - I could put in a redirect to the Bleat...

The name? - by now it's a tradition, like the cranberries I don't eat at Thanksgiving. And the new domain name might be worse... Both resulted from the same process that named Peculiar, MO - the locals got tired of coming up with a unique name to suit the postal service. Incidentally, the 'watermelons' in question are those who pose as environmentalists (green on the outside) while actually serving the left (red on the inside).

The overall esthetics? Well, I'm an engineer/IT guy - it would be like putting lace on a bowling ball. If it all sucks beyond redemption, comfort yourself knowing that I see it more than anybody else.

Getting away from Blogspot? It's on the agenda. The new host, Hosting Matters, has the cojones to carry Instapundit and VodkaPundit, so they'll barely notice me between billings. I already have Movable Type over there too, but I've been so slow about it that they've upgraded in the meantime.

That obnoxious void comment page? I keep telling myself 'it'll go away after I'm on Movable Type'. So far I haven't been quite annoyed enough to fix it yet.

That @#$% hit counter needs improvement too. Apparently Bravenet has decided to cut back on referral logs, from 50 to 25.

And I'm among the world's worst for returning email.

On the plus side, I don't have a cat.

Well, I'm trying to learn from some things that annoy me about other blogs. I have a slow connection most of the time, and I don't want to see something more than once. So I'm starting to put labels on some of the links. That way if your browser permits you can see what it points to, in English.

Enough. Fire at will.

Your research dollars at work

You know, my hands are bigger than average. They're probably bigger than Eddie Van Halen's. All else being equal, you might think that would give me some advantages at playing guitar. But although I do play, you'd better stick with Eddie.

And now we have this, attempting to correlate penis size with index finger length.

You'll note that I already mentioned I have big hands, and I can hold up my end of a locker room bull session. But really, is this observation of any medical value at all?

Where are your kids?

I just saw a TV ad for Wherify Wireless. They sell a GPS wristwatch for kids along with a monitoring service that lets you keep tabs on them. Supposedly it can also tell if the device has been removed. It also has a pager and can call 911 - the latter can be disabled.

They are developing a locator for cars too. This has been around a while for major corporate clients, but now it would be available for the rest of us.

Cuban Missile Crisis 40th anniversary

The History Channel is running a show about the Cuban Missile Crisis, from almost 40 years ago today. This occurred when JFK found out that the Nikita Khrushchev's Russians had installed nuclear missiles in Cuba.

Many options for a response were considered, including a land invasion.

At that time, unknown to US intelligence, the Russians had tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba (including nuclear torpedos). These could have been used to vaporize many if not all of our personnel involved in the invasion. According to Khrushchev's son Sergei, these weapons were likely to have been used in case of an invasion.

Does this sound familiar?

Please tell me he's not joking

Even if it is Scrappleface.

Unreasonable

I typically avoid discussions with people who a) are more involved with an issue than I am, and b) have more time available than I do. But I'll break that little rule today to try to deliver on a post I pledged a few weeks ago.

Arthur Silber publishes an interesting blog called "Light of Reason". A name like that is a heavy load to carry IMO. Mr. Silber does well, but in fact has chosen a burden that cannot be borne. Reason fails him, as it must.

I don't have the time or space to go into this in great detail here. What I would say boils down to "Mr. Silber worships reason". I don't think he would find that offensive per se and it is not intended in that way. What it is intended to convey is that Mr. Silber elevates reason to heights its powers do not justify.

If I am mischaracterizing his position I'm more than willing to be corrected, but it appears that Mr. Silber believes that 1) all that is true can be demonstrated through reason, and 2) reason will never lead to falsity. Without these, he simply has no starting point to build his philosophy.

And I disagree with both statements. I would like to see how Mr. Silber defends them, without resorting to what he would call "arbitrary".

Not a blonde joke

I usually don't bother linking to anything I find in the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web Today because I figure most of you have already seen it. But this is too good.

No Blood for Oil!

You know, intelligent, responsible people have been awfully hard on some of these leftists and their protests about our involvement in the Middle East. But we have to try to appreciate their point of view, you know.

For instance, I've heard them say 'no blood for oil'. Admit it, it's a lousy idea. It can be slippery, but it's a lousy lubricant - after a while it gets all sticky and eventually it dries out. It doesn't keep well. It doesn't burn worth a hoot. It's more edible than petroleum, but it never really caught on in the US. When you cook it, it clumps up like plastic but it's no substitute for petroleum based products. And really, we ought to use it for plasma and transfusions instead.

Well, I suppose that's kind of a stupid interpretation. But what else could they mean? Surely they don't think that we'll accept oil shortages.

Has everyone forgotten about locking gas caps? Surely I'm not the only one who remembers what gasoline tastes like. What will people do if they can't get enough gasoline to get to work or get groceries?

We have some experience from the 70's. Long gas lines. Corruption. Violence. And the economy will go down the tubes.

My conclusion is that in fact there will be blood for oil. Our only choice is whose it will be, and where it will be shed.

Carbon monoxide poisoning

It's getting to be heating season, and we've already had our first local deaths from carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning.

CO results from incomplete combustion combined with poor ventilation. Symptoms are headaches, nausea, sleepiness, dizziness and disorientation. In high concentrations, carbon monoxide can cause loss of consciousness and death. Many victims die in their sleep. It kills over 200 people every year in the US, and is a factor in fire deaths because it incapacitates people when they need to escape.

So if you have a gas or other kind of heater that has a flame, make sure there are no obstructions in the airflow going in or out. In particular, the flue might be blocked by bird nests or otherwise. If you don't feel qualified, call your handyman, heating repairman, apartment manager or whoever.

In any case, spring for a CO monitor and install it as directed. You don't need as many of these as is recommended for smoke alarms, but there should be one near the likely sources.

And if you won't listen, you can just drop dead.

Lewis Grizzard is dead, and I'm not feeling so good myself

But we still have Acidman. So what if he went to the wrong school.

You haven't heard of Lewis Grizzard? @#$% Yankee heathen!

Hands off my Boy Scouts

Stephen Spielberg has disassociated himself from the Boy Scouts of America. He doesn't like the policy of excluding gays.

Whatever the wisdom of this policy, the fact is that they have the right to screen their members and Scoutmasters as they see fit, and they should.

But no - gay groups have to harass the BSA over the policy. Good grief, how many Boy Scout aged boys have decided that they're gay, anyway?

Why don't these crusading groups just start an alternative to the Boy Scouts? Let their new organization practice don't-ask-don't-tell, or explicitly include gays, or be exclusively gay, or include both sexes, or whatever. Then let the parents and the boys decide if they want to join it instead of Boy Scouts.

If the project is a success, fine. But if it isn't, then it suggests that the Boy Scouts are only doing what their market is telling them to do.

So what?

Drudge offers this headline: MAG: If Saddam Disappears, Power Would Pass to His Sons Who Could Be Worse Than Father...

Maybe so. But Saddam isn't immortal - surely the spawn will be taking over sooner or later. So this isn't an argument against going in and cleaning house.

And if the sons take over? My bet is that they'll probably be like scorpions in a bottle until one manages to kill the other.

Cleats

At the moment the Packers are beating the Patriots 14-3, and I just saw a Packer wipe out trying to sack Tom Brady.

Hmm. Has anyone ever tried wrapping cleats partway around the sides of shoes? That might have kept the rusher on his feet. Then again, it might also cause a lot more leg injuries.

De-evolution

Richard Dawkins is a staunch evolutionist, but his existence leads me to question the theory that we're descended from anything as intelligent and gracious as apes:

Regarding the accusations of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, deplorable and disgusting as those abuses are, they are not so harmful to the children as the grievous mental harm in bringing up the child Catholic in the first place

That's offensive even to an agnostic like me.

But he's not through yet-this scientist is also an atheist:

The word atheism sounds negative; let me call it rationalism.

Of course he can't prove that there is no god - he must assume that there is not one, just as those who believe in gods must assume that they exist. Good luck getting him to admit that.

Link stolen from Bo Cowgill.

Attack Iraq Now II

Some time back I wrote of the passing of a friend of mine to liver cancer. I've been to a few funerals, but I wasn't prepared for the difference between the 42 year old family man I had last seen at work 3 months earlier and what I saw in the casket. I got out of there fast.

This week's dead-tree Weekly Standard points to this letter in Slate (look for 12:47), about aflatoxin. Saddam has weaponized it.

He might well be the first to do so. Nobody else is fiendish enough to want it. After all, it's useless against soldiers - it doesn't kill fast enough. But it does induce liver cancer, especially in children. And Saddam's record against the Kurds, Iraqi Shiites and Iranians shows that he will use such measures, and enthusiastically.

Saddam has at least 2200 liters of aflatoxin. And according to the letter above, they had loaded aflatoxin into two warheads capable of being fitted on Scud missiles.

Of course you don't need Scuds. You just need some irredeemable mofos willing to spread it strategically in foreign countries. Maybe even in your back yard. Voila - genocide in a bottle.

The usual Hitler/Stalin/Mao/Idi Amin/Pol Pot/Kim Jong-Il epithets simply aren't adequate to describe this man. Take him out. Now.

Attack Iraq Now

This is not a 'warblog' - others like Little Green Footballs do a far better job. But then I just finished reading 'Saddam's Bombmaker' and I'm partway through 'The Threatening Storm'. Brrrr!

Saddam's Bombmaker is a chilling story of Dr. Khidhir Hamza, an Iraqi who unwittingly made a deal with the devil when he accepted scholarships to study nuclear physics in the US. While he was gone Saddam Hussein took power and demanded that he returned home to avoid reprisals against his family.

From there he wound up involved in the Iraqi program to build nuclear weapons, and he tells how the program got started. It seems that in the early 1970's, some people wanted their budget increased, so they proposed building A-bombs. They figured it would take years to do it, by which time Saddam might be out of power.

Over time Hamza came to know much about other Iraqi weapons programs, and by the time of his nerve-wracking escape from Iraq in 1994 he had an earful for the CIA. Getting them to listen was another story (as Aukai Collins could have told him - Collins has a book of his own called 'My Jihad' that is also on my mile-long reading list). Enough, just read the book.

And when you're through with those, there's Glenn Frazier's Warblogger's Bookshelf

Just in time for Christmas

Someone you know needs this stuff.

No Australian Watermelons Allowed

Greens make Aaron Oakley see red. Check him out.

Be your own Dante

Sasha Castel posted this gem from someone who is offended by obesity. It starts with the guy complaining about the fat guy seated next to him on a plane and overflowing his seat (there's no record if he also blamed his corpulent neighbor for lousy service, bad food, laughable security and poor on-time performance). From there he goes on to tell us The Way Things Ought To Be, with fat taxes et al.

I guess we're lucky more of our vices don't leave such obvious signs behind. You can lie, cheat and steal all you want, but if you overeat and/or don't exercise enough, karma will not be denied.

There ought to be physical manifestations of other vices too. Say, if every time you lied, your tongue forked. Bill Clinton's would look like a French tickler. And according to certain women, he might like it that way.

We don't cut off the hands of thieves like certain other cultures, but it would be OK with me if their hands turned sticky and slimy. Shake hands with them and instantly you know what you're dealing with.

But I guess I'm straying into Dante territory. Which would be a good place to link to something I read recently which updated Dante's Hell, but I can't remember where it is. I don' t know what Dante did with airheads (but then I wouldn't, would I?).

Here's a chance for you to play Cosmic Karmic Enforcer. Give me a vice, and tell me how its practitioners should be labeled or where Dante should put them.