***Dave Does the Blog

Squandered sympathy

I quoted below a bit of Lileks’ comments on the terrorist attacks in Israel yesterday — 18 dead (plus the two suicide bombers, of course), 100 wounded. What I find…

I quoted below a bit of Lileks’ comments on the terrorist attacks in Israel yesterday — 18 dead (plus the two suicide bombers, of course), 100 wounded.

What I find interesting is that his feelings about it — a barely-restrained fury — not only echo my own, but that I found just the same thing on SDB’s page:

But increasingly I’m finding myself feeling as if the world would be better off if someone went in and shot every damned one of them and piled the lot in an unmarked grave. After reading about yet another Palestinian atrocity, I find myself thinking, “Fuck it. Nuke Ramallah. Then nuke Nablus. And if that doesn’t help, bulldoze Gaza. And once that’s done, put all fifty surviving Palestinians on a freighter, tow it out to sea, and let them become someone else’s problem.”
I know that’s wrong. I know it could never happen, and that it will never happen, and that it should never happen, and I would never actually advocate anything like that. But what I’m finding is that every time I read about a Palestinian being killed by the Israelis, my first emotional reaction is, “Good riddance.” I’ve reached the point where I feel nothing at all when I read about them dying. I have reached the point where I don’t care at all, not even slightly, about their pain and hardship. They have ceased to be persons to me. I’m no longer even interested in hearing their side of the story.

I said interesting. I shoud have said scary.

At least scary to me. And, if there are any sane people among the Palestinians, to them, too.

Reference

I haven’t linked to a Lileks column recently. That’s become sort of passe in the blogosphere — it’s simply assumed that everyone pulls up Lileks’ Bleat column on a daily…

I haven’t linked to a Lileks column recently. That’s become sort of passe in the blogosphere — it’s simply assumed that everyone pulls up Lileks’ Bleat column on a daily basis, and chuckles at the same jokes and marvels at the same turns of phrase.

Another reason is because he writes about multiple subjects in each column. So he might write something uproariously amusing about his two-year-old, Gnat, but it will be sandwiched between a bit about terrorism and a passage about life in Minneapolis, and those are only mostly wonderful, so I don’t want to dilute things so I don’t cite it.

On the other hand, today has two gems out of three, even on those three topics, so I will.

First, on terrorism, in particular the suicide bombings that hit Israel again, yesterday:

Twenty dead I can imagine. I tote up 20 of my friends and relatives, and imagine them gone. Reaction? […] My wife was incandescent when they [got home] – a driver on France Ave. had merged with oblivious velocity, and had my wife not wrenched the car two lanes over the other vehicle would have smacked her car right where Gnat was sitting. The other driver was a young woman yammering on a phone, and I swear if I had the power I’d find out who she was and reprogram her phone so it delivered an electrical shock sufficient to set her hair on fire and blow off her shoes if she used it while driving more than 6 MPH. That’s how I feel about someone whose casual rote stupidity almost cost the life of my daughter.
Towards those who would do that intentionally I can imagine a wide variety of rejoinders. If I turned on the TV and I saw people celebrating the car wreck that killed my daughter, I think I would go mad. I think I would claw my eyes until everything was red. I would want to call down hell on their heads.

On Gnat (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Kitten):

Yes, Little Miss Sweetness and Light. Also Little Miss Capricious Tyrant. Such are the twos; the word NO is her answer to everything, and she’s caught on to the Bugs Bunny Mind Control Trick, too: when I say “No” to her “No,” she doesn’t say “Yes” anymore. She says NO, LOUDER. And we’re dealing with the appearance of new rules, drafted daily, none of which are announced in advance and each of which requires strict adherence. Two-year olds have the soul of a 19th century European bureaucrat. Ritual, routine, capricious application of power, devotion to process. Also naps. Today, for example, I learned that I had to stand on the right side when we walked up the stairs, not the left, because standing on the left would RUIN EVERYTHING in some inscrutable way, and provoke tears and lamentations not heard since the plagues of Egypt.

There’s a bit on life in Minneapolis, too, at the end, but that was only good enough to make me want to go back and reread all his previous comments on the subject, so I won’t quote it here.

So, take up and read, already.

Fellowship I

We finally cracked the plastic on the Fellowship of the Ring DVD set (the fancy one that didn’t include the Argonnath bookends). We ultimately realized that if we waited until…

We finally cracked the plastic on the Fellowship of the Ring DVD set (the fancy one that didn’t include the Argonnath bookends). We ultimately realized that if we waited until we could sit down and watch the whole movie — let alone the commentaries and features — we’d be about as old as Bilbo. So we’re willing to watch it in what dribs and drabs we can.

So, some thoughts from the first disc. Spoilers (from Two Towers, in some cases) below.

Continue reading “Fellowship I”

Days of the Year

It’s time for the grand Changing of the Calendars. I love calendars, and so end up each year getting far more than I actually need. For Margie’s office, a nice…

It’s time for the grand Changing of the Calendars. I love calendars, and so end up each year getting far more than I actually need.

For Margie’s office, a nice Maxfield Parrish one, plus a Zobmondo page-a-day for the amusement of her office-mates.

For the kitchen, a Boynton family calendar, dates down the left, columns for Margie and Katherine and myself across the top. It’s an experiment to see if it helps us better with our planning of stuff.

Two calendars are going up in the basement, home of our gaming sessions — Hellboy and Usagi Yojimbo.

In the office, I have a Colorado Then-and-Now wall calendar — very nice and business-like, and no mildly embarrassing “that’s not nudity, it’s art!” images on it.

Also at the office is the Host of Page-a-Day Calendars, this year featuring:

Dilbert

Foxtrot

Shakespeare quotations

Forgotten English

Dave Barry

New Yorker cartoons

Yes, I am insane. Why do you ask?

Travel planning

The new security regime was in place at airports when we travelled back. The nature of it makes it difficult to generalize, but here was our experience at Ontario Airport,…

The new security regime was in place at airports when we travelled back. The nature of it makes it difficult to generalize, but here was our experience at Ontario Airport, Calif.

Two of the massive scanning systems have been brought in and installed, one on either end of the ticketing lobby. Regardless of whether you check in at the curb or at the counter, bags being checked must still be hauled over to these scanning machines (by the sky cap if you checked in at the curb, by you if you checked in at the counter).

You queue up, an attendant places the bags one at a time on the conveyor, and they are processed.

If the bags come through clear, they are placed on a baggage cart and wheeled off to wherever they get wheeled off to (through the lobby, which seems like a mild security risk).

If there are questions about the bags, they are taken over to little tables — in your presence — where they can be swabbed for explosive residue (similar to the systems that have been used at security gates for some time), and then, if the image warrents it, opened and hand-inspected.

In our case, one bag with some limes in it was opened (the machine made them look like tennis balls — or maybe grenades), and another with four place settings of utensils was opened, too.

The hand inspection of the bags looked to be thorough but non-disruptive. They had no problem closing the bags back up (remarkably so, since, given how Margie and Jim were packing them, I’d have expected opening the bags to have either caused an explosion, or else sucked all the atmosphere in the place into them due to the small black hole they place in each bag to aid fitting stuff in).

The attendant at the bottom of the escalator, leading to the “old” security checkpoint (for passengers) didn’t want to let us up with just luggage tags. Since that’s all the sky caps issue now, the question of what you get by checking in at the curb is one worth considering — though for us, having someone to cart your bags over to the inspection line was not trivial.

We had zip-tied the main compartments of the bags, and the TSA folks re-zip-tied the ones they opened.

Obviously the procedure is different at airports (such as Denver, I believe) where the scanning machines are behind the scenes. More reporting on that next week, when I fly back to California on business.

The rest of the trip was uneventful. Kitten slept through most of the flight, which was nice. We were delayed a bit getting off the plane, as they had some odd trouble getting the Jetway lined up, but it meant our bags were there and ready to go when we got to the carousels.

Thoughts of the Day (Past)

What with the chaos in our lives of late, the arrival of my birthday was a mild surprise to both Margie and me. It wasn’t until mid-morning that she wished…

What with the chaos in our lives of late, the arrival of my birthday was a mild surprise to both Margie and me. It wasn’t until mid-morning that she wished me a Happy Birthday, and I averred that, why, so it was.

According to my contract, I’m supposed to understand Life, the Universe, and Everything now. But I don’t. Damn. You’d at least think, though, that my complexion would clear up.

We actually spent most of the day resting and relaxing and recovering from our stay in Faerie. I cannot question the quality of the food, drink, or fellowship (not to mention child care), but it’s always good to be back home and grounded in reality. I sort of like my reality, most of the time, so being away from it can sometimes be stressful.

Margie fixed me a faboo dinner of lambchops, peas and potatoes, finished off with a slender bottle of dessert Zinfandel. Yum. We watched the first disk of Fellowship of the Ring (having sadly realized that waiting until we could watch the whole thing in one sitting was doomed to failure), relaxed, and enjoyed ourselves.

Margie offered as a birthday gift to replace our digital camera, which I dropped the day we left Orlando. No damage, save to the door to the flash memory, which now will not close, except with tape. I’d made noises earlier about replacing it, but now I suggested I’d rather invest in a 5.8GHz cordless phone system, to replace our 2.4GHz system which locks up our home network about half the time people call our house. She agreed, which made for an even happier evening.

Then lights out and to bed, which was a very fine place to end a very nice day.

A Long-Awaited Party

(via Uncle Bear)…

(via Uncle Bear)

Alert! Alert!

I’m shocked — shocked! — to discover that a movie like The Two Towers is allowed to be released when it has so much Offense to God in it, according…

I’m shocked — shocked! — to discover that a movie like The Two Towers is allowed to be released when it has so much Offense to God in it, according to the Good People at the ChildCare Action Project. This Offense includes:

unholy influence on thinking
tale of evil control over “good”
sorcery to defeat beast
gaiaism (talking trees), repeatedly
psychic premonitions and possessions, repeatedly
“all-knowing wizard”
unholy apparitions
the “undead” terrorizing others
mockery of the Transformation
sorcery to defend
sorcery to do battle with evil beast
resurrection, mockery of the Transformation
casting out demon
miraculous reverse aging
creatures claiming immorality
crystal ball sorcery
foretelling future
demon possession
Especially that gaiaism stuff — I knew there was something offensive about those talking trees!

Though, to be fair, it got downchecked even more in the Wanton Violence/Crime category.

(via Andrea, who notes that the Maoist Movie Reviews site isn’t too wild about TTT, either.)

Lost

FOUND Magazine – a web collection of stuff that’s been found. we collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids’ homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills,…

FOUND Magazine – a web collection of stuff that’s been found.

we collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids’ homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles- anything that gives a glimpse into someone else’s life. anything goes…

This is really interesting (in its mundanity) stuff.

(via Uncle Bear, who notes the potential for RPG fodder here)

Marshalling our resources

An interesting article here on the Federal Air Marshal program, both its early problems post-9/11, and how things have smoothed out quite a bit….

An interesting article here on the Federal Air Marshal program, both its early problems post-9/11, and how things have smoothed out quite a bit.

Because this is, of course, the number one national priority

Faced with ongoing economic struggles, a war on terrorism, and a prospective war in Iraq, what’s the top priority for congressional conservatives? Why, anti-abortion laws, of course. At a time…

Faced with ongoing economic struggles, a war on terrorism, and a prospective war in Iraq, what’s the top priority for congressional conservatives?

Why, anti-abortion laws, of course.

At a time when the Democrats have been floundering about for an issue to drum up support, the GOP seems to be willing to hand them a huge one.

The fact is, the majority of Americans think that abortions should be rare but legal. It’s a subject that they don’t like to think about much, and one that they feel ambivalent about — they think abortion is of questionable morality, but they also feel it’s a personal decision, and don’t like the government dictating to them about a personal situation that they or someone they love might suddenly find themselves in. That indicates a social climate that could cause a major backfire for the GOP if they push too hard, too fast on this.

Losing their marbles

Since it’s much more likely that I’ll visit London than Athens, I’m selfishly in favor of the British Museum retaining the Elgin Marbles, which Lord Elgin kinda-sorta-legally removed from the…

But the comments of the British museum’s new director, Neil MacGregor, are more than a bit, ah, goofy.

“Works of art of this level belong to humanity. The context of a universal museum is one that is of great value.”
He said it was “very disturbing”, “anti-world” and “worryingly nationalistic” of countries who wanted to reclaim what they had made.

That’s right. How “anti-world” it is for the Greeks to think that the Elgin Marbles should be in their part of the world rather than Mr. MacGregor’s part of the world. How “worryingly nationalistic” that they wouldn’t be in the British Museum — unless he’s going to have it renamed the “Universal Museum,” of course … or else put them on a traveling display around the world.

If the Brits want to keep them, fine. At least make it a straightforward “We have them, we’ve taken care of them, we’re keeping them” statement, rather than making it sound like the Greeks are being … well, unilaterialist cowboys.

It’s an easy day

Why, it’s as easy as 01/02/03….

Why, it’s as easy as 01/02/03.

Confluence

An unfortunate juxtaposition of stories in this mornings Rocky Mountain News headline e-mail. *** Polar Bears take leap of shake *** Nine-year-old Kiersten Duffy was nervous about plunging into the…

An unfortunate juxtaposition of stories in this mornings Rocky Mountain News headline e-mail.

*** Polar Bears take leap of shake ***
Nine-year-old Kiersten Duffy was nervous about plunging into the icy waters of Boulder Reservoir, but she took the leap because “you don’t live forever, and you’ve got to have some fun.“
*** Hiker dies after fall near Morrison ***
A man hiking near Morrison fell to his death Wednesday afternoon off a narrow trail above jagged rock formations near an area called The Falls.

Blog resolutions

2002 was the first full calendar year for ***Dave Does the Blog. What does 2003 hold? Time for a redesign, at least in colors. The maroon-and-yellow has worked well, but…

2002 was the first full calendar year for ***Dave Does the Blog. What does 2003 hold?

Time for a redesign, at least in colors. The maroon-and-yellow has worked well, but it’s time for something fresh.
Consider the overall page design. I’ve been using the same basic layout for over a year, just shuffling header graphics and colors. Is there something better?
Photo gallery. Something to replace Picturetrail, hosted on my site. I have that Gallery download that Seki recommended; I just need to Just Do It.
Reduce the sidebar clutter. It needs to be done, badly. I expect to see the media reviews go away, the rings, etc., to go away, a number of the non-blog links go away, etc. If I have a hard time navigating through it, visitors must, too.
Finish my re-Categorization project.

Problem is, by and large, I’m happy with how things are here. I don’t see moving away from MT any time soon, and I’m using most of the features of it that I want to be (eschewing things that require I dig around in files that get replaced).

So while I have the urge to houseclean, I need to make sure that I don’t just rearrange the furniture for the sake of doing so.

Any suggestions from our studio audience?

Thursday!

And here’s the Thumb-Twiddler….

And here’s the Thumb-Twiddler.

Continue reading “Thursday!”

Resolved

At the risk of sounding repetitious, I resolve to lose weight this year. I did not lose weight last year, resolutions aside. I might have been a bit lower before…

At the risk of sounding repetitious, I resolve to lose weight this year.

I did not lose weight last year, resolutions aside. I might have been a bit lower before Thanksgiving hit, but December was an utter disaster.

Rediscovering the joy of chili cheese fries didn’t help.

So. I will lose weight this year.

At least, as soon as we leave Faerie. Da mini castitatem et continentiam sed noli modo. And on that note …

There’s a corker

The world’s wine industry is slowly but surely moving away from “real” corks to synthetic ones, which are supposed to be more reliable and more protective of the wine inside….

The world’s wine industry is slowly but surely moving away from “real” corks to synthetic ones, which are supposed to be more reliable and more protective of the wine inside. Problem is, that obsoletes the cork industry in Portugal, which means that Portuguese cork forests are being developed, which means that the ecosystems of those forests are in danger.

The loss of the cork oak forests would shatter this economy and could easily lead to desertification, Landeiro says, as the cork trees are replaced by other forms of agriculture that are less sustainable and often non-indigenous. Cork oak forests are also less susceptible to wildfires, which destroy some 600,000 to 800,000 hectares of Mediterranean forests each year.
Two wildlife species, the Iberian lynx and the Iberian imperial eagle, are both seriously endangered, but can survive within cork oak forests. If the forests suffer, the outlook for these native animals will also worsen.
WWF estimates the Iberian lynx population has decreased some 90 percent in the past 15 years and population estimates range from 1,000 to only 150. It is the most threatened carnivore in Europe.

So remember, drink naturally-corked wine: it isn’t just good for you … it’s good for nature, too!

And a Happy New Year …

New Years Eve was both busy and quiet. The Two Towers plans fell by the wayside, in favor of taking Kitten (and us) down to Legoland. Let me say this…

New Years Eve was both busy and quiet. The Two Towers plans fell by the wayside, in favor of taking Kitten (and us) down to Legoland.

Let me say this about Legoland.

1. It’s the best amusement park I’ve ever encountered for little — I mean Katherine’s age — to visit. Such kids are usually relegated to the fringes of amusement parks. At Legoland, they are the focus (though there’s plenty for older kids, too).

2. It’s amazing how utterly clunky design can be made cool-looking by adding clunky Lego-knobs on the top of it.

3. The place grew on me while we were there. At first, I was — well, not impressed (perhaps affected by #1). But over time — especially once we passed through “Miniland” (miniature recreations of cities and towns and harbors, all in Lego) — I became hooked.

3. It’s wildly expensive, and not as exciting or well-run as, say, Disneyland, but I think it was still worth it. Heck, I wish we could have stayed longer, but Kitten started nodding off.

We all nodded off on the ride back, in fact, except Jim — which is good, since he was driving. We plopped Kitten into bed when we got home, then sort of sat around, idle, for the rest of the afternoon. Reheated pizza for dinner, then the New Years Party.

Unlike the faboo social event which is the Ks’ Christmas Party, the New Years Party is much more laid back, and has gotten moreso over the years. Everyone is encouraged to bring a game and an appetizer — and this year not even the latter was needed, since it was only a few days after the Christmas party. Jim & Di came over, as did Michelle, and the Kerfoots, and even the traditional jigsaw puzzle never really happened. Instead, we played Fluxx and Namesake.

Kitten arose from her slumber about a half an hour before the end of the year, so she got to join in the festivities once again. She was happy, and loved blowing on the party favors.

Things wore on after the turn of the year, including the traditional Exchanging of Christmas Gifts With Folks Who Only Come On New Years Eve event. More good swag was had by all.

Finally crashed about 2ish, which made waking up for the Rose Parade at 8 a bit of a grind, but it happened semi-spontaneously anyway. (I’ve not been sleeping in well, even when I’ve had the opportunity, between listening for Kitten, being awakened by Kitten, and worrying about whether the alarm clock is going to get unplugged again.) We sat through the parade (which went off like clockwork, though I don’t think the floats were as interesting as in past years; half the fun is getting snarky about sloppy bands and atrocious uniforms). Then showers, day clothing and …

… off to work converting files from the Ks’ iMac to their new PC. Which is how I spent most of the rest of the day, in-between having lunch and dinner with the visiting bro-in-law Eric with cousins Alex and Nicholas for Kitten to run around with.

And today? Up at 1 a.m., when Kitten decided it was (a) time to go downstairs, and (b) she really wanted some juice. This was followed by two repeat performances, two false alarms, and a Spooky Tree Trying To Get In (to our room), so Margie and I were largely sleepless for two hours there.

That still didn’t keep me from waking up before my 6:15 alarm, fed by various squirrels running through my head about all the things I need to do over the next month or so. Happy New Year indeed.

To work today, then, followed by a dinner out for my birthday tonight (Carmen is watching the Kitten again).

Our time in Faerie is drawing to a close — we fly back home Saturday (facing the Challenge of Luggage Inspection). It will be good to be back. Even with a business trip in two weeks, and our England vacation in a month-plus, it will be good to get back to some modicum of normalcy in our schedule.

Faerie’s a faboo place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live here.

Salud!

Yet another summary of research that shows moderate drinking is probably good for you. The word’s still been slow in coming out, though, because public health officials are loath to…

Yet another summary of research that shows moderate drinking is probably good for you.

The word’s still been slow in coming out, though, because public health officials are loath to say anything positive about booze, for fear that it will encourage alcohol abuse. Because of that, not a little bit of the research on this has been quietly suppressed.

It’s enough to drive a man to drink.

(via Instapundit)