Tuesday, April 09, 2002- - -
"Warfare is the Tao of deception. Thus although you are capable, display incapacity. When committed to employing your forces, feign inactivity. When your objective is nearby, make it appear as if distant; when far away, create the illusion of being nearby.
Go forth were they do not expect it, attack where they are not prepared." Sun-Tzu The Art of War
At this point, I think we've pretty well established who's with us and who's against us in the Middle East, and it's a very target rich environment. Mark Steyn (link via Bill Quick) cites a recent Trevor McDonald interview with President Bush on Britain's ITV network in which Bush repeatedly points to Iraq as our chief target. Of course, practically everyone thinks Iraq is our next target and this makes perfect sense considering that Iraq might well have been the elder Bush's undoing.
Perhaps the most important principle for a successful military attack is surprise. Thus, the harder everyone focuses on Iraq the more I must suspect that the next shoe will drop elsewhere.
There's another principle at work here as well. Fear and uncertainty are debilitating. The longer we can keep Saddam thinking he's about to be attacked any second the more exhausted his forces will be when we do attack.
@10:19 PM
Score one for the Constitution. Via the Denver Post: The Colorado Supreme Court refused Monday to force the Tattered Cover Book Store to turn over sales records to aid in a drug investigation, saying that both the U.S. and Colorado constitutions protect an individual's fundamental right to purchase books anonymously.
Justice [Michael] Bender said the case revolved around the rights of Americans to read whatever they want without fear the government is looking over their shoulders.
@1:51 PM
Monday, April 08, 2002- - -
Via Suman Palit, I had to try this: "What D&D Character Am I?"
I Am A: Neutral Good Elf Ranger Bard
Alignment:
Neutral Good characters believe in the power of good above all else. They will work to make the world a better place, and will do whatever is necessary to bring that about, whether it goes for or against whatever is considered 'normal'.
Race:
Elves are the eldest of all races, although they are generally a bit smaller than humans. They are generally well-cultured, artistic, easy-going, and because of their long lives, unconcerned with day-to-day activities that other races frequently concern themselves with. Elves are, effectively, immortal, although they can be killed. After a thousand years or so, they simply pass on to the next plane of existance.
Primary Class:
Rangers are the defenders of nature and the elements. They are in tune with the Earth, and work to keep it safe and healthy.
Secondary Class:
Bards are the entertainers. They sing, dance, and play instruments to make other people happy, and, frequently, make money. They also tend to dabble in magic a bit.
Deity:
Mielikki is the Neutral Good goddess of the forest and autumn. She is also known as the Lady of the Forest, and is the Patron of Rangers. Her followers are devoted to nature, and believe in the positive and outreaching elements of it. They use light armor, and a variety of weapons suitable for hunting, which they are quite skilled at. Mielikki's symbol is a unicorn head.
Find out What D&D Character Are You?, courtesy of NeppyMan (e-mail)
@10:51 PM
What I find particularly amusing about this, is that the bourgeois are loudly denounced about the university - until fund raising time. Then, of course, we're their favorite people.
@10:51 PM
Our tax dollars at work.
@10:50 PM
Holy Moly, the VodkaPundit says he blogs 14 hours a day. That's serious.
@10:49 PM
Outstanding! Via the InstaPundit, I find that Jan Yarnot, who grew up in Laramie and who offered me much early encouragement, has started her own blog: Fossil Freak's News and Views. A good read, too.
@10:48 PM
Dinkytown! There's a place I haven't heard of in awhile. I wonder if the old Rathskeller is still there..
@10:43 PM
Yesterday I wrote: Where do you all come from? Why on earth do you read this blog as opposed to one of the other million or so out there? My curiosity is killing me.
It never occurred to me to just ask. Now I've got a stack of email, often explaining at great length what folks like and don't like about this blog. That's just outstanding, and until I can answer each, I thank you all.
It does appear that I've mislead a good number of folks though. I'm not really a 'hard-working, salt-of-the-earth' sort. I spend most of my time sitting in front of this infernal contraption. The computer is a great labor-saving device - it saves me from doing any labor. When I do twist off I'm not so much an outdoorsman as a woods loafer.
@8:55 AM
We had an earthquake! There's not much info online yet, but it was supposedly the first quake over 2.5 magnitude ever recorded in the Worland area and only the fourth quake in Washakie County that's registered over 2.5 since they started recording them in 1871. One little bump at 2.9 on the scale. It made the house creak. My wife is a geologist. She'd never experienced an earthquake before, so it made her day.
@7:43 AM
Via the Billings Gazette, Les Dolezal was an investment officer with Dain Rauscher for 14 years. Now he's a river guide, leading canoe trips through one of the last really untouched prairie grasslands. I haven't floated that stretch of the Missouri yet, but friends who have assure me that it's spectacular.
I wonder if he ever misses the office?
@7:35 AM
The Wringneck Wranch was planted in Budweiser barley yesterday. I trust you'll all do your part.
@7:34 AM
Nice. At 4:32 pm today, according to my notation, it will be 0204081632.
@7:34 AM
A field of dreams gets the axe over on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
@7:33 AM
A telling bit of human nature at work here.
@7:32 AM
Sunday, April 07, 2002- - -
Via the InstaPundit, what's truly sad here, is that the guy who thought he was defending himself isn't of age (21) to own or carry a handgun. At this point it's a good bet he's in a lot more trouble than the morons who attacked him:
According to the Denver Post: In a 1999 Thornton case, paintball shooters were charged with battery, illegal discharge of a firearm and criminal mischief. Witherwax and the Mace brothers could face similar charges, authorities said.
"They could face charges down the line," Oulton said, "but right now the detectives are focused on the more serious crime of the shooting."
@12:28 PM
Every time I try to sign up for GoStats I fill in the registration form, click submit, and .. Nada, nothing, zip, zilch. Blank screen. No Response. Good thing they're not trying to sell something, they'd be missing a lot of customers.
Building a big readership wasn't really the aim here. How could it be? With something like a million blogs out there I'm still astonished that anyone besides my dad reads this. I'm doing it principally to break out of the technical writing straight jacket. I write constantly in my work, but it's all very mechanical: "On fill in the date, fill in the crew members conducted an investigation of fill in the client and project." On and on, ad nauseam.
I get no points for originality or style - quite the opposite. Much of what I write are technically legal affidavits. Ambiguity is Bad. The paperwork must fly through the federal and state review process. To do that I must try to anticipate any questions the reviewers might have and answer them, but more important, the answers must be in the same place and in the same format - in the same words if possible - time after time, because the reviewers won't read the entire report, they only read the parts that answer their specific questions. The more of the report they actually read, the more likely they'll find something they don't like, so I don't want to force anyone to search through the document looking for their answers.
But I like to write. Like Sgt. Stryker, I find it cathartic. Yes, I get rid of my troubles and aggravations by loading them on You. Back when I started this in January it was 'start a blog, or pitch the TV out in the street.' Writing letters to the editor wasn't getting through to anyone. Or maybe it was getting through to the editors - why else would they spend so much effort 'editing' a one paragraph letter that was electronically submitted and in passable English when they got it? Especially if the regular result was to make the letter look like a submission from Deliverance Land..
Now, the more I blog, the more I find that my curiosity demands I at least attempt to find out what it is I'm doing right, and more important what I'm doing wrong in attracting readers. I can't track my own stats, unless there's some facility for doing it through Blogger that I've not yet found. But some ways I don't have to.
While I was shopping for a counter and stats service I took a look at Megan McArdle's counters. I haven't looked into it enough to interpret the stats very well, but she was getting on the order of 100-150 "First Time Referrers" and roughly the same number of "Returning Visitors" refers in a six day period associated with this blog in some fashion. Those numbers are now in the 200-250 hits per week range. I'm not sure if that means that over 200 people are finding their way to me from her, or vice versa, but it doesn't really matter. The number is ridiculous. Especially since I don't think I've linked to her in the last week other than my Favorites list, nor has she recently linked to me.
And Bill Quick has complained when I send him too many refers! (Hmm. Actually I guess you'd need the email that went with that post) He was joking of course, but now I see that he was only about half joking. He's in a financial bind, generating more readership than he can afford bandwidth. He wanted to move back to BlogSpot, but BlogSpot won't have him! Go figure. If you support yourself through advertising and more readers means more revenues, why would you turn down someone who brings a good readership with them? Unless you simply didn't have the bandwidth to spare - which could explain why I wasn't able to get on Blogger at all Saturday, and two little posts took half an hour to copy, paste & post this morning (Sunday). I think I'll wait until the wee hours to post this one. I digress. Perhaps Bill will explain Ev's reasoning in more detail, but in the mean time, if you can spare a few bucks please help him out.
Where do you all come from? Why on earth do you read this blog as opposed to one of the other million or so out there? My curiosity is killing me. I've finally emailed GoStats to ask for some direct intervention. Perhaps I'll have a counter and some answers soon.
@10:19 AM
Hmmm. Not a single email in almost 24 hours now. Not even a spam. Me thinks my IP may be having problems again.
@7:05 AM
I suppose that until the range of these critters can be defined, and appropriate habitat can be identified and evaluated, the US Fish & Wildlife Service will be forced to stop all development in San Diego and the vicinity to protect these rare and obviously endangered species.
@7:03 AM
Friday, April 05, 2002- - -
We just finished watching HBO's The Laramie Project. Neither my wife nor I is a native of Wyoming. We have no relatives who live in Wyoming. In our business we could live anywhere in the Rocky Mountain west. We live in Wyoming by choice, not by chance of birth. That said, we lived in Laramie between 1986 and 1991. My wife has her master's from the U. of Wyoming, in Laramie. As a confirmed bar fly, I'm intimately familiar with the scenes of the crime.
I've been encouraging all my friends to watch the film premier on HBO and I'll be collecting feedback through the weekend. There's a lot to digest and I'm still cogitating, but here are a few initial reactions:
I think The Laramie Project is an honest effort. Moises Kaufman and his crew tried very hard to capture the essence of Laramie and I think they tried to do a fair rendition of the people and events. Considering Kaufman et al. are city folk, I was half expecting Deliverance II, complete with banjo music. In some ways they did much better than that, but still I wish they'd been familiar with the term "stereotype."
For now I'd like to point out that you don't have to come to Wyoming to find religious cretins preaching hate from the pulpit. Unfortunately, that seems to be a near universal problem. In fact, although they didn't go out of their way to point this out, the most visibly hate-filled wacko who showed up in Laramie, the preacher in the cowboy hat who was faced down by the Angel Action group, was the Rev. Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. Last time I looked Kansas wasn't a county in Wyoming, although it's big enough to be one. Sorry, we don't own the guy.
Second, there's a strong undercurrent of gay paranoia throughout the program. Early on it was stressed that several of Kaufman's crew were afraid to come to Laramie because they were gay. They brought that preconception and prejudice against the rural west with them to the Project, although I'm not sure they realize they made it explicit. Several of the locals who were interviewed stressed that Wyoming is a 'live and let live' kind of place. One gay Wyomingite interviewed for the Project said 'sure, that means if I don't tell you I'm gay you won't beat the shit out of me.' Really?
We have a gay couple living about three doors down, across the street from us, in a far smaller and more insular town than Laramie. I don't know that they've ever done a Rosie and 'come out' on the front page of the local paper, but they certainly make no secret of being gay. They own a bar north of town and they did have some jerk giving them a hard time out at their bar a few years ago, which event was featured in the local paper just in case anyone didn't know they were gay, but other than that I'm not aware of anyone seriously hassling them. I can lean a little to the left and look out the window at their house, and no one's burning it down at present.
It is a sad, sad thing that most of the hate being preached in The Laramie Project was coming from our 'religious leaders.' This, I think, was deadly accurate.
@6:20 PM
It seems like the major media are running about an article a day on blogs right now. Steven Green just had to point out the latest from John C. Dvorak. I suppose I should read it .. and yes, it's about what I'd expected. I bet Hunter Thompson will be surprised to learn that 'gonzo' is a blogger term..
I've read a lot of theorizing on why some mainstream media writer types seem so aghast at blogs. I don't have anything to add. But there is another group in the major media who should be aghast. The advertising managers. Virginia Postrel termed it the 'advertising depression' when she mentioned their problem in passing a few days ago. It seems that advertising is one of the easiest line items to chop from the corporate budget when times get tough. It is certainly one of the first things to go from my business' budget. Couple that with huge increases in the cost of paper and newsprint over the last few years, and things start to look pretty grim around the business offices of the print media.
So who shows up to take a little dip in that relatively finite pool of ad dollars? Bloggers. Amazon.com seems to be the major advertiser on blogs, and the first blog ads I remember seeing were Amazon's ads at The Scene. A brief tour of my Favorites shows that Megan McArdle also carries Amazon ads. Bill Quick has a similar Amazon button on his site, but it's for his book. I'll genuflect in his general direction if Amazon also pays for the spot. But if I were him I'd argue that nobody buys just one book.. With his daily traffic it's a wonder that Glenn Reynolds doesn't carry ads.
Given the amount of time I spend at this, I should probably start running an ad acknowledging which of my clients is paying the bills this week, although they don't directly support the blog.
@3:14 PM
This is starting to look like a textbook 'good cop, bad cop' routine: "Not having a good time, Yasser? Starting to wonder what they'll do next? Well, we'll try to restrain the IDF, but you'd better get real serious with us right now, because we're the only thing standing between you and them, and we don't know how much longer we can hold them back."
I have serious doubts that it will work, but I suppose it's worth a try. What are the options after all?
@11:43 AM
I'm much taken by James Lileks' "Grandma's Camera" piece. A labor of love, and it shows.
The history of industrial technology is a particular interest of mine, so I'm terribly entertained by this photo, as it contains some great old machinery, some of it even from before my time. The photo tells quite a tale. I think Lileks is mistaken in calling this a thresher. If you want to know about antique farm machinery ask an antique farmer. I have - my dad - and I'll soon know more than I ever wanted to about the rig. In the mean time, it's great opportunity for me to practice my machinery ID skills.
It looks to me like the little girl in the front is sitting in the steering wheel of a tractor that's faced toward the camera. The right rear fender of the tractor is the large curved piece of sheet metal that occupies the lower left quarter of the photo and the right rear corner of the gas tank, which sat above the engine of the tractor to allow gravity flow of the fuel, is the other curved metal object in the far lower right. The woman in the background is sitting on the operator's spring seat of what's generically known as a "swatter", perhaps very similar to the McCormick-Deering Tractor Binder. If you look very closely you can see the unoccupied spring seat in the very rear of this contraption and the tractor in front. The tractor would have been used to pull various implements and earlier, horses would have been used to pull them, as you see here.
In Lileks' picture you can see one of the boards of the swatter reel behind the little girl's head in the far upper right, and another behind her right arm. Rising vertically between the legs of the woman at center frame are three control levers. These would have been the clutches to engage and disengage the reel and mower, and perhaps either a mower height control, or rake or binder control, depending on the exact model of the swatter.
The purpose of this whole rig was to cut the grain and bind the stalks into bundles. These bundles would have been collected and delivered to the actual threshing machine, a stationary implement that separated the seed from the straw and chaff. In this photo you can see the threshing machine in the background by the pile of straw, the steam tractor* in the foreground that was used to power the thresher via the broad leather belt visible stretching between them, and the threshing crew that made the whole business work. Machines were gradually introduced to accomplish all of these tasks, and eventually the combine came along, which literally 'combined' the swatting and threshing operations in a single mobile implement. In this photo of the combine the swatter reel is the prominent 'paddle wheel' in the front.
Early on this must have been seriously labor-intensive as 'eat like a threshing crew' is still part of the local dialect. The combine and all the rest of the farm implements that were being introduced eliminated a huge amount of manual labor involved in collecting the sheaves of wheat and transporting them to the thresher. This farm-industrial revolution eliminated a huge number of agricultural jobs, mostly between about 1900 and 1940.
The tangle of stuff, including the John Deere sign, that lies between the girl and the woman in Lileks' photo looks like a pile of miscellaneous farm-industrial trash to me. I see a cone gear and various sprockets and rods and idler arms that don't appear to be attached to anything. If I had to guess, I'd say the picture depicts a 'wreck.' A pile of old parts & wire left hidden in the deep grass on the margin of the field that got tangled in the implement somehow. Wire can be particularly bad because it gets wound around everything and can be a real bugger to get untangled from machinery.
I might look a little disgusted too if my temporarily hired, hourly-paid threshing crew were sitting in the shade of the threshing machine eating all the food I'd just brought while the regular hands (or god forbid the implement mechanic who would have arrived in the 1926 or '27 Model T in the background) struggled to straighten out this mess and get the machinery back in operation. That might be why the third person in the photo is scurrying in the background behind the woman's left arm and didn't have time to pose for the camera.
And now you can see the sort of 'just so' stories that an historian or archaeologist can weave from tenuous evidence. The photos don't 'tell us' anything, but we interpret them to say all kinds of things. Wait until I've explained the entire 1930's farm economy on the basis of this one picture - and no, I'm not really joking, more elaborate tales have been built on less.
*Compare this picture of Lileks' granddad to the operator's area on the back of the steam tractor in the foreground here. These two photos could have been taken at the same 'threshing bee.' The steam tractor was the Big Dog - the most expensive, dangerous implement of the whole show. Thus, it's likely that the owner sat in the engineer's seat, as granddad does, both to protect it from the tender ministrations of the hands, and to keep the hands from severely scalding or killing themselves in the process of blowing up the steam engine. They were very powerful but very dangerous machines. Note also that the fireman, on the left in Lileks' picture, is sitting with his shovel at his elbow rather than shoveling coal as is the fireman in the other photo. This further suggests that Lileks' photos #4 and #5 are a pair taken during 'down time.'
If you're interested you might browse around some of the sites I've linked here. This is the equipment that truly changed the course of human history, allowed urbanization by freeing up a bunch of labor from the farm, and generally changed the face of the planet over the last 100 years. Human enginery at its finest.
@8:50 AM
Thursday, April 04, 2002- - -
Here's a little study in psychology that I wish a few folks in our government would learn from:
On the back side of Bald Ridge in the Bighorn Range, there's an old two-track trail that's ground almost door handle-deep into the ground by years of traffic. This is unusual because ordinarily when a two-track gets deep enough that folks start high-centering they move over and start another track. When you've got two or three parallel tracks going it's time to think about putting in a better road. What makes this track so unusual is the ancient Forest Service sign standing at the point where the road starts getting rutted. In barely legible lettering it says something to the effect of 'Howdy folks! The soil here is really susceptible to erosion, so please stay on the road.' And everyone does.
A few miles away there's another area of this same sort of soil, with big new Forest Service signs saying 'Warning! Under penalty of law and fines of up to $25,000, No off-road traffic is allowed in this area!' Of course, the whole meadow is torn to shreds by off-road traffic.
@9:25 AM
I'm always interested in what folks have to say about the blogging phenomenon, whether it's Alex Beam proving most anyone could hold his job, or a fellow blogger wishing they had a job. So when one of the old timers of the Blogocracy discusses the travails of the medium it's particularly interesting.
Yesterday, Steve Den Beste discussed the mixed blessings of attaining fame in the blogosphere. I'm grateful that he didn't explain my early technique of trolling for links, as he was a chief victim. It's too embarrassing to relate now, but I'm sure Steve would agree that with a little effort I could be the insurance salesman from hell.
Like Steve, I've found that there's simply not enough hours in the day to read all the blogs I like, much less search out new good ones. I'm embarrassed to say that I've never visited half the links of half my Favorites. I certainly respect their taste in blogs, although like Mark Twain, I am a little suspicious of the Favorites of anyone who lists me as one. Add to this the fact that in the 2½ months I've been at this I've updated and corrected my list of Favorites several times, most recently last week, and I'm sure some of the URLs are out of date again. A longer list, up front or in some 'links' file, is simply out of the question.
It's also clear that the blogosphere operates like a school of piranha - there's nothing left of a story but gnawed bones if you don't get there quick. Thus, for the sake of writing material it's better to hit the mainstream press for ideas and fresh news. This raises a dilemma for me, as my favorite reading has always been the OpEds and Letters pages, and now the blogs: Do I read the blogs for fun, or work on my own blog? Never having been one to stint myself, I choose both.
A warning for those thinking about starting a blog: It's addicting. Shoehorning in a little paying work can sometimes be difficult. As Bill Quick has pointed out, there is a certain opportunity cost involved in blogging. However, if everyone considered opportunity costs we'd be knee-deep in nickels. I know I've spent a ridiculous amount of time working on this blog and every minute of that time could have been spent doing paying work. But then, every minute I spend sleeping could be spent working. I've fallen in that trap. I'm self-employed as a sole proprietor. I don't pay myself overtime, or any given amount, but I get to keep the profits and sometimes it's hard to ignore the sound of that little cash register bell ringing in the back of my mind. But I do it all for you, gentle reader.
Oh, and did I mention the fact that I like to shoot off my mouth? That factor alone, I think, will keep blogging alive. The urge to communicate is very central to human experience.
@8:56 AM
This is interesting. Via Gary Farber, WorldNetDaily has published what they claim is an itemized bill found by the IDF when they raided Arafat's headquarters. According to that bill, someone had offered Arafat 3,000 Kalashnikov bullets @ NIS2 each. 6000 shekels for the lot. FXConverter says one US dollar will get you 4.795 Israeli New Shekels this morning, so that works out to $1251.
Down at the Sportsman's Guide they'll sell you 1000 rounds of fresh Russian-made 7.62x39mm Kalashnikov ammo for $79.97, plus shipping. This ammo is loaded with soft point bullets for hunting, military ball would be somewhat cheaper, but let's just assume for the moment that the Sportsman's Guide could deliver 3000 rounds of Kalashnikov ammo to your door for roughly $300. Incidentally, Cabela's can deliver 250 rounds of NATO War Shot M16 ammo for $62.99, plus shipping, or NIS1.21 per round. If you'll settle for South African surplus, Sportsman's Guide can fix you up with a 2700-rd battle pack of M16 ammo for $309.97. Yes, half a shekel per round.
Either UPS doesn't deliver on the West Bank, Yasir needs lessons on comparison shopping, or the bill is a hoax as Gary Farber had wondered. I suppose you might also suggest that Arafat uses the same suppliers of whom our military seems so fond. Of course, I'm only joking about Arafat ordering his ammo from Sportsman's Guide, and there are all kinds of laws about exporting arms and ammunition that would probably preclude UPS delivering ammo to the West Bank in any case. But the numbers don't add up. Especially when you figure those guys shoot 3000 rounds in the air every time they have a beer party.
Here's something to contemplate though: Sportsman's Guide wouldn't let me calculate shipping charges because they're currently sold out of Kalashnikov ammo. They're also pretty much sold out of M16 ammo right now, but with heightened military demand on our industry that's understandable, right? Now peruse the rest of the Sportsman's Guide or Sovietski Collection and you'll see that the entire Russian arms industry seems to be trying to support itself by exporting anything not firmly nailed down to the sportsmen of the US. For years there's been a pallet-load of Kalashnikov ammo sitting somewhere at every gun shop. To us civilians it's not much good for anything but plinking tin cans and the Russians have been flooding the market, so it's been way cheap. But what you couldn't give away a few months ago is now sold out.. [Cue ominous music]
Update: Maybe they are rich little boys: Steve Den Beste says they don't take very good care of their expensive toys.
@6:30 AM
Wednesday, April 03, 2002- - -
When the going gets weird the weird turn pro. Hunter S. Thompson
And getting paid to blog would be weird. Don't get me wrong, I'm a mercenary wretch, but I'm still waiting to see where the whole blog phenomenon is headed. I've a gut feeling - not to mention having read in 42 blogs - that original content is the missing ingredient at this point. Somehow I hope e-panhandling isn't the wave of the future. Glenn Reynolds' excellent April's Fool's spoof may be one possible future. Or a future possible for some.
Broad-based news networks where the individual with a cell phone and camcorder becomes the reporter on the scene - for a cash prize..
Still begs the question whence comes the cash?
In the mean time, I find it amusing to think that someone somewhere might actually be reading this. I'm surprised and very flattered by the response I've received and that seems thanks enough. I thank you all for stopping by.
@7:31 AM
The Department of the Interior is mostly back online and this is what's circulating in their email. Received this morning from a friend at the DOI, perhaps this expresses some of the frustrations of the rank and file in that fine organization. As usual with internet humor there's no attribution:
A major research institution has recently announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. This new element has been tentatively named "Administratium".
Administratium has 1 neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 111 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by a force called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons. Since Administratium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of Administratium causes one reaction to take over 4 days to complete when it would normally take only a few minutes.
Administratium has a normal half-life of 3 years; it does not decay but instead undergoes a reorganization, in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons and assistant deputy neutrons exchange places, and additional peons are added. In fact, Administratium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization causes some morons to become neutrons forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to speculate that Administratium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as...."Critical Morass." You will know it when you see it...
@4:46 AM
Tuesday, April 02, 2002- - -
Evidence Found of Ferrous Huevos Culture.
I read often that this or that Pleistocene species 'may have been hunted to extinction when humans entered the western hemisphere.' The Clovis peoples, being the earliest generally accepted inhabitants of North America, are probably the most frequently fingered for these Terminal Pleistocene orgies of extinction.
While human predation was certainly a factor to be considered, how heavily that factor weighed in the extinction of any given species is an issue of considerable debate. I couldn't begin to sum up the current state of the debate nearly as well as Doc Frison already has. In this passage Doc employs a wit so dry that folks often miss it entirely:
Any discussion of mammoth hunting inevitably bring forth the question of mammoth extinction. Since Martin's (1967) article, Pleistocene overkill versus extinctions by natural causes has been a subject of numerous articles and debates with no indication that the problem will be resolved, at least in the immediate future. The Colby site [about 2 miles east of where I blog this] constitutes a significant part of the present data base on Clovis mammoth hunting in North America, and, being the principal investigator of the site, I claim the privilege of making comments, being fully aware they will probably serve only to fuel the controversy rather than resolve the problem.
The Colby site provides the only known evidence to date on the Northwestern Plains from which it is possible to propose an actual mammoth procurement strategy. This is because of the unequivocal association of Clovis materials in an identifiable landform, a deep, steep-walled arroyo, strongly suggesting some sort of natural trap. Juvenile animals were apparently the preferred target of long-term, systematic exploitation of a resident mammoth herd. The area was apparently capable of supporting mammoths at that time but the same is untrue today. Consequently, and based on paleoecological analyses of climatic studies at the terminal Pleistocene and beginning Holocene, we can assume that a deterioration of the area in terms of its animal-carrying capacity was in the process, which was not favorable for the mammoth populations.
At the same time, mammoths in the Colby site area which were facing problems due to diminishing forage were faced also with an intrusion of obviously successful human predators who were killing mostly young animals. For a species in which females produced young at the age of about 15 years, had a gestation period of under 2 years, and a mean calving interval of somewhere around 6 years (see Laws et al. 1975), the combination of human predation and a deteriorating environment were operating against survival of the species. Consequently, both human predation and climatic factors could have had strong implications in mammoth extinction on the Northwestern Plains.
On the other hand, deterioration of the environment was toward present conditions, which were continually more favorable for horse habitat, as can be demonstrated today by ever-increasing herds of feral horses. The archaeological record has produced little if any reliable evidence that either the Pleistocene horse or camel was systematically hunted by Clovis (see Frison et al. 1978) or any other cultural group, and both species became extinct in the area. However, the bison, which was the most heavily hunted of all the species by human predators, did manage to escape extinction along with the pronghorn, which was the next most heavily hunted species. .. We are left with the conclusion that more data are needed before the Pleistocene extinction problem can be resolved.
I might add that the African lion-sized Smilodon and the Short-faced bear, "the most powerful predator of the American Pleistocene," [think Grizzly bigger than a Clydesdale here] also became extinct about that time, and no one I've read has ever suggested that they were hunted to extinction. On the contrary, someone (who? Hmm. I can't remember.) has suggested that humans couldn't occupy the western hemisphere until the Short-faced bear became extinct.
These 'hunted to extinction' arguments certainly resonate with our modern environmental consciousness and are often the lede in news reports on any archaeological excavations that feature the remains of Pleistocene megafauna. This gives the whole argument a certain ad hoc flavor of sensation-seeking that may sometimes be deserved.
In a broader sense the 'hunted to extinction' argument is ad hoc, as climate change alone can easily explain the late Pleistocene extinctions. Either that, or there remains undiscovered the clan that hunted the Smilodon and Short-faced bear. As by some lights these folks must have existed, I think I'll jump on the naming priority by calling them the Ferrous Huevos Culture.
@3:23 PM
"Wind. Sun. Hydrogen. They are odorless, tasteless, invisible and abundant. And they can be harnessed to generate electricity, power cars and heat homes. So, hey, let's stop dallying! Replace those shameful fossil fuels with clean renewables. What is taking so long?" Says James K. Glassman, via Reason Express.
Glassman goes on to point out: "But there is a reason that renewables, despite a history of generous government subsidies stretching back to 1982, haven't made a dent in the dominance of oil, gas and coal - which together account for 85 percent of the energy used in this country. The reason is cost. As energy sources, wind, sun and hydrogen are hugely expensive and inefficient. Fossil fuels aren't.
The renewables have their own environmental costs as well. Wind turbines sparkling in the sun as far as the eye can see isn't my favorite vision of the future of southern Wyoming, but it's fast becoming a reality in some areas. They may be clean, but they're mighty unsightly. So are all the shiny power lines strung across miles of the Big Empty.
One area where renewables do have promise is in new rural development. The REA expansion of electric lines to rural customers was hugely subsidized and these subsidies are now largely ended. The cost for new rural power lines is in the close approximation of several thousands of dollars per pole. If living in a rural subdivision isn't your style, Central Vermont Solar and Wind say they can fix you up, with 19 years of experience "living off the grid." I can't vouch for them but it's an intriguing idea with cellular and broadband via satellite becoming more of a reality.
With a couple of solar panels I really could become Hermit Blogger! Live from my cave in the hills! Except that we all saw what living in a shack in the woods did to Ted Kaczinski's head. I think I'll stay here in town where folks can toss a net over me before I get nearly that bull-goose loony.
There are good environmental arguments to be made for going 'off the grid,' even where the economic argument doesn't apply. An isolated house with on-site solar and wind electric generation, and perhaps propane for heat and hot water, would be less of a visual intrusion on the landscape than the miles of power line that have been strung in the past to serve REA's rural customers. I understand that there are govmint subsidies available in Wyoming for installing these renewables in rural settings, although we here at Coyote Headquarters don't like to encourage such munificence with the taxpayer's dollars.
These certainly are isolated (no pun intended) circumstances (Ok, I intended it) and not about to become the norm until Butt Weasel Browne gets elected, divvies up the western public estate, we all get our 1.2 acres, and we're ordered to move there to disperse the threat from WMDs, since Bush II has so cravenly allowed OBL to win the war in Afghanistan.
@3:22 PM
If the date line on this was April 1st, I'd have thought it was a bad joke.
Many at the Department of the Interior are still off the internet and this is still causing wide-spread problems. Among those problems, many in Indian Country have still only received one check since early December from the Individual Indian Trust.
Glen Loveland, a spokesman for Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., one of the lawmakers upset over the disconnection, said Monday that the department's promise to speed interim payments to Indians who live off their trust accounts "is still a mess."
"Many, many of our constituents have received only one check," Loveland said. That's despite promises from Interior officials that more than 7,100 payments were in the mail to thousands of Indians who depend on the accounts.
@8:05 AM
It's definitely spring. 65°F yesterday, and it's now 15° with an inch of fresh snow. We don't every really get 'spring' here. It battles back and forth between winter and summer until finally summer wins. The skirmishes regularly extend into June. Then they have a re-match in the fall.
It does keep things interesting. I've left home in 80° weather and been trapped by a blizzard more than once. I've also started the day in long underwear and finished up in shorts. I like those days better.
And come to think of it, I've started the day in shorts, switched to long underwear and then back to shorts a few times too..
Those folks you see in Wyoming that look like street people? They're just natives who've given up trying to figure out what the weather's going to be like this afternoon and wear a winter coat all year-round.
@8:04 AM
Combative Cartoonists
Via Indianz.com comes the first knock-off on the Fightin' Whities, from John Potter of the Billings Gazette:
".. have you heard about this team I'm putting together?
It's open to Indians and non-Indians alike, and our goal will be to blot out racism and other forms of stupidity. I'm having T-shirts made, which I'm sure will DRAW some criticism, but who cares!
All hail, "The Combative Cartoonists!"
The pen is mightier than the mascot!"
His logo does have the Whities beat, although I note that the Whities jerseys now say "Fightin' Whites," an improvement over the original design.
@7:39 AM
Monday, April 01, 2002- - -
What a strange sensation. The sight of the Norwegian flag with hammer and sickle made my hair - or what's left of it - literally stand on end for a few seconds. Like goose bumps on the head.
@12:27 PM
George Will (not yet online) agrees with Bill Quick and me in his column today, that our government exhibits a distressing degree of disregard for the little niceties, like the constitution.
Will has one very telling point: "Just five years ago, 38 senators who supported reforms contained in McCain-Feingold voted to amend the First Amendment to empower Congress to abridge political speech." That's 38% of the pricks who would shut you up right now if they could.. Think about that.
@8:19 AM
Juvenile Amusements are still the best kind
Dr. Weevil liked my reference to Harry Butt Weasel Browne. But I must admit I didn't start out to make a play on words. The 'Butt Weasel' part came along originally in reference to The Rat and was orphaned when it became apparent that beating on pathetic Johnny Taliban was just too easy.
Later the topic of Browne came up and 'Butt Weasel' attached itself to him as if by its own volition. I'd realized this would betray my generally juvenile sense of humor and I'd tried to avoid using the full appellation, but it eventually got away from me.
What can I say? Harry is to politics as Jim and Tammy Fay are to religion, except that Harry could use a little more makeup.
Update: The original Butt Weasel is a friend's cat - so fat it has to sneak up on its own butt.
@7:45 AM
Sunday, March 31, 2002- - -
Things are coming to a boil in the Middle East, in typical modern media fashion. The Israelis have Arafat's compound surrounded while Arafat's giving interviews to FoxNews. It's as if the plot were scripted in Hollywood. Strange editing on this Fox article, too. They've transcribed Arafat's speech and then edited it as if it were a written document.
I think it's safe to say that for better or worse, things are going to change a great deal in the Middle East in the near future.
@6:46 AM
Joanne Jacobs says she's never gotten a dime from Enron. Fortunately, I can't say the same.
She has some very interesting observations on education majors from one of her readers. I have thought the education curriculums I've seen have been a little odd. Great emphasis on the vocational aspects and mechanics of teaching, teachers aids (I recall a class on felt boards and three dimensional props for pre-school instructors) and little emphasis on the traditional broad university education.
I took a graduate course in multivariate statistics given through the graduate school of the education department once upon a time. About a dozen education grad students, two math grad students, one biology grad student, and me. Most of the education grads were teaching at local schools and taking this class during a free period, while the rest of us were more or less full time students, which probably makes a difference, the teachers were working more or less full time and attending class on the side. Regardless, the class required a good deal of work. Each week we employed different statistical techniques to explore the "High School and Beyond" data set, with the purpose of learning the intricacies of analyzing data containing multiple variables. In 16 weeks of class we blasted through the top ten of multivariate statistics. The professor had done his Ph.D. at Oxford, on principal components analysis I believe, in about 1940-1950 B.C. (Before Computers) and demanded that we be able to work the stats by hand as well as by dumping data into the computer hopper - the sort of thing that made you hate him then and remember him fondly now. He also graded on a strict 90%, 80%, 70% or some such scale that didn't allow much wiggle room.
The course was intensive and extensive. It was also a graduate course, in which only A's and B's count toward the degree. You've usually got to have a 3.0, a straight B average, to receive an advanced degree, so a C can only hurt you. Yet our education majors showed a remarkably lax approach to the class, some coming unprepared when they attended at all - yet they stayed in the class. In the end, two B's and two A's were awarded - to the two math students, the biology student, and me.
I've pondered the implications of this experience ever since. My initial reaction was to be shocked that would-be educators would avail themselves so poorly of an educational opportunity. I temper that with the realization that the education majors were attending the class for considerably different reasons than the rest of us. For them it was 'continuing education' or whatever the catch phrase of the time. They were more or less required to be seeking advanced degrees as a condition of their job, and even that particular class may have been required of them. They were also out in the 'working world' and oddly enough education wasn't the center of their existence.
Another observation: Even in studying multivariate statistics, the focus was on the "High School and Beyond" data set. In graduating to advanced work these folks had gone from studying teacher's aids and how to give a chalk talk, to analyzing educational statistics. The vocational education emphasis was still there. Perhaps this is a holdover from the days when my grandmother graduated from the North Dakota State Normal School. "Normal School," you've got to love that. It's what they called the teacher's college. Was that normal? [Sorry, couldn't resist] But seriously, teaching was treated as a vocation, like welding or diesel mechanics. Teachers didn't go to a university, they went to a vocational school. Much of this view of teacher training apparently still persists. Whether that is good or bad is an argument for another day.
@6:41 AM
Saturday, March 30, 2002- - -
".. the past should be left to the historians." Gerald Ford, as quoted by Robert Asprey in his book War in the Shadows: The Guerrilla in History. Asprey's book gives an outstanding overview of guerrilla warfare since the days of the Scythians. It also illustrates why you shouldn't believe everything you read..
Discussing the build-up for the Vietnam war during the Johnson years, Asprey says (pages 814-815) In addition to standard arms and equipment, troops received rapid-firing Armalite rifles, at first the controversial M-16, later the improved M-14 which fired a lighter, 7.62-mm. round.
Yes, the M14 fires a 7.62mm, .308 caliber cartridge, but the M14 is an improved version of the WWII M1 and predates the M16 considerably. The M16 was controversial and the basic design was by Armalite, but the M16 fires the much lighter round, the 5.56mm, .223 cartridge. The controversy was at least partially over the adoption of a .22 caliber as a fighting rifle. Col. Jeff Cooper still refers to the M16 as a "poodle-shooter" and prefers the earlier and much more powerful 7.62mm round. Supposedly there were also a lot of problems with jamming at first with the M16 but these were supposedly remedied with cleaner-burning ammunition and chrome-plated chambers and bores. Some folks really liked the M16. It doesn't kick much so you can do a lot of shooting very fast. The ammunition is very light so you can carry a lot of it.
Some folks didn't care for the M16, however. They took the M14s away and gave me an M16. After firing it on the range I decided I wasn't a happy camper. The sights were rudimentary and the trigger was awful. 300 meters became a very long shot. The thin black plastic stocks broke when you whacked them on a tree. The loudest noise they made when you fired them was the sound of the recoil spring rattling as it compressed in the guide tube under your ear. They simply didn't instill a lot of confidence in me.
I must say that the current issue M16A2 is vastly superior to the original M16, with much better sights and trigger and a much stronger stock, and the new heavy bullet ammunition and faster rifling is supposed to extend the range to 500 meters or better. However, 300 meters would seem to be a long shot for any .22 caliber weapon in any sort of wind. I'd like to say I'd still prefer the old M14, but there is something to be said for the lighter rifle if I'm lugging it all day.
So how did I get off on that tangent? I guess I started pointing out that practically everything said about the modern US Infantryman's basic weapon in this passage is wrong in this well-received and generally excellent history book. This seems like a trivial issue, but the logistics are simplified by the weight savings of the lighter, more compact rifle and ammunition. That's not so trivial when you're fighting in a remote area half-way around the world. It's not so trivial for the light infantryman who has to pack the rifle and ammunition, either. The lighter cartridge produces substantially less recoil, requiring substantially less training for basic familiarization and making the rifle more usable by smaller statured people. This is significant not only to our arming of South Vietnam, but to the increased numbers of women entering our own armed forces at that time, and to the increased urbanization and decreased familiarity with weapons of US recruits of both sexes. The adoption of the M16 in the 1960s and its subsequent evolution parallel vast changes in our military and in our military thinking, not trivial things at all.
@5:57 AM
So OBL is traveling through the mountains on horseback with 300 bodyguards, eh? Mullah Omar And Ayman Al-Zawahiri are with him, too. Chief Joseph was the last one to move that many people through the hills on horseback and get away with it. The cavalry didn't have helicopters back then, though.
Says FoxNews There have also been reports that bin Laden this week sent an e-mail to an Arabic newspaper in London slamming a Saudi peace plan adopted at an Arab summit in Beirut. Like the bin Laden sightings in Afghanistan, however, those reports could not be confirmed.
If bin Laden were alive we'd have another tape by now. I've got to believe he'd do that to maintain his position of power with the al Qaeda and the Arab world, as much as to taunt us.
@3:32 AM
Friday, March 29, 2002- - -
Visiting space aliens won't get this. I'd like to restage the scene with the next bunch of Junior High kids who wander through the yard on their way back to school from MiniMart. Fortunately, I suspect they know this..
@5:57 PM
Ah yes. the Game of Princes in action. We've been here before. You didn't seriously expect them to pay any attention to technicalities like the constitution, did you?
@5:43 PM
Some friends must have been having a day much like many of mine of late, when they wrote this into an official document:
A brief perusal of a number of recent contract reports has resulted in the compilation of a list of some commonly used archaeological terms. This list includes component, occupation. activity area, assemblage, episode, cultural strata, natural components, tradition, stage, phase, and horizon. In most cases, explicit and well conceived definitions of these critical terms were not included in the text. Apparently a misconception is that these terms are self-explanatory and convey only one distinct impression to the reader. In fact, this is not the case.
No it's not. But we don't usually say so quite so explicitly, as often as I'd have liked to.
@5:23 PM
Incidentally, the Concha y Toro Chilean Cabernet/Merlot is nice for a cheap swill. Peppery with some blackberry flavor and good body, but a little weak on the finish.
@10:09 AM
It seems we have a problem with prairie dogs in Worland. Along with all the other critters, they're probably under a lot of stress due to the drought and they're moving into town. This causes the neighbors to complain. They are rats and carry some lovely diseases, including plague. Then the exterminators come to really give them something to complain about. It seems their method of extermination is to flood the holes with propane gas, give it some time to reach the optimum fuel/air mix, and then drop in a match. I imagine if the explosion doesn't kill them it would burn all the oxygen from the air. The neighbors complain about the noise. And it makes me wonder if the folks clearing all those caves in Afghanistan know about this..
@6:54 AM
Via Bill Quick, an interesting piece in the NY Post on the end game in Afghanistan. As much as I'd like to agree and like to see the al Qaeda exterminated, there's a problem with this scenario.
John Ringo equates the al Qaeda with North Vietnamese troops, when it might be more apt to equate them with the Viet Cong. The al Qaeda aren't uniformed troops. They won't necessarily quit and go home when Mullah Whooziz says so. Just like the Viet Cong, it will be very hard to identify them unless they can be caught with weapons in hand, and it will be damn difficult to find every cache of weapons in those mountains. Our friends the Brits have had a similar experience with the IRA. A fresh batch of lunatics is apparently not difficult to find and you don't need a lot of suicide bombers to pose a problem. Nor will stopping one source of weapons stop guerrillas for long - gasoline and a match are weapons. We're a long way from declaring a quagmire, but Afghanistan could become one if we don't find a better exit strategy than "they're all dead, we can go." We could be a long time at that job.
@6:37 AM
Early morning is the best time to study turkey hunting lore. As one old guy said on a calling instruction tape, "Turkey hunting isn't a sport, it's not an addiction, it's a disease. It can't be cured. It can barely be controlled.
There is a lot of thought involved. First, where to go? I've got 1:100,000 scale maps showing the ownership of all of northeastern Wyoming. I'm eyeing an area of about 250 square miles of Forest Service and BLM land with various degrees of accessibility. One area has a paved road running though it. I think I can count on that area being pretty well hunted on the weekends because of its accessibility. Other areas are more difficult access and require greater navigation skill to find. If an area is well off the nearest road in terrain that's difficult to hunt, it's a good bet the turkeys will take refuge there if there's much hunting pressure. At least difficult terrain stops the folks who hunt from a quad-runner.
For the areas I select I'll also produce a set of 1:24,000 scale maps that show the topography clearly enough to navigate through the area and avoid trespassing or becoming lost. I suppose this would be a lot easier if I'd spring for a GPS receiver, but I've always wondered what happens when you rely on GPS to find your way home - and the batteries go out. I'll stick to the old map and compass, thanks. But a GPS would be handy nonetheless. I'm relatively familiar with the area, I've worked and played in the Black Hills all my life, but I like to see some new country, so I intentionally look for areas I haven't been, as well as scoping out all the areas I've known to hold turkeys.
All that's before I even start thinking about what gear to take. A wonderful way to beat the cabin fever.
@6:00 AM
Thursday, March 28, 2002- - -
Cabin fever is setting in bad. I must finish these damnable reports and get outside soon. Too many hours in front of the computer spent for work and not enough time left for play is making me a dull boy.
@9:39 AM
Bill Quick says the blog bubble will burst: "Tens of thousands of folks are getting a charge out of creating and maintaining blogs, with absolutely no financial rewards - except for a handful of bloggers so tiny their numbers are statistically meaningless noise. The charge is enough for now, but it won't last, and the blogosphere, currently in full expansion, will shrink like a popped balloon in another year or so, as hundreds of thousands of blogs go dark and dead.
"The problem is simple: it requires too much work and talent to maintain a good blog, work and talent that brings in nothing tangible for the creator. "
As neither work nor talent go into this blog I should be safe for now. Although perhaps I should bring in some porn just to liven things up..
@9:25 AM
It looks like Anton Sherwood may have found the job of his [bad] dreams, complete with evil HR director and pointy-haired boss no doubt.
@9:25 AM
For all the fellow winos, I've been enjoying Corbett Canyon's California Cabernet Sauvignon. A nice long finish is its best characteristic.
@9:24 AM
Wednesday, March 27, 2002- - -
Wake up, Moonshine; the sixties are over! Between Megan McArdle and Stephen Green, there's not a lot left to be said this evening. No particular post, just a double roll. Go read them.
@6:42 PM
Blue glowing moon crystals from the nether regions of the emailbag:
If you are a time traveler or alien disguised as human and or have
the technology to travel physically through time I need your help!
My life has been severely tampered with and cursed!!
I have suffered tremendously and am now dying!
I need to be able to:
Travel back in time.
Rewind my life including my age back to 4.
I am in very great danger and need this immediately!
I need as close to temporal reversion as possible, as safely as possible.
To be able to rewind the hands of time in such a way that the universe of
now will cease to exist.
I know that there are some very powerful people out there with alien or
government equipment capable of doing just that.
I am aware of two types of time travel one in physical form and the other
in energy form where a snapshot of your brain is taken using either the
dimensional warp or an electronic device and then sends your consciousness
back through time to part with your younger self. Please explain
how safe and what your method involves.
I have a time machine now, but it has limited abilities and is useless
without a vortex.
If you can provide information on how to create vortex generator or
where I can get some of the blue glowing moon crystals this would also
be helpful. I am however concerned with the high level of radiation these
crystals give off, if you could provide a shielding or other crystals
which give off a north polarized vortex field just as strong or strong
enough to make a watch stop this would be great.
Only if you have this technology and can help me exactly as mentioned
please send me a (SEPARATE) email to: ..
Please do not reply if your an evil alien!
Thanks
If you have a spare vortex lying around, or some blue glowing moon crystals, let me know and I'll pass the info along.. But don't bother replying if you're an evil alien or your method isn't proven safe and effective. OK?
@9:05 AM
Let me get this straight. According to Deirdre Davidson, writing for the Legal Times, forty former and current government employees are facing possible contempt charges in Cobell v. Norton, ".. the contentious case over the government's handling of Native American trust funds."
Davidson quotes Dennis Gingold, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs: "If they hadn't destroyed documents or violated the law, they wouldn't have anything to worry about, .. There isn't a single person given blanket immunity to violate the law. Government officials are public servants. They have a duty to follow the law."
In an attempt to gain control of the situation, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth is considering personal fines for Norton and Assistant Secretary Neal McCaleb. He has also been asked to consider jail time for the top officials. The judge has reasoned that there's no point in imposing fines if the government is going to pick up the tab.
Judge Lamberth believes he's been mislead by former TAAMS project manager Dom Nessi and others, who "knew" that the newly instituted Trust Asset and Accounting Management System (TAAMS) wouldn't work, but allowed him to rule to institute the system regardless. "They let me rule in ignorance," Judge Lamberth charged. Three months later he says he discovered that the system was becoming an entirely different monster: "I knew TAAMS was never going to work the way they told me," Lamberth said.
"That's when I knew I had been duped," he said. "That's when I knew this case was going to go on forever."
Now according to Davidson, Rep. Norman Dicks (D-Wash.), suggested at a House hearing March 14 that the government pay the costs for any government employee working on the trust, effectively neutralizing any threat Judge Lamberth could make short of jail time. The judge may be right. At this rate Cobell v. Norton could go on forever.
@7:48 AM
Tuesday, March 26, 2002- - -
Will wonders never cease. I was actually able to conduct business with the Department of the Interior over the internet yesterday. For the first time since December 7th. It's such a relief to be back to normal, that it's easy to forget that it was business as usual that prompted the Cobell v. Norton class-action lawsuit that eventually shut down the DOI's internet systems in early December.
I've been working on a lengthy piece outlining the current state of affairs, but it's obvious that I can't do it justice in a couple of hours this morning. Suffice it to say that when all is said and done there's going to be a lot more said than done in this situation.
Through this internet shutdown the DOI has successfully demonstrated that they could make things a lot worse if they were so inclined. Over five years of legal wrangling and there's still no adequate accounting system in place. The lawsuit that set out to demand reform of the system is seen by the DOI as ".. hampering their ability to fix the trust and is taking a toll on the work force. Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles recently told Congress that some employees have refused to work on the trust anymore -- and that those still working on the case have taken out insurance policies to protect against potential judicial sanctions. Yes, it's all the Indians' fault for suing, don't you see?
@8:03 AM
Monday, March 25, 2002- - -
Gee guys, how could you have missed Harry Butt Weasel Browne? The Weasel's recent WorldNetDaily article: This just in: Bin Laden wins Afghan war, should be good for a nomination to the Academy of Drivelling Idiots.
Says the Weasel: The root fallacy in the War on Terrorism is the idea that we have no choice but to fight people who won't rest until they destroy us.
I rest my case.
Update: Odd, the link to Samizdata doesn't appear to be working at present. You can find them in my favorites though.
@6:55 AM
The ranks of the professionally offended are well represented by Shelter Inc., who found reason to complain about a Hardee's restaurant chain placemat promoting their new "Six Dollar Burger for $3.95." The placemat lists 38 suggestions for how customers might spend the $2 they save by buying the Hardee's sandwich instead of a more expensive one. The sixth suggestion is, "Make a homeless person really happy." It follows the fifth item on the list, "Replace your shoelaces."
"Is this to say that you can make a homeless person really happy for the same price as it takes to replace your shoelaces?" people associated with Shelter Inc. wrote in a letter to the paper. "We insist that this placemat be immediately rescinded and a formal apology be issued."
@6:34 AM
So A Beautiful Mind won a bunch of awards. It sounds like they didn't dare ignore it.
@6:34 AM
Nick Gillespie at Reason Online wonders whether Randy Cohen, who writes the "Ethicist" column for The New York Times Magazine, is willfully mistaken or simply delusional.
@6:33 AM
Another sunrise, another sunset, more dreams turn into ashes.
Good one, Suman.
@6:32 AM
I'm doing some behind the scenes renovations on the blog this morning, so if something in my Favorites list, or links elsewhere throughout this site are rickety, please let me know.
@6:32 AM
Saturday, March 23, 2002- - -
Looks like I'm not the only one with cabin fever. Suman Palit is going fishing.
@8:51 AM
Here's one good reason to support a World Tax: Andrew Hofer says he'll buy some guns and move out west if the idea gets traction.
@8:45 AM
Looks like the InstaPundit is out playing golf with his clone this morning..
@8:15 AM
Some days nothing in the news particularly trips my trigger and then there are days like today.
I loved this article. The guy should argue that by operating a neighborhood strip club he's saving the neighbors from driving drunk on their way back from the bad side of town.
One of my occasional clients is dismissing Arthur Andersen.
The obvious answer to this sort of thing is to whack idiots who leave guns lying around where 3-year-olds can get their hands on them, and those who leave 3-year-olds unsupervised in any event. Unfortunately, what we'll probably see is a push to outlaw .25 caliber handguns.
It's doubly cynical of me, but I should point out that according to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, 'unintentional injuries' was the leading cause of death for children aged 1-4 in the United States during 1999. A total of 1898 children aged 1-4, of both sexes and all races, died from unintentional injuries of all kinds during that year. Of these, 564 deaths were motor vehicle related, 490 were from drowning, and 12 were firearm related. All of these deaths are surely tragic, most of them could have been prevented, but we only hear about the last 12.
@8:09 AM
The low cost of living is one of the advantages of Wyoming. One can live fairly well here on the proceeds from a modest clientele. Perhaps the low cost of living is what makes the area attractive for aspiring artists as well. Or maybe it's something in the water. But there are an amazing number of good, if sometimes undiscovered artists in all media who live here at least part of the year. Sculptors and painters, crafters of furniture and firearms, and screeds on freedom. Musicians and entertainers of all sorts who rely on an audience are less common, but frequently hide out here when they're not on the road.
Maybe it is the water.
@8:08 AM
Friday, March 22, 2002- - -
A friend of mine has a somewhat unusual hobby. He's a farmer by day, sugar beets, barley, silage and feed corn, and Sunday afternoons he's a team roper. The gentleman's rodeo sport. Riding rough stock is for the teenagers - baby boomers don't bounce well any more. But team roping is a finesse game: two men rope a steer, one on the head to hold the animal and a 'heeler' who ropes a hind foot to throw the critter. This is a more necessary skill than one might think: How else would you vaccinate a cranky old range cow? It's also a sport.
They practice in an arena south of town, Sunday afternoons. It's not a cheap sport, you bring your own steer. Not to mention your horse and tack. Eventually the steer will learn that it doesn't like to be tripped and laid on its side. It starts to dodge the ropes. That takes all the fun out of it and you need a replacement steer. The one who's wised up gets fattened up, leading to the obvious conclusion: Sometimes it doesn't pay to get too smart.
@8:18 AM
I've got to start doing a little map reconnaissance for the turkey trip. I'd hoped to draw here in the Bighorn Basin, where I know the landowners and the lay of the land, but such was not to be. Fortunately, this year they've opened up most all of the Powder River Basin for general licenses, meaning you can buy a license over the counter at the hardware store rather than entering a lottery for a limited number of licenses.
This suggests that the turkey population is becoming large enough that it can sustain a considerable number of hunters. Of course, if the hunters are all as successful as I usually am the turkeys are pretty safe. There's also huge tracts of land that are inaccessible to the public, either due to terrain, to the Forest Service road closures, or to private landowners who don't allow access, so there are many de facto refuges for the critters.
Turkeys are interesting. A hen turkey lays a bunch of eggs, one a day pretty regularly just like a chicken, for over two months. I've heard of up to 75 eggs in a single nest. After an incubation period the eggs begin to hatch, also about one per day. At the right time of year you can walk through the woods and come on hatchlings at all stages of development, from peepers to near-adults fledging out. And all the coyotes, foxes, bobcats, and other predators are lying around with distended stomachs.
Some folks think turkeys are wily, smart critters, but they are just birds. There's not enough room in that cranium for much thinking apparatus. But of every 100 turkey eggs that hatch, only three or four make it to adulthood. The ones that survive are the ones that put their heads down and run at the first hint of danger and don't stop running until they're in the next county. They're not smart, they're paranoid.
@8:17 AM
An old friend of my sister's who's living in Kaycee found this. As usual with these things when they start circulating on the internet there's no attribution, but it's a variation on an old theme and it was to awful to resist:
Two attorneys boarded a flight out of Seattle, one sat in the window seat, the other sat in the middle seat. Just before takeoff, a physician got on and took the aisle seat next to the two attorneys. The physician kicked off his shoes, wiggled his toes and was settling in when the attorney in the window seat said, "I think I'll get up and get a Coke." "No problem," said the physician, "I'll get it for you." While he was gone, one of the attorneys picked up the physician's shoe and spat in it. When the physician returned with the Coke, the other attorney said, "That looks good, I think I'll have one too." Again, the physician obligingly went to fetch it and while he was gone, the other attorney picked up the other shoe and spat in it. The physician returned and they all sat back and enjoyed the flight.
As the plane was landing, the physician slipped his feet into his shoes and knew immediately what had happened. "How long must this go on?" he asked. "This fighting between our professions? This hatred? This animosity? This spitting in shoes and peeing in Cokes?"
@6:06 AM
I got another 1.5 Mb antivirus download from Norton this morning. Actually it looks like most of it is an online registration of some sort. They'll want money of course and they do need it to keep churning out those virus definitions.
@6:05 AM
It's springtime in the Rockies!
I've finished the spring shearing and I'm pleased to report that the same good-looking young guy appeared from under the mass of facial foliage. I'm always a little afraid that I'll shave off my beard and find my father under there, but not this year.
I may have been a bit premature, as it's about 20°F outside and the weather channel is predicting snow and cold with high winds through the weekend. Given my usual luck we're sure to have a major spring blizzard now that I've been shorn. However, if I really thought it would tempt the weather gods to dump snow or rain on us I'd shave my head to boot, because we desperately need the moisture.
Update: Yes, I am this far behind in my blogging. I wrote this yesterday about this time Dreadfully busy right now, with 16-hour days in front of this infernal contraption. Makes me want to run away and become a hunter-gatherer. But the season doesn't start until April 1st.
@6:01 AM
Incidentally, I notice that FoxNews.com's Wednesday Guest Blogger feature is trolling for Guest Bloggers:
Editor's Note: Wednesdays is Guest Blogger Day at Fox Web Logs, whereby Foxnews.com expands upon its effort to provide a forum for the aspiring pundits of cyberspace. If you keep a great log, send us an email with the URL and some samples of your best work. (Only submissions with "Guest Blog" in the subject line will be considered.)
Cool. Give 'em a shot. I'll have to do some good work first, though. That is, of course, work.
@6:00 AM
I still haven't heard back from GoStats. This is an Internet World, dammit. Where's my instant gratification?
It's probably my fault, I guess I'll try again. Hmm. Perhaps I should have read the fine print more carefully. There's more information required to sign up than is indicated by the asterisk-marked 'required' fields. Hopefully it will take this time, before I get cold feet.
@5:59 AM
Thursday, March 21, 2002- - -
"Sane Gun Bill in Sight"
An interesting editorial in today's Denver Post heralds the possibility that a modified 'shall issue' concealed weapons licensing law will pass in this session at the Colorado legislature.
Don't get me wrong. In matters of public policy I'm pretty much an incrementalist. I think we make more progress when we take small steps than when we demand great leaps. To many, passing a 'shall issue' CCW is a small step in the right direction. However, I disagree with the whole concept of licensing constitutional rights. When it’s licensed by the state it’s not an unalienable right, it’s a privilege granted by the state. That is no small step. That's hanging ten off the edge of the abyss.
Today's DP editorial illustrates some of the problems with licensing rights:
Senate President Stan Matsunaka, D-Loveland, and House Speaker Doug Dean now seem close to a compromise that makes sense to us: Law enforcement will be able to deny permits if there's documentable proof of instability under a so-called "naked man" provision. That would apply to people who have done weird things but avoided being charged with crimes.
Dean says he'll support that provision if there's a way to appeal denials.
Who defines 'weird?' Is blogging weird? What if you just look weird? What if the denial appeal process doesn't make it into the law? The People's Republic of Colorado is flirting with the concept of denying someone their constitutional rights although they've been charged with no crime, much less convicted. And potentially denying them the right of appeal. That is a frightening power to hand to a bunch of bureaucrats.
Some might argue, as does the DP, that the proposed CCW legislation is an improvement on the current situation. They may be right:
We have long supported a uniform concealed-carry law because some sheriffs pass permits out like candy, while in other jurisdictions like Denver, no ordinary citizen - even one in grave peril - can get one.
Some folks feel that licensing one's rights from the State is preferable to having no rights at all. This is understandable. But where does this lead?
@7:22 AM
I hesitate to blog on this for reasons that will become clear, but he who hesitates is a weenie. Via the InstaPundit, Andrea Harris hammers Harry Butt Weasel Browne for his recent WorldNetDaily article: This just in: Bin Laden wins Afghan war.
My problem with Butt Weasel Browne has been that he's discovered he can make a good living being a perpetual political candidate. Raise money. Pocket money. No problem. It's bad enough that some of that money must be spent to raise more. It would be a horrible waste to spend more than a token amount actually running a legitimate campaign. He's going to lose anyway, right?
Of course, when the Butt Weasel does make an appearance it's calculated to create the maximum controversy, as his WorldNetDaily article surely has. I suppose that's the 'no such thing as bad publicity' concept in action. And free publicity is the best kind. In writing this, I'm aware that I'm doing my little bit to keep the Weasel in business. But good god folks, can anybody take him seriously after he's written this?
The root fallacy in the War on Terrorism is the idea that we have no choice but to fight people who won't rest until they destroy us.
@7:20 AM
I think it was Kathy Kinsley whom I first noticed distinguishing between those 'on their own' and 'still on BlogSpot.' Bill Quick explained his reasoning for the distinction. It makes a lot of sense.
But I still feel so ghettoized.
@7:20 AM
Wednesday, March 20, 2002- - -
"Archaeology is the imaginative recapture of the past within the hard boundaries of the evidence, the steering between the Scylla of fantasy and the Charybdis of unrelieved fact .." Gordon Willey An Introduction to American Archaeology
Of course, some days you don't so much steer as ping around like a pinball. In the literature, it's truly amazing how a fact most unrelieved can morph into fantasy in the retelling.
I don't think I was nearly as aware of this phenomenon before I became a blogger. Now I've become acutely aware of how difficult it is to give an accurate brief synopsis of someone else's ideas. Many times I've done the 'link, summary, comment' routine only to go back and reread the original article and realize that I hadn't captured its essence and thus, that my comment had in some fashion missed the mark. Usually a little tweaking will fix the problem [I hope. Only you can judge.], but I've occasionally dumped the whole thing rather than post on something I simply didn't have a handle on.
Thanks to this newfound awareness I've become considerably more skeptical of what other writers say that someone else has said. Of course, this makes me even more glad for the blog format that allows one to effortlessly read the original author. While blogging may yet be proven a passing fad, at the least the on-going adoption of links in online publications should bring a more measured and consciously honest discourse to the mainstream media. In some cases, that in itself is revolutionary.
@9:26 PM
How about that. Cathy Young's Reason Online take down of Nicholas Kristof's guns and terrorism article, which I linked yesterday, has been picked up by the Boston Globe of all places. (Via the InstaPundit.)
That just gladdens the cockles of my heart. Perhaps things are changing.
Update: I've read the Boston Globe article and it looks like they printed it straight up as it appeared in Reason Online. The Globe article also notes that Ms. Young is a regular contributor to the Globe. How interesting.
@12:12 PM
Yes! This is an area of great promise for the developing internet. To provide an education beyond that offered by our education establishment. Or despite it as the case may be.
@12:12 PM
I see that Mrs. Sese-Seko is getting desperate. Would someone please take her $30 Million so she'll quit spamming me? Or at least get a more original scam going?
@12:10 PM
Oh Oh. Must have been something I said. I see I've been summarily purged from the up-front favorites at Samizdata. I'd have thought they'd put me in their "Havens of fluorescent idiocy" category from the start, so I guess I shouldn't complain.
Actually, I suspect that their favorites list was becoming terribly unwieldy, so I'll forgive them - someday.
@12:09 PM
Today's Christian Science Monitor has a good outline of the Cobell v. Norton Indian Trust case, with a brief bio of Elouise Cobell.
Have you ever wondered what the IRS would do to you if your accounting was on par with that of the Department of the Interior? What if you just refused to keep records on Millions of dollars in income? They'd be on you like spots on an Appaloosa.
Now consider this: The DOI manages the mineral estate of enormous tracts of land out here in the 'empty quarter.' Only a small portion of those holdings are held in trust for the Indianz and the proceeds from the Indian Trusts supposedly amount to roughly $½ Billion per year. The vast majority of the mineral estate is held in trust for all of us. With that much cash flying around and DOI accounting procedures being what they are, the potential for corruption is clearly enormous.
Why do you suppose that the DOI is so very reluctant to provide an accounting?
Where does the money go?
@6:34 AM
Sylvia Machamer weighs in on the Fightin' Whities in a letter to the Denver Post. Says she: "Even in California, we know of Eaton High's offensive mascot. What a great idea the American-Indian students at the University of Northern Colorado had. I am so proud of those young men."
Even in California.. I think that pretty well sums it up.
Quick Sylvia: Where is Eaton? What's their major industry? Ok, you can look at a map..
@5:56 AM
The Denver Post Doofus of the Month Award goes to the Hurst, Texas, public schools for expelling a 16-year-old honor student after a bread knife was found in the back of his pickup truck. The knife apparently fell from a box of household goods that had belonged to his grandmother, when he hauled it to Goodwill. "This is a serious offense," a school official told the boy.
Another good deed well punished by the morons at Zero Tolerance, Inc.
@5:38 AM
Tuesday, March 19, 2002- - -
Anthony Woodlief asks why bathroom doors are exempt from the 'open outward' fire codes. This may be the last triumph of common sense over bureaucracy - when was the last time you were in a hurry to get out of the bathroom?
@9:52 PM
This is my rifle. This is my gun. This is funny and probably too close to truth. Via just about everybody, but I finally got around to reading it.
@9:51 PM
Via Sand in the Gears comes a pointed quote from Frederic Bastiat's book, The Law. "It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder .. it erases from everyone's conscience the distinction between justice and injustice."
There's got to be a better way than these class action suits where the plaintiffs get discount coupons and their attorneys pocket millions. Makes you wonder whose interests were being represented..
@9:50 PM
Hmm. I never did hear back from the folks at Bravenet when I signed up for their hit counter. I'd thought their site was behaving oddly. I guess I'll give it another try - if only I could get a connection to my ISP..
Update: Well, dummy, that's because you signed up for GoStats. But you haven't heard from them either. (The mouse in your pocket)
@9:49 PM
Excellent! Looks like Sgt. Schultz is an armored cavalryman. Can't have a real party without the heavy metal.
@9:49 PM
Thanks to Bill Quick I've discovered Anthony Woodlief's Sand in the Gears. It is indeed laugh-out-loud funny with turns of a more biting wit.
Woodlief takes a whack at Sovietski.com. Absolutely right. Don't buy anything from those filthy Russian capitalists. Especially their cheap, simple, but well-made amber jewelry. They should be punished forever for their government's misdeeds and their bad taste in merchandise.
@9:47 PM
One more time
Marc Herold Afghan casualties
Herold Afghan casualties study
Afghanistan civilian casualties
Herold collateral damage
Marc Herold Afghanistan study
Afghan casualty figures
Marc Herold Afghan casualty figures
dead Afghanis
dead Afghans
Herold Afghan WTC casualties
Herold study Afghan casualties
Herold Afghan casualties study
Afghan civilian casualties
Afghan collateral damage
Herold collateral damage
Marc Herold Afghanistan study
@9:46 PM
I'm honored! I've just received a very special email:
I AM MRS. SESE-SEKO WIDOW OF LATE PRESIDENT MOBUTU SESE-SEKO OF ZAIRE? NOW KNOWN AS DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO (DRC). I AM MOVED TO WRITE YOU THIS LETTER, THIS WAS IN CONFIDENCE CONSIDERING MY PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCE AND SITUATION.
Her situation? Well, she's got $30 million bucks she needs to put in my bank account, if only I'll give her the account number. Too bad I can't remember it right off..
@6:44 PM
Cathy Young's take down of Nicholas Kristof's guns and terrorism article is now available at Reason Online.
@6:12 PM
Jacob Sullum writes Editor's Links today at Reason and has some interesting news: The drug warriors have discovered the internet.
The [National Drug Intelligence Center] concedes that actual drug dealing is exceedingly rare online, so the Threat consists mainly of inconvenient facts and dissenting speech. Fortunately, the NDIC has discovered the First Amendment as well as the Internet. In a section on "Challenges Facing Policymakers and Law Enforcement," it explains there is precious little the government can do about people who refuse to join the crusade for a drug-free America, even if they use the National Information Infrastructure to spread their heresies.
Incidentally, notice that Editor's Links has, yes links! Reason is one of the few print media that is beginning to employ links on a regular basis to enhance it's online articles. Of course, you get the best of both worlds if you subscribe to the magazine.
@6:10 PM
I see by the supermarket tabloids that Rosie has come out. I assume this means she saw her shadow?
@6:09 PM
According to Nando Times: At a conference for women entrepreneurs, President Bush has announced that he wants billions of dollars in new tax breaks to spur America's small businesses. This will be in addition to the business tax cuts Bush signed into law earlier this month.
While other elements of the proposal remain vague, Bush has revived a proposal to increase the depreciation and section 179 expense deduction for small businesses from $25,000 to $40,000 per year.
According to the boilerplate in a federal solicitation for bids that I've got here, Section 52.219-01(a)(2) The small business size standard is 500 employees. By that standard I'm a microscopic business, as I've never employed more than five people. A $15,000 increase in the amount of the section 179 expense deduction could be a great help for me but I wonder how much it will help all those 490-employee 'small businesses.'
Update: Notice that throughout the Nando article linked above the 'cost to the government' of these tax cut proposals has been calculated. One might only wish that the cost to the citizens of government actions were taken as seriously.
@9:06 AM
No shit, Sherlock
From the Denver Post: Current law makes it "much easier for the government to seize property than to convict you of a crime," said [Colorado Republican State Rep. Shawn] Mitchell, a Broomfield lawmaker. "I have the firm belief it's a dangerous power subject to abuse, and it needs to be restrained." ..
Cash, cars, boats, firearms - even a hot tub - are being confiscated from citizens before they're ever charged with a crime.
And few people know where the money or property is going because most law enforcement agencies aren't reporting it. Police have used the cash to pay for everything from pizzas to Christmas parties and use the cars for undercover work.
@9:05 AM
Via Indianz.com, it looks like Mr. Roadless had better stick a little closer to the road.
@9:04 AM
Fightin' Whites T-shirts and sweats are now available. Where? CafePress of course. All proceeds go to the Fightin' Whites Scholarship Fund, Inc. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that they actually say 'Fightin' Whites' on them.
According to Indianz.com: "The Fighting Whities will be the subject of a Native America Calling broadcast today at 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time."
Here's more of the story. The effort is raising consciousness across the country, but it seems folks aren't as offended as some might have hoped. Indianz says that if Rush LImbaugh likes it it's becoming passe and pointless.
@9:03 AM
Monday, March 18, 2002- - -
Jeez. I spent the better part of the morning rescuing a bunch of old WordStar text files from an ancient DOS machine. Boilerplate stuff I should have translated and backed up years ago but haven't needed until now. First I used the WordStar Convert utility to translate them to WordPerfect 5.1. Then I used MS Word to translate the WP5 files to MS Word format. Then I can use MS Publisher to translate them to Publisher files. What a pain. But the result is fairly clean and it beats retyping 150 pages of stuff.
I've spent the afternoon summarizing and updating all this old info and it gives me a good leg up on the next installment of The Big Project. I can see this will occupy a good deal of my time and concentration for the next couple of weeks, though this is much more straightforward than the last little job.
I'm dealing with the Bureau of Land Management on this job again and it appears that they're again, or still incommunicado. I received an email from the Wyoming State Office March 6th, and nothing in or out since.
@6:06 PM
Megan McArdle recently wrote about grade inflation and grade 'compression' at the university level. Here's a little scandal that underlines another side of the problem - out and out grade fraud.
But what would you expect? Major sport college athletes are a big investment. Couldn't have them become academically ineligible. I have friends who teach at various universities and I've been astonished at the stories they've told. Serious pressure can be brought to bear on any academic who's grading threatens the athletic department, frequently the university's biggest cash cow.
@6:03 PM
Well there's the problem, the economic "Recovery remains reclusive." No that's not a typo. At least not on my part.
@6:03 PM
The Denver Post has an article today on Dennis Gingold, plantiff's attorney in Cobell V. Norton. One government lawyer calls him 'The Terrorist.' Not surprising considering he's ".. forced the Justice Department to send in a replacement team of lawyers after he questioned the ethics of the first team." I bet they loved that.
His explanation for the government's decision to fight the case is backed in part by the testimony of a Treasury official, who said government officials long have viewed the trust funds as a "government slush fund" that could be used to lower the national debt.
@9:09 AM
More bad science at the EPA. What a surprise. This time it's a sample size of one and they diddled the test to boot.
@9:09 AM
We seem to have a lot of illness going around today and I see I'm not the only one who suspects it's not all due to bad tunafish.
423 DUI arrests in Colorado over the St. Pat's weekend last year and shaping up about the same this year. Looks like a lot of people believe in the luck of the Irish.
@9:09 AM
After my 'fix it' day yesterday it is gratifying in a 'misery loves company' sort of way to see that Evan Williams has problems with Outlook Express.
@9:08 AM
Evan Williams has a note about time stamps on blog posts that's true here as well. I often save up a few posts and then paste them up all at once. You might also note from the link that Ev doesn't host himself on BlogSpot..
@9:08 AM
Andrew Sullivan has an article on Bush II today that's well worth the read. Bush and I sound a lot alike in the goofy jokester department, although I'd have gone for the sushi. I've always been pretty slow-spoken. I think about what I say, I don't just repeat the sound bites I've been fed. But this leads some folks to assume that I'm not very bright. I learned long ago that being 'misunderestimated' can confer a certain advantage and I wonder if Bush II hasn't cultivated this same tactic to a degree I can only dream of.
During the presidential campaign I wondered why it was that a Harvard MBA was being billed as a dummy while the journalism major and divinity school/law school dropout was Mr. Science Guy. I wrote it off as wishful thinking and 'tell a Big Lie' tactics by fellow journalism majors at the time and still do. If Sullivan is any indication, Bush II won't be getting another bye in the brains department for the next election.
@7:23 AM
Ok, everyone who ate their corned beef and cabbage yesterday, raise your hands. Not bad as far as ethnic 'soul food' goes. My wife says 'this is to remind us that we can do much better now.' Of course, it's been on sale for the last couple weeks, but at the regular price it's right up there with New York strip, so I'm not so sure we can do much better.
@7:22 AM
Sunday, March 17, 2002- - -
The Mythical honest man has been found! The DailyPundit, Bill Quick, lists the DailyPundit among his favorite blogs.
@9:17 PM
Via Bill Quick comes this, from a Time.com article: At a recent dinner for Democratic fund raisers in Manhattan, [Al] Gore ripped into Bush's handling of the presidency. The President's philosophy is "speak loudly and carry a small stick," he said.
If that was the 'small stick,' Saddam ought to be very, very afraid.
@8:31 PM
This has been a most productive day. First I learned about "smart quotes" - although I still don't know what a smart quote is or why anyone would want one, at least I now know how to get rid of them. And now Anton Sherwood has told me how to beat the blasted disappearing archive number problem that's been plaguing me since day one. Just add a ?/ as I've done in that last link.
One thing I've learned from all this—the interconnectivity of the internet isn't quite seamless. My blog looks just fine to me, the links work and the quotation marks look like quotation marks. Apparently this isn't the case for some of the readers, however. And it's bloody impossible to fix a problem you can't see or recreate. Especially if you don't know you have a problem.
My original goal for today was to set up a hit counter. I'd been reluctant to do so. I don't know whether I'm more afraid to find out that no one reads this drivel, or that everyone reads it. But I've signed up for a hit counter through Bravenet, I think..
If my signup with Bravenet works I'll have learned three new tricks in one day. Not bad for an old 'yote.
Now I'll probably find out that my "fixes" have caused a whole slew of new problems somewhere else. Computers. Gotta love 'em. But why is it that we seem to love the things that cause us the most aggravation?
Update: Drat! I notice that getting rid of smart quotes doesn't do a thing for the "smart hyphens" or whatever is causing that little black box some of you are probably seeing right after "One thing I've learned from all this.. Tsk. If you're expecting perfection you'll have to look elsewhere. But please do let me know if you see any more problems!
Many many thanks to those who've emailed with comments and suggestions.
Update Dux: Ah! I get rid of the smart hyphens the same way I got rid of smart quotes. Of course. Now I need to know why I would want a hyphen smarter than I am..
@7:19 PM
Ask and you shall receive!
Reader Matt Harris writes: "This may seem like a simple question, but if Publisher is giving you such a hard time with smart quotes, why not turn them off? I checked the help files for MS Publisher 2000 for "smart quotes" and turning them off is fairly simple."
Cool. I've just tried it, let's see if it works..
It works!! Outstanding! Thanks, Matt Harris!
This morning I'd never heard of a smart quote. I guess you can teach an old dog the occasional trick.
@6:03 PM
Sigh. As you can see in the post below, I have enough trouble with the Queen’s English, without fighting with computerese. For the time being I’ll try to eschew quotation marks wherever possible, and fix those I must use. If anyone out there sees any other problems with this blog, other than my shitty attitude, please let me know! Please.
Let me know if you don’t like my attitude too. Although I doubt there’s much I can do about that.
@10:03 AM
Finally, someone tells me!
When I started this blog I had the very devil of a time trying to figure out how to create links. I dutifully typed the HTML code character for character as Steve Den Beste had explained them to me, but they didn’t work. Finally, I did a "View Source" to see exactly what I was sending Blogger and discovered that the quotes characters I was sending to Blogger appeared as little squares in Blogger’s text editor. The only way I’ve found to correct this is to manually retype the quotes in Blogger’s text editor before publishing to BlogSpot.
Almost two months later I’m still doing that. A tiny nuisance, but it works and given my magico-religious approach to computers, I generally don’t mess with what works. Until now. Anton Sherwood informs me that my "smart quotes" don’t look so smart from his point of view:
"I decided not to bother urging you not to use "smart" asymmetric quotation marks in your blog, because it would be mere whining about the incomplete font in which I read the stuff. But
(you knew there had to be a 'but')
Then I found your link to A Boy and His Blog, which is broken because - ta daa! - the tag contains "smart" q rather than dumb ones."
Oops. I forgot to retype the quotes in Blogger. They're fixed now. And apparently, although the non-HTML quotes marks in my text look fine to me, they don’t look so good to some folks. I don’t wish to give up composing in MS Publisher. I’m working in Publisher all day anyway and sticking with a single text editor is easier on my head than switching back and forth. I also desperately need a spell checker. However, I don’t want folks to read my blog and see a bunch of @$#%@ instead of elegantly composed prose. (Or is it semiliterate gibberish? I’m not the one to judge.)
However, MS Publisher does provide a couple of 'Unicode' fonts that appear to me to be pretty much straight ASCII code. I’m composing this post in Unicode to see what happens when I blog it. In the mean time, please don’t be bashful about emailing me if you have any problems reading my blog or anything is coming through garbled on your end. I can’t promise I’ll fix the problem, as I have no clue how to make any of this compatible with Apples, Unix, Linux, or what have you, but if I don’t know about the problem it’s a sure bet it won’t get fixed..
Hmm. Unicode quotes characters still come through as little black boxes in Blogger's editor. I've manually retyped all the quotes in this post, but that is a huge pain. Ah well, I'll keep working at it.
@9:01 AM
Saturday, March 16, 2002- - -
Great minds think [somewhat] alike?
Personally, in times of indecision I always ask ‘What Would Machiavelli Do?’ I’m beginning to suspect similar thought patterns from the Bush II administration.
@11:01 AM
Local Blogger Makes Good!
Outstanding! I see that we have a new ‘semi-pro’ in the ranks. Megan McArdle writes about Netscape’s Folly in Thursday’s Salon.
@11:00 AM
Via Anton Sherwood, I’ve noticed these quasi-libertarians cropping up in letters to the editor at Reason and Liberty (no active website). A frequent argument of this set parallels that espoused by Bill Bennett a couple years back—that the public school teacher’s First Amendment rights ought to trump your right not to have your children proselytized in school by their teachers.
Regardless of the issue, the message seems always the same: “Freedom for me, but not for thee.” I would hope that most folks see this as the perversion of the libertarian ideal that it is.
@10:59 AM
Friday, March 15, 2002- - -
Bill Quick unleashes his trademark caustic wit on Reuters. But I always thought it rhymed with hooters, rooters, as in ‘little pigs.’
Hmm. Yes, although their tactics were reprehensible and despicable, the donkeys did save us from Bob Bork.
Tipper should be committed as a public service.
Yep. Lure all the tourists in so they’ll spend their money. That’s a great way to build your economy. and your kids will be able to get good jobs at those resorts. Making beds, waiting, tables, and cleaning the pool.
Yes, but. Those governments don’t want their people partaking of the fruits of the 21st century. Socialism, communism, reactionary Islam, and tyranny are all defunct strategies in the 21st century. They don’t want to go there.
@8:00 PM
Some hopeful noises are finally being made on the Indian Trust issue
In response to questions posed by lawmakers who expressed skepticism that the broken system could ever be fixed, senior officials said Indian Country probably won't accept an effective termination of the Individual Indian Money (IIM) trust. "I don't personally think that the individual Indian allottees would think that is the right idea," said Deputy [Interior] Secretary J. Steven Griles. ..
Why, of course not. Who would want to be let alone to manage their own affairs?
"But that doesn't mean it isn't the right idea," he quickly added. ..
.. Griles and Swimmer told members of the House Interior Appropriations subcommittee that certain problems could be avoided if Congress stepped in. If the land remained free of local and state taxation, stayed within reservation boundaries and was kept out of non-Indian hands, they said eliminating the IIM trust might work.
"I think there obviously is some value . . . if there were a way to having less than a full trust duty to those properties," said Swimmer.
Made during an oversight hearing on trust reform, yesterday's remarks were the first concrete admission that the Bush administration would accept some sort of dismantling of the individual system. The issue was raised briefly last month by Associate Deputy Secretary Jim Cason, who told the Senate Indian Affairs Committee the idea was rejected in favor of reorganization of trust duties.
Yep. Gonna have to pry their sticky fingers off that money one at a time. But perhaps it can be done.
@6:39 PM
Incidentally, check out the Lalo Alcaraz ‘your visa is denied’ cartoon at Indianz.com. Your tax dollars at work, indeed. Check out the rest of the site too. A very different perspective and concerns with a lot of other issues you won’t hear about every day.
@6:36 PM
Finally someone asked a key question in the Indian Trust case
"The Department of the Interior has not placed a dollar value on the amount of the problems that have come from the mismanagement," [Interior Secretary Gale Norton] said in response to a caller who wanted to know where the money has gone.
Say what? The question: “Where did the money go?” Gets the answer: “We don’t know how much money has been lost.” Sounds like some boot-scootin’ side-stepping going on down in DC. A lot of fiddlin’ too.
Secretary Norton goes on to say that "most" of the payments to Indian beneficiaries have been made. "We've had to make some estimated payments for some types of those transactions because we didn't have the complete computer system going," she said.
Norton made her comments during a half-hour appearance on the C-SPAN program "Washington Journal." She was asked two questions about the Indian trust debacle.
Over a month has gone by. Another month. And still some people are waiting.
Says Elouise Cobell, plaintiff in Cobell v Norton: "I see Native people dying every day because they can't afford health insurance .. one woman I know has seven oil wells on her property, and she gets about $1,000 a year."
Yes, and that’s when she gets it. How would you like to have gone without a check of any sort since early December? This is the only income some of these folks have. $1000 a year. In the heart of the USA.
@6:04 PM
Hey! It hasn't been 12 months yet. Where did that ad come from? Of course, I'd gladly pay $12 a month. This has been very entertaining.
@5:33 PM
Oh baby, I’ll make the earth move for you!
Drop a burrowing bomb this big and it’s going to rattle the dishes 100 miles away.
Frankly, despite accusations of squishiness, given the ordnance we’ve expended already, I think Bush II is probably wise to start preparing people for the fact that we may never find the remains of OBL’s vaporized butt. But he’s got to be dead or we’d have gotten another tape by now.
@4:41 PM
Via His Unholiness, Incorrigible I, aka Stephen Green comes some unsurprising news: Harry Browne [Butt Weasel!] is at it again. Is there anyone left out there that doesn’t realize that this guy is a snake oil salesman of the first order?
Update: But please Stephen, don’t give up on the libertarian ideal. Harry Butt Weasel Browne doesn’t speak for all of us. He’s just a conman who’s hijacked a small part of the Party of Reason.
@3:55 PM
Yeah! The InstaPundit is weakening! ‘Senator Reynolds’ does trip right off the tongue..
Hmmm. I wonder if anyone’s told Tipper about what you hear when you play a CD backward?
@3:22 PM
The latest in PC
In this morning’s Red Star Tribune (no link to article) we have an article about the “Fightin’ Whites,” the UNC Greeley intramural basketball team. They’re now selling ‘Fightin’ Whites’ T-shirts! Cool, I think I’ll order one.
What’s so amusing? Well, here’s the original article, word for word with what the Star Tribune prints, except that somewhere between the original author, the AP, and my print addition, a slight spelling change has taken place. They’re actually the “Fightin’ Whities”! I've got to have one of those shirts.
Update: I notice in the article that they have to check the University guidelines before they can sell the shirts. I'll bet they're required to 'correct' the spelling..
Update II: Now I'm covered with embarrassment. It looks like this was the original article. Although it didn't appear in my google search it was linked at the bottom of the first article I linked, above. The article also states: "The intramural basketball team's official name is "Native Pride." But the team calls itself the "Fightin' Whites" - and is widely known by the more in-your-face "Fightin' Whities" - as a jab at nearby Eaton High School." So there's some question about the 'official' spelling of their unofficial name.
@7:44 AM
Gonzaga thought they got no respect before.. Chortle. Snigger. Guffa.
@6:44 AM
No one ever pleads permanent insanity, do they?
My first post on the Andrea Yates case was probably as incoherent as anything I’ve written, at least from my point of view. I stand by what I said, I think it’s all probably correct, but it was also entirely off the point of what I meant to say.
My original intent in writing the piece was to point out that we can never really get inside someone else’s mind. We can’t know for a fact what was going through Ms. Yates mind when she killed her children. In my humble opinion we shouldn’t care. While I think her behavior provides an operational definition of insanity, I think driving a jetliner into a crowded building is [almost] equally insane. So what?
I wouldn’t argue for the death penalty in either case, but I will argue that for the safety of all the rest of us, anyone who does something like this should be removed from society forever. For this reason, I really don’t believe in the insanity defense. Especially because it’s always ‘temporary’ insanity and often of the sort that’s already been ‘cured.’
I can see a place for an insanity plea in sentencing, as Ms. Yates would appear to belong in a rubber room. But that rubber room should have no exit to the outside world. Not ever.
@6:00 AM
From a can of spray solvent: “WARNING: This product contains a chemical known to the State of California to cause cancer.”
And we all know that the State of California is an authority on the subject.
@4:53 AM
Thursday, March 14, 2002- - -
Who cares who put it up, as long as they come down, that’s not my department ..
Dang! I’ve been so concerned with my computer ‘bombing’ that I almost forgot about the Google bombing!
The pissant pedant in me requires that I point out that although folks are crediting Megan McArdle with the idea, Megan’s post links an earlier post by Ben Sheriff, who appears to have constructed the first google bomb at the instigation of Charles Johnson, and has since been on a one man google bombing mission. None of this is important as long as the bombs keep dropping, so here’s mine.
Marc Herold Afghan casualties
Herold Afghan casualties study
Afghanistan civilian casualties
Herold collateral damage
Marc Herold Afghanistan study
Afghan casualty figures
Marc Herold Afghan casualty figures
dead Afghanis
dead Afghans
Herold Afghan WTC casualties
Herold study Afghan casualties
Herold Afghan casualties study
Afghan civilian casualties
Afghan collateral damage
Herold collateral damage
Marc Herold Afghanistan study
Update: It’s entirely understandable that the history of the event ended with Megan. BlogSpot was being very flaky about the time all this occurred and I got a 404 the first couple times I tried the link to Ben Sheriff.
@2:09 PM
Sgt. Stryker is starting a spin off blog for all ‘the personal shit.’
I’d taken something of this same tack when I set up A Boy and His Blog for all the serious quasi-professional stuff. I’ll still make use of the little humanitarian when I have photos available and can post some of the interesting stuff I do, but I haven’t been over to the ‘Boy’ myself in quite awhile. I should drop the link in my favorites here until there’s something there worth reading.
I’d given thought to creating more blogs to sort the serious from the zany, but I decided that folks who read only the serious stuff would think me one grim sucker while folks who read only the zany would think .. well, probably what you all think anyway. Ah well, I decided to leave well enough alone for now. I can’t decide myself sometimes if I’m being serious and there’s times when I must laugh to keep from crying.
@9:02 AM
Just as I suspected. Glenn Reynolds is off to California and there’s just as much activity on his blog as usual. Did anyone attending that speech yesterday take note of which side the good Professor is parted his hair? The peepul have a right to know..
@8:55 AM
Halleluiah! Blogger recognizes my cookies!
Oops, no it didn’t and still doesn’t. My server had taken a ‘time out’ so the silly computer fixed me up with a previously saved ‘temporary internet file.’ Sure fooled me for a couple minutes, though.
@8:52 AM
I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now .. The Byrds
But Professor, doesn’t a mother killing her own children pretty much define “Insane”?
Rather than a subconscious view of ‘child as chattel,’ there may be a deeper, indeed instinctive reason why fraternal and maternal filicide are viewed differently. Ms. Lithwick touches on it when she says “.. the law treats individuals who burn down other people's houses as criminals and institutionalizes those who burn down their own.”
From a sociobiological perspective, maternal filicide is certainly not a rational behavior in terms of genetic survival and, except in very unusual circumstances, we would consider it highly aberrant behavior for females of any species.
On the other hand, for the male, killing children he knows or suspects are not his offspring can be rationalized as a pro-genetic survival trait—reducing competition for one’s own offspring—thus rational rather than aberrant behavior. In fact, we do see fraternal filicide throughout the animal kingdom, including the remainder of the hominoids, but only very rarely do we see maternal filicide.
It’s pretty much beside the point, but the statistics in the Slate article are as sloppy as any I’ve seen. First, what is the sample size? Given the media hysteria over the Yates case, I suspect it’s exceedingly low. What is the nature of the sample? Do these ‘murder’ statistics include the horribly sad ‘shaking the baby’ deaths that come more from ignorance than malice? None of these numbers mean a thing without this information.
Given this, only a newbie blogger would be forgiven for the link provided in the Slate article: “A 1969 study by Dr. Phillip Resnick, the "father" of maternal filicide .. found that while mothers convicted of murdering their children were hospitalized 68 percent of the time and imprisoned 27 percent of the time, fathers convicted of killing their children were sentenced to prison or executed 72 percent of the time and hospitalized only 14 percent of the time.”
The link doesn’t take you to Resnick’s study supporting the statistics, but rather to a CBS News article on Resnick’s testimony in the Yates case which neither presents nor defends any statistics whatsoever. The link only gives the appearance that Ms. Lithwick is linking her source for the stats. Furthermore, these statistics only show that the courts can be more sympathetic for filicidal mothers than for their male counterparts. Neither they, nor any of the other statistics in the article go to the question of whether Yates is ‘insane’.
Ms. Lithwick asks: “While it may once have been true that women were the sole—and often frustrated—caregivers of small children, mothers now work, yet they don't kill their colleagues; they kill their babies. Why?” This is just silly. If I wanted to be flip I might suggest that Ms. Lithwick has never been around children much. But frankly, I suspect that it’s just a hell of a lot easier to kill an infant or child than it is to kill another adult.
Finally, note that in the CBS News article it does state that: “.. Yates confessed to killing her kids and even prosecutors concede that she was mentally ill back then.”
I’ll leave this with one last thought: No one ever pleads permanent insanity, do they?
@7:41 AM
As everyone who uses Windows 98 and Internet Explorer 5.5 is surely aware, Microsoft has announced this morning [now yesterday] that Internet Explorer 6 is now available for download for users of Windows 98. Frankly, considering the number of problems I’ve been experiencing with the internet in the last few days, and I know I’ve been comparatively lucky, all I need is another batch of bugs. I think I’ll ride with IE 5.5 until I hear some reviews on the new product.
@7:36 AM
Via Steve Den Beste, this is just plain unbelievable:
Huffman Aviation in Venice, Florida, has been notified this week that the Immigration and Naturalization Service has approved applications for student visas for Mohamed Atta, and Marwan Al-Shehhi.
Approved them? OK, I guess they can start their flight training now..
In case anyone could possibly have forgotten, Atta and Al-Shehhi trained at Huffman in July 2000 and were aboard separate flights that struck the towers of the World Trade Center.
This sounds like a disgruntled INS employee trying to make trouble for the agency. If it’s not a disgruntled employee There Had Better Be Big Trouble.
@7:34 AM
That was pretty wild. Perhaps the good Professor was right. Norton Antivirus just downloaded 2.2Mb of updates & definitions. That’s about 10 times what I usually get.
Of course, I may never get to tell you about it, because two hours later (0520) BlogSpot is still down. I hope there’s no connection.
Whoa Nellie! (x 10) I’ve never seen this message before (received at 0520):
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, dev@pyra.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Apache/1.3.19 Server at blogspot.com Port 80
But I didn’t do anything! I also suspect that poor Ev has gotten about 5000 emails already. should I add to the load? Sure, why not..
Before BlogSpot came back up I had to dash to Casper for the day. We didn’t return until late evening. My ISP is generally pretty overloaded in the evening and I avoid blogging during those peak-use hours, so the next several posts above were actually written yesterday.
@7:30 AM
Tuesday, March 12, 2002- - -
Ah, the pseudo mythical Blogger crash. BlogSpot is working fine but Blogger is off in 404 land as of 1440 MST. How will you all get along without me? Ah! Now it's back.
Luckily, I had to see my lawyer and insurance guy anyway. One of those 'what does "the party of the first part agrees to indemnify the party of the second part for any activity of the party of the third part that may later be deemed immoral, illegal, or fattening" mean?' sorts of things.
What’s scary is that I’ve been at this long enough that I’m actually starting to understand what all that stuff means, and worse, why it’s in there.
@5:42 PM
This is interesting. According to Michael Standaert, writing for Reason Online: “Denmark .. appointed Skeptical Environmentalist author Bjørn Lomborg an environmental economic advisor in late February, causing shock in many Green groups there.”
The horror! Appointing someone who can actually fact check their silly asses.
Standaert goes on to say: “Since its formulation, observers have accused the Kyoto protocol of being a paper tiger. Whether that tiger is endangered or extinct will likely depend on the flexibility and strength of the European Union.”
Adios Kyoto.
@5:34 PM
Of course, all talk of appeasement, the ‘we should help them and give them things and start more schools and dig more wells and ..’ mentality, is totally off the mark. It is precisely ‘our things,’ all the trappings of civilization, that these troglodytes abhor. Of course they want these things, but only for the select few. Note that OBL has no problem with video as long as he’s the subject. But no movies for the masses. That would be a sin.
@12:21 PM
The problem here, is that the Euros have always looked on NATO as a sort of ‘my big brother will kick your ass’ alliance. I doubt they ever considered they might be asked to come to the aid of the big brother US, nor are they really being asked to do that now. After all, it really is civilization as we know it that we defend against these terrorist nihilists.
There’s a parallel here to the Moral Hazard phenomenon described by Megan McArdle: They know we won’t abandon their people in need, no matter what crap their aristocracies pull. They have every reason to believe that ‘what goes around comes around’ is invalid in this case. Given that, there is no reason for them to give us more than token assistance. Anything else would not be in their best interest. They’re ‘free riders.’ They know it, they like it that way.
Of course, this same equation holds for our friends in the Anglosphere and it speaks volumes that we have gotten far more than token assistance from them.
@12:06 PM
Steve Den Beste answers a question I’ve been wondering: “Where are the well-written liberal [anti-war] web logs? .. A thoughtful writer cannot make a compelling case against fighting this war; only thoughtless or incompetent or deluded writers are even willing to try.”
I’m not aware of anyone who’s seriously taken the Den Beste Challenge.
I hate war. Friends and the sons of friends are fighting this one and I am horribly afraid for them. But I see no choice. There is no way to appease these nihilists except to capitulate and allow them to annihilate us. You can argue to go live in a cave with them or you can argue to rip them up, root and branch, and till that ground with salt.
If there is a middle ground I certainly don't know where to find it.
@10:23 AM
Incidentally, go check out this photo of the new WTC memorial lights. Via Megan McArdle, it's a better angle than the shot on the print media front pages. And photos always seem to look better on screen than in newsprint.
@9:42 AM
There’s been speculation on this for awhile and I think it’s well founded. Ol’ Osama is one dead string bean.
@9:40 AM
Jackalope ranching may start looking pretty popular if we don’t get some more precipitation this year. It was drier than a popcorn fart last summer, and the summer before. Megan McArdle is right. The DOA won’t let US agriculture be destroyed. Unfortunately, the lion’s share of the subsidies go to .. well, the Lions. The big boys with the clout. The little guy who’s struggling already won’t get nearly enough help to hang on.
Perhaps this is the way it should be—survival of the fittest. It stands to reason that the bigger and more successful and productive a given farm is the more it would hurt the general economy to lose it. But go tell that to the family that’s been scratching out a living on the land for four generations. Of course, if they have been scratching out a living on the land for that long they’ve weathered far worse than this.
If worse does come to worse I might consider buying a jackalope ranch myself. It isn’t a bad investment if you don’t have to make a living from it. They’re not making any more land after all.
@9:37 AM
That's right. I said subdermal burrowing larvae. They will make your skin crawl. And take it from me, the cure is nearly as bad as the affliction.
Am I on a morbid and juvenile roll this morning, or what?
@8:05 AM
EEEEUUUWWW!!
Via Fritz Schranck we have this little item on necrotizing fasciitis in Arizona. The flesh-eating bacteria. A friend had a dog who contracted a lingering form of necrotizing fasciitis. Not to be too graphic, the poor mutt slowly rotted alive. The smell was delightful.
Curious, not to mention a bit alarmed to learn that such things exist, I did a little googling on the topic. Turns out there’s about 1500 different species of bacteria thought to cause the disorder. The most well known lingering form in humans is leprosy. Yuck!!
It's usually contracted through some break in the skin, or through the soft tissues of the nose and throat. But just in case you're not sufficiently crawly yet, here's a particularly nasty way to catch it..
Stay tuned. Tomorrow we'll talk about subdermal burrowing larvae.
Update: I’ve done a bit of fact-checking as it’s been a while since I researched this. As usual, definition is everything and the definition of necrotizing fasciitis varies wildly. It seems that some folks define necrotizing fasciitis fairly narrowly, and refer only to the sort that develops from severe Group A streptococci infection—yep, same critter that causes strep throat. For what it’s worth, the Encarta Encyclopedia says it ‘can be caused by any type of bacteria.’ Don’t you feel safer already?
@6:55 AM
Here’s a sex column with some sex in it. Perhaps there’s some good coming from journalism departments after all?? Go read it and then say ten Whoa Nellies!
@6:23 AM
Speaking of venison chewing, I’ve been suffering too many distractions, like work, to wax poetic about dinner. However, we did have a most delightful round of venison Philly steak sandwiches for lunch yesterday. Alas, it was the last of the venison and many long months to wait for more.
Worse than that, my spring turkey license application came back. So if there’s to be any turkey poking next month it will have to be over on the Black Hills where general licenses are available. However, the feral peacocks are back and as many years as they’ve survived the coyotes they’re about as wiley as a turkey. No season or hunting regulations governing them that I know of—technically I suppose they are ‘livestock at large’ but we’ve tried to find an owner and no one claims them.
And peacock is mighty tasty..
I’d better sharpen a couple broadheads while I read the blogs this morning.
@5:30 AM
Monday, March 11, 2002- - -
My dad wants in on the action. He forwards this one:
A US Air Force C-141 is scheduled to leave Thule Air Base, Greenland at midnight. During the pilot's preflight check he discovers that the latrine holding tank is still full from the last flight.
So, a message is sent to the base, and an airman who was off duty is called out to take care of it. He finally gets to the air base only to find that the latrine pump has been left outdoors and is frozen solid so he must find another one in the hangar, which takes even more time.
He finally arrives at the aircraft and is less than enthusiastic about what he has to do. Nevertheless, he goes about the pumping job deliberately and carefully (and slowly) so as to not risk criticism later.
As he's leaving the plane, the pilot, an Air Force Major, stops him and says, "Son, your attitude and performance has caused this flight to be late, and I'm going to personally see to it that you are not just reprimanded, but punished."
The poor guy says, "Sir, with all due respect, I'm not your son. I'm an Enlisted Airman in the United States Air Force. I've been in Thule, Greenland for eleven months without a furlough, and reindeer are beginning to look pretty good to me. I have one stripe, it's two thirty in the morning, it's twenty degrees below zero and my specialty here is to pump shit from an aircraft. Now just what form of punishment did you have in mind?"
@9:34 PM
UffDa! I finally put the draft review copies of the Big Report in the mail this afternoon. I am a happy camper.
@9:33 PM
I’ve refrained from comment on the steel tariff issue. If there’s anything I know less abut than international trade I don’t know what it would be. But I do find Virginia Postrel’s take on the tariff interesting:
“Now suppose the Russians or the European Union take their complaints about the steel tariffs to the WTO and get a favorable ruling: "Bad America. You are violating your trade treaty obligations." All that ruling means is that these countries can put their own tariffs on U.S. goods—not exactly a form of invasion. But now the Bushies can get rid of the steel tariffs and blame the foreigners and the big, bad WTO. Everybody wins except the steel lobby. “
Could they be that Machiavellian? Count on it. Especially since she should have added the democrats to the losers column in this scenario.
@9:32 PM
Pope Incorrigible I? Whoooooa Nellie! Next thing you know we’ll have lawyers running for political office. Worse things could happen in this case, however.
@9:30 PM
A Jeff Gearino article in today’s Casper Star (no link) says something that always trips my trigger: “Wyoming native Carole Smith said the biggest change she’s noted since Sept. 11 has been a renewed sense of patriotism across the nation and a growing appreciation of government.”
I’ve no doubt that this little social experiment we call the United States of America is, and will remain one of the greatest achievements of all humankind. I love this country and I’m damn glad I live here. However, every time I hear someone whining about how people nowadays just don’t “trust the govmint like they used to” I want to puke.
The very design and structure of our government is due to the fact that our founders did not trust government of any kind. They knew that government is a necessary evil that should be kept on a very short leash. The Constitution and Bill of Rights are that leash.
Folks, every single elected politician in the country has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution. By their subsequent actions you may judge what that oath is usually worth.
"Everyone knows how praiseworthy it is for a ruler to keep his promises, and live uprightly and not by trickery. Nevertheless, experience shows that in our times the rulers who have done great things are those who have set little store by keeping their word, being skillful rather in cunningly deceiving men; they have got the better of those who have relied on being trustworthy."
Machiavelli The Prince
@8:27 AM
Sgt. Stryker fingers a ring-knocker. This would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad.
@8:22 AM
Sunday, March 10, 2002- - -
Oh Oh. Low morale over at Sgt Stryker’s. Says he: “I've been thinking about this website and why I keep at it and whether it's any good or not.”
No Sarge, you’re not going to be the next Hemingway. Neither am I. But if you’ll settle for J.D. McDonald I’d say you were well on your way. A beautifully turned phrase is great but there’s something to be said for authenticity of voice as well.
I very much look forward to your book about this little conflict.
@8:11 AM
I’m experiencing the bizarre disappearing archive #9999999 problem. Now I think I see what Anton meant, it is different than having the archives missing/off-line problem I was having.
I can follow this link and it works fine. Likewise I can follow the link from there over to Anton and it works fine. But even if I try physically cutting the link and pasting it to the address bar I lose the archive number trying to go to Megan’s hooters and wind up with a 404.
The poor ol’ bear has been limping lately. The InstaPundit voices my suspicion that there’s something nefarious going down. I’d wondered if it isn’t a nasty new virus, considering the problems everyone seems to be having. I’ve been updating my virus protections daily of late but haven’t caught anything that I can detect.
@7:14 AM
Anton Sherwood cites Reason saying Get those guns off the street!
I agree. They’ll get all rusty and beat up.
@7:09 AM
I think this is what's called begging the question.
@6:20 AM
A google of “big hooters” just returned about 22,200 hits (Holy cow! Haven’t you guys got anything better to do?) but Megan isn’t in the top 20 yet..
@6:14 AM
Gut-wrenching photo of Stephen Hawking on the cover of this month’s print edition Reason. And an absolutely transcendent picture of him inside. I wouldn’t mind having a poster of that one. Actually, it’s probably the effect created by the combination of the two photos that makes the second so great.
@6:13 AM
The more I struggle with the figures and references and footnotes for this report, the more I appreciate the Blog format. Permalinks work far better than static references and footnotes. Saves the writer a lot of skull sweat and saves the reader the footwork of tracking down the references.
Now if only someone could come up with a word processor that used something like permalinks for figures and references. Unfortunately, the resident expert (Gentleman & Scholar) has retired. Retired in the Travis McGee sense, I hope..
@6:11 AM
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