AProudVeteran – Page 9 – The Daily Brief

Book Collectors, take note…

07. October 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: A Href, General

For those of us who would like to catalog our book collections, the options have usually been few and tedious, requiring lots of typing. Oh, the Mac lovers can get by with Delicious Library, which lets you use your webcam to scan the barcode of the book and then enters the applicable data for you, but Macs are a small percentage of the population, and there are no plans to port it to a Windows/Linux environment.

So I thought I was trapped, tied into purchasing a cataloging software and typing the data in for each of the almost 1000 books I own (could be over 1000 by now – who knows?).

Then along comes Tim Spalding, who needed a quick way to catalog his own book collection, so he created LibraryThing. It’s an online catalog of your book collection, but the data is printable and exportable (csv format). You can make your catalog public or private, as you prefer. You can add your own “tags” to the books, describing them in ways that make sense to you, instead of to Mr Dewey or the Library of Congress.

If you want to test it out, you can add 200 books for free. If you have a larger library, he requests a one-time payment of USD10. Yeah – Ten bucks. That’s it.

Creating an account there is simple – you simply type in a username/password, and if they’re unique, you’re in. Adding books to your collection is just as simple – the quick add feature lets you type in whatever you want (author’s name, title, isbn, etc), and search one of over 30 online libraries. Within 5 minutes, I had added 40 books to my online catalog, simply by typing in an author’s name, searching the Amazon.com library, and clicking on the titles that matched mine. When I have time to sit down and do more, I’m going to use the Library of Congress for my searches instead of Amazon – often-times Amazon showed incorrect authors, although the title was correct. I’m thinking it was maybe showing secondary authors as primary, although they all show correctly in my actual catalog.

Those are minor annoyances, and there are a couple other minor tweaks I would like to see, but it’s still in beta, and it’s only about 6 weeks old as a public product, so I can be patient, I think. It was made public on Aug 29, 2005, and according to its “zeitgeist” page, there are already:

total books catalogued 369,481
unique books 209,490
6,805 users since August 29, 2005

Check it out, see what you think, and share your thoughts with Tim. He seems to be very willing to listen to his customers.

hat tip: Shannon at ShannonBlogs

Cleaning up Katrina

05. October 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: A Href, Domestic, General

Baldilocks links to a news story someone sent her, about the mess folks will run into when they go back home to New Orleans and try to clean out their refrigerators.

“Across the flood-ravaged city, refrigerators spent a month sitting silent and dark, baking in the 90-degree heat.” I bet Stephen King could turn that one sentence into a book. The full story can be found here.

I’m sure Rita folks will have a similar experience to look forward to. Best advice seems to be DON”T OPEN THE DOOR, MAN! (gratuitous Cheech & Chong reference). Duct tape that bad boy up, and drag it to the curb.

Milblogging goes mainstream

04. October 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: A Href, General, GWOT

Blackfive has the go-ahead from Simon & Schuster to edit a compilation of milblogs from OIF. Read all about it on his site. LT Smash will be one of the contributors.

Blackfive says, in part:

While I have already been in contact with about 30 MilBloggers, I could use your help. This is your opportunity to influence the content of a book – what posts would you like to see in a book (on the history) of our soldiers in the War on Terror?

Please either email me suggestions or put a link (if use http:// with the URL, the link will be live) in the Comments of the best Military Blog posts that you have read.

As editor, I’m looking at a wide range of experiences – Saying Goodbye (from deciding to serve in the military to leaving loved ones behind), Combat, the Weight of Command, the Fallen, Homefront (spouse and parent blogs), Humor, Time Off, and Coming Home.

And, as always, thank you for supporting and visiting MilBlogs. This is happening, quite frankly, because of all of you.

Personally, I’d like to see Capt Patti included in there, and Sgt Hook.

Hat tip to the Indepundit

Light a Single Candle

03. October 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: A Href, General, World

As a child, I ran across the quotation “Better to light a single candle than to sit and curse the darkness.”

Carlos Leite, a Brazilian who lives on the edge of poverty, seems to have done just that. Illiterate, he has amassed a library of 10,000 volumes, which he has made available to his community of Sao Goncala. Brazilians, on average, read less than 2 books per year (America reads 5, according to the article). There are few or no public libraries there, and although the government has launched a campaign to build public libraries, the wheels of bureaucracy grind slowly.

Leite couldn’t wait.

“Those of us who grew up here, we know what the needs of the community are,” he said. “I stopped and thought, ‘Wait a minute. There’s not a single library. The schools have libraries, but there’s no public library.’ So I said, ‘Let’s make this dream come true.’ ”

When he asked members of his small bicycling group to help him collect used books, “they all thought I was a little crazy,” he said.

But they humored him, and the nameless cycling club got a moniker: “The Madmen of Sao Goncalo.” Or so they seemed at first to the neighbors whose doors they knocked on.

“Some people thought, ‘You must be joking. Here in this community, people ask for clothes, but to ask for books!’ ” said Ronaldo Pena, 48, one of the cyclists.

They inaugurated the library on March 20, 2004, with 100 volumes, most of them literary and historical treatises donated by someone Pena knew. Since then, the group has been amassing books at a feverish pace. Many come from rich Brazilians in whose homes they work as cleaners, handymen and the like.

Because everything is by donation, the collection is eclectic and quixotic, but impressive in scope: from Shakespeare to Agatha Christie, Umberto Eco to political theorist Antonio Gramsci, William Faulkner to James Joyce, not to mention textbooks and reference works. There’s no Dewey decimal system, or even strict alphabetical order; books are simply grouped by subject.

“All the material you need is here,” said Gabriele Sthefanine Silva Azeveda, a seventh-grader who was busy one recent afternoon copying down information about Central America from an encyclopedia. The nearest public library is 20 minutes away by car — not that many residents here own cars — and her school library is often of little use.

“It has fewer books than here,” she said.

Leite and his companion have been pushed to a tiny back alcove of their small house, and many books are still in boxes due to lack of space. His library is run by volunteers, and his bills are mounting. Libraries need lights and fans so the patrons can be comfortable. Someone donated a computer so they could catalog the books, but no one has had time to do so – all their time is taken up either working at their regular jobs, or running the library.

It’s a challenge just to keep the library open Monday through Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., and often later when there’s special need: a report due, a test the next day.

“There’s a lot of demand,” Leite said. “We have lawyers, doctors, teachers, psychologists coming in to do research.”

He depends on Da Penha and his friends to staff the library, all of them unpaid. Leite continues to do construction and maintenance work to try to meet the mounting bills. How do you run a library without overhead lights? Or fans to keep patrons cool and books from going moldy on those hot tropical afternoons? Or tape and glue to repair broken spines and torn pages?

Not a single penny has come from official sources — “not from the politicians, not from the government,” said Da Penha, who is on medical leave from her job as a cleaning lady at a local school.

“What’s here is what we’ve done ourselves,” she said. “We’ve sacrificed a lot to help the people here. But it’s a sacrifice of love.”

The one thing the article didn’t tell me was how I can help this man. I’d love to send him some money to help with his bills, but have no idea how to do that. Can anyone tell me how?

Worth Reading…

01. October 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: A Href, General

A guest poster over at Blonde Sagacity has provided us with a wonderful, if challenging to read, profile of a pedophile.

The writer is a Marine Reservist, formerly active duty (5 years). He now works as a sherriff’s deputy somewhere in MI. He works within the court system there, as “the enforcement arm of the family court to which [he] is assigned.” In the 3 years or so that he’s been doing this, he’s seen lots of things. And his observations should make you stop and think.

Probably the most important part of his post (which will be continued on Monday in part 2) is this:

We’ve all heard that rape is about power; it’s not about sex. With child molesters, it’s different. It is about sex.

What’s sick is that often we pick up that these people genuinely love kids. It may sound perverted to say this, but they genuinely love kids. A lot of people get upset by that notion. “How can somebody love a kid and do that?” they ask.

You can’t deny that. And that’s why when you see the person who operates the day-care center or the beloved Pop Warner football coach accused of CSC with a minor, there’s almost always an out pouring of sympathy for the defendant. Letters to the editor of the local paper in support, nasty letters to the prosecutor and the police about how unjust we are. People see someone who genuinely appears to love children and they say “Someone like this who really likes kids couldn’t possibly do this.” People get confused by that. But let me tell you, Pedophiles genuinely love kids… and they have a sexual desire for kids. Take the Michael Jackson case in California as a great example of this phenomenon, public support for a molester because of the molester’s love for children. Some people are fooled by that love. Don’t be.

Whenever I hear somebody say, “Wow, did you hear about that schoolteacher, that priest, that camp counselor, who abused the kid?” it doesn’t surprise me. It doesn’t surprise me a bit. I’d expect it.
(snip)
This is something we in Law Enforcement go insane trying to tell parents and kids. When I was a kid all you heard about was the “Dangerous Stranger,” the outrageous, scary-looking guy that would kidnap you from K-Mart. Mr. Dangerous Stranger is out there. There are individuals who pick up children, torture them, and murder them, they do exist. They are also less than one percent of all CSC cases.

Let me tell you, sex offenders are very normal looking. I arrested a [large car company] VIP for child porn once. Most have “normal” families, children, and jobs. It’s usually not the weird looking dude in the trench coat outside the school yard with a hand in his pants. It’s usually is the basketball coach at the Y. I tell my daughter to look out for the one you know.

Pedophilia is probably my number one “kill them all and let God sort them out” issue. I have no sympathy for it, no interest in it, and no compassion for the perpetrators. I don’t watch the Lolita-type films, and I don’t wink and smile at the school-teacher-pregnant-by-her-teenage-student stories. Maybe because it all strikes a little too close to home, for me. We had a baby-sitter living with us when I was a small child – one of my alcoholic parents’ alcoholic friends. He and I were …. very close, shall we say…probably too close, if anyone had been paying attention. But what did I know? I was only 4. I have a friend whose dad first raped her before she was a year old. Another good friend was molested by her grandmother for most of her early childhood years.

So yeah, not a lot of sympathy from me for these poor, previously abused perpetrators. ‘Cause the cycle does NOT have to continue. Help is out there. I should add, for full disclosure, that I have an alcoholic sister who spent a year in jail for molesting a 12yr old boy she was babysitting, when she was in her late 20s.

Anyway… odds are good that someone you know was abused as a child. And according to the post’s author, odds are good that someone you know is a pedophile (scary thought). You owe it to yourself and your kids (and your neighbors’ kids) to be informed.

Go.

Read.

Learn.

Wandering the ‘sphere….

14. September 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: Domestic, General, Home Front

Citizen Smash posted a letter that should make us all proud, and should have any Navy folks busting their buttons.

From the CNO, it says in part:

At NAS New Orleans I came across a bunch of Seabees working feverishly on the wooden platform for what was going to be a temporary dining facility. It was a contract job, but the contractor was having problems rounding up the necessary manpower and resources. The Seabees didn’t ask permission, didn’t wait for orders. They simply rolled up their sleeves and went to work.

“Hey, they needed help,” one said. “And we know how to do this stuff.”

We do, indeed, know how to do this stuff, and we are doing it exceptionally well. Standing amongst them, I was never more proud to call myself an American Sailor.

It’s well worth your time to follow the link and read the whole thing.

And Baldilocks shares something I’ve not read in very many other places, yet.

“In the name of the Iraqi people, I say to you, Mr. President, and to the glorious American people, thank you, thank you.

“Thank you because you have liberated us from the worst kind of dictatorship. Our people suffered too much from this worst kind of dictatorship. The signal is mass graves with hundred thousand of Iraqi innocent children and women, young and old men. Thank you.”

–President Jalal Talabani of Iraq during his first visit to the White House on Tuesday, September 13, 2005.

If you scroll further down on Baldilocks’ site, you’ll find an entry detailing how Wal-Mart has set up “registries” for the evacuees. Like a bridal registry, the Katrina survivors can register for what they need, and their friends can help them re-stock their lives.

I think Wal-Mart, along with Lowes/Home Depot, is doing a fantastic job of helping out with the recovery efforts. (and yes, I realize it’s in their best economic interest to do so)

This makes my eyes water….

06. September 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: A Href, Domestic, General, Home Front

..in a good way. 🙂

Baldilocks pointed me to a Guardian online article.

excerpt:

Asian Countries Offer U.S. Hurricane Aid
Tuesday September 6, 2005 2:31 PM
AP Photo XLEE102
By ROHAN SULLIVAN
Associated Press Writer

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) – Some of the world’s poorest nations – Bangladesh, Afghanistan and tsunami-hit Thailand – have offered the United States aid and expertise to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

While some of these aid pledges were small compared with the millions of dollars and heavy machinery promised by Europe, they come from nations with far less to give and are symbolic recognition of the role U.S. aid has played in their development.

Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest countries, where millions of people live on a monsoon- and flood-prone delta, pledged $1 million to Katrina’s victims and offered to send specialist rescuers to inundated areas, the Foreign Ministry said.

The list of countries mentioned in the article: Bangladesh, Thailand, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Honduras, Mexico, Peru, Cuba, Venezuela, & Singapore.

What are bloggers?

06. September 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General

I know, what kind of question is that? But I find myself getting irritated, once again, with a cyber-friend who routinely ignores how blogs have evolved.

The context: A message-board discussion about Katrina’s aftermath. I posted a link to the Katrina timeline that Timmer blogged about, and another member posted a variety of items from blogcritics.org. Her comment (below) was more to that poster than to me, based on when she posted it. But it still rankled with me, because she said the same thing during the 2004 election-cycle, so it’s a long-standing opinion with her.

Her words:

Frankly, bloggers don’t mean anything to me, because they are just people speaking their minds. Just because someone blogs, doesn’t mean what they say is factual.

How would y’all have responded to her? Do y’all ever get this type of comment thrown at you?

My response:

They’re more than just commentary. Have been for a few years, now. It depends on which ones you read, of course, but many bloggers are experts in their fields, and many of them do a lot more digging and basic research than some journalists do. It’s not unusual to find a blogger serving as a consolidation point for a multitude of news articles, for instance, as well as linking to other blogs from folks who are where hte news is happening.

Many of the bloggers that I read rely on source documents, including wire reports, as well as their personal knowledge & expertise. They quote their source documents, and provide links to them, so their readers can read the originals, and make up their own minds, much like the blogger I linked to did with his timeline. They also rely on first-hand accounts from people in the field, and most of them accept viewpoints from all spectrums. In other words, a conservative blogger will have liberal readers, not just conservative ones, and they will all discuss the blog-post in the comments section. Same for liberals and libertarians (and yes, often the readers and commenters will be the same political persuasion as the writer, which leads to preaching to the choir – often, but not always) . The conversations in the comments sections can get quite interesting, believe me. And responsible bloggers (including the ones I read) will correct their entries when more information is known, factual errors are found or pointed out by their readers. And they don’t bury the correction in a hard to find spot – they usually put a comment at the top of that post saying that there are updates further down.

I agree with the need for an accurate opinion, but honestly, if I relied on the news media, whether print, radio, or televised, I’d feel like I was only seeing what they wanted to share with me. There’s more to the story than what they show us.

disclaimer: I am a casual blogger, and if she were reading my sporadically-updated blog than her comment would be just. But when I think of the blogs I visit regularly, and the wealth of information I gather from them, I couldn’t just leave her comments alone. /disclaimer

Katrina Around the Blogosphere

04. September 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: A Href, General, Home Front

Ran across this interesting blog post today, whilst surfing and trying to catch up with Katrina blogs after a week on the road.

The blogger, whom I assume is named Eric, since the blog name is “Eric’s Grumbles before the grave,” says that the aftermath of Katrina is showing us the natural result of 70 years of government dependence.

A sampling of his thoughts:

We have empowered our government to make us into dependent children over the past 70 years, give or take a day or two, and it shows. Tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of people were as effectively isolated from their state and national government by this disaster as if they lived on the American frontier 150 years ago. No matter how dramatically and quickly the various government entities had responded, many of these people would have been isolated from food, water, law enforcement and health care for days. Let’s talk about some of the current problems and criticisms and then we’ll tackle why those criticisms are simply ignoring the blindingly obvious truth of the correct direction to go, both in disaster relief specifically and governance much more generally.

Baldilocks (always a fave read) is adding a Katrina support agency link to each of her posts, regardless of its topic (except for the post announcing Rehnquist’s passing). Baldi also linked to another site that is calling for RVers to donate the use of their vehicles that would otherwise sit idle all winter, and for RV sites to donate unused hookups. Living in a trailer is better than living in a sports stadium, I think.

Please consider donating, for long-term use, your idle RV or travel trailer. We are opening our park to our good neighbors from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama who have lost so much in Hurricane Katrina. We have RV hookups available for their use, but we don’t have RVs. Your donation can make all the difference in the world to people who are looking for a place to call home for a few weeks or months as they sort through the aftermath. It’s absolutely crucial that we all work together to help out our friends and family. Please email (info@buckbrazos.com) or call (254-898-2825) if you’re able and willing to help out. We can help make arrangements for getting your RV or fifth-wheel to our place. Buck loves to drive.

This is the weekend that bloggers are holding a donation drive for Katrina, as well. I learned about it from Baldilocks, but it’s being hosted/coordinated/tracked at TTLB. And it was from following a link on that site, that I ran across Eric’s post that started this entry of mine. If you have donated, or do donate, please log your contributions there, especially if you donated as a result of someone’s blog entry. This started as a one-day deal, similar to what was done back in Jan for the Tsunami survivors, and the response was so huge that they extended it through the holiday weekend.

Their stats as of this posting:

$714,139 in contributions so far
1,659 blogs participating
221 charities recommended

If you’ve not given yet, please give what you can, when you can. If all you can afford are prayers, then offer those. They help too. And remember, while there’s a tremendously generous outpouring right now, the need will still be here months from now. So if you can afford ongoing donations, that’s a good idea, as well.

On a more personal note, I was supposed to have lunch with Joe Comer today, but my work schedule changed, so he obligingly flexed his schedule as well, and we were going to meet at a Cracker Barrel last night, since we would both be in Atlanta. I was very disappointed to hear that he had only gotten as far as Macon, but I know we’ll get together another time – I’m thinking we’re only about 200 miles away from each other, and *everyone* comes to Atlanta at some point.

Look into my eyes….

23. August 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General

Look into my eyes...

This is one of my favorite pictures of one of my favorite roommates. She’ll be 14 in October, which means any time I have with her from there on out is gravy, since greys have an average lifespan of 12-14.

She’s been with me for about two and a half years now, and I honestly cannot imagine not having her here. She may be one of the best gifts that I’ve ever given myself.

(photo taken in Sept 2003, with an Olympus C2100UZ, in natural light)

Update: This is embarassing. I’ve alwasy said Math is not my subject, and I’ve proven it here. She was born in 1992, which means she’s coming up on 13, not 14. No need to age her prematurely, ya know?

OK, This crosses a line…

23. August 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General

From Yahoo! News….

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson suggested on-air that American operatives assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to stop his country from becoming “a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism.”

“We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,” Robertson said Monday on the Christian Broadcast Network’s “The 700 Club.”

“We don’t need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator,” he continued. “It’s a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.”

I’d just like to go on record, as a self-described fundamentalist evangelical Christian, and say that Pat Robertson does not speak for me, even though I fit his demographics.

Can anyone explain to me how Robertson’s comment is any different from the Imams who incite their followers to Jihad? (apart from the obvious difference that Robertson is saying the *state* should take out Chavez, as opposed to recruiting suicide bombers) Seriously, if I’m mistaken and shouldn’t be disgusted by this, let me know.

Disengagement – An Israeli Soldier’s Story

23. August 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: A Href, General, Israel & Palestine

OpinionJournal.com (free registration required) shares a story today written by a Major in the IDF Reserves, who is a historian in his civilian life.

Together with thousands of Jews, I sat on the flagstones before the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The time was midnight on the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, the day on which, according to tradition, invaders twice overwhelmed the city’s defenders, destroying their Temple and crushing Jewish independence in Israel. Two thousand years later, a new Jewish state with a powerful army has arisen, yet Jews continue to lament on that day, and rarely as fervidly as now. For the first time in history–ancient or modern–that state would send its army not to protect Jews from foreign attack, but to evict them from what many regarded as their God-given land, in Gaza.

It’s well-written, and worth reading.

disclaimer: Personally, I hate sites that make me register before reading, but in the several years I’ve read their pieces, I have never regretted registering, and as far as I can tell, I’ve never been spammed by them.

Semantics are everything, people

17. August 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General

I’m watching Fox News coverage of the Israeli army forcibly removing the remnants of settlers from the Gaza Strip.

Earlier, they showed four soldiers carrying out a young man. One soldier holding each limb, the young man easily 2 feet above the ground (waist-high to the soldiers, basically).

And yet, Fox News persists in saying the settlers are being DRAGGED from their homes. Dictionary.com tells me that “drag” means to “trail along a surface, especially the ground.”

These people are being carried, not dragged. None of their body parts are touching the ground. using the term “dragged” brings to mind pictures of the 1968 Democratic convention, when police were literally dragging protesters to the paddy wagons.

In their favor, Fox is making sure to include the info that each settler has been given months of notice, and offers of substantial compensation for their move. It’s just that nobody really likes to give up their homes (just ask the folks in the Kelo decision), and not all of them agree with the resettlement, so they’re holding out to the bitter end.

How NOT to parent your child

28. July 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: A Href, Domestic, General

No matter how ticked you may be, do NOT stop on the beltway outside DC, and leave your 4-yr old standing by the side of the road while you drive another 100 miles or so to Richmond, stopping only when you have an accident.

news article

hat tip to a commenter at Blonde Sagacity

To our Friends in the UK

07. July 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General

Please accept my deepest and most sincere sympathies for the troubles assailing your nation today. The attacks are reprehensible and unconscionable.

I have no words to express the depth of my emotions as I read about the bombings.

Wishing I could do something concrete to help,

your American friend

Independence Day

04. July 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General

June 7, 1776:

“RESOLVED: That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally disolved.”

July 4, 1776:

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness….

… We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

I am not ashamed to say that the first quote moves me to tears. Two hundred and some years ago, a group of men in a hot, humid meeting room in a backwater country joined together in a noble experiment. It was a new thing they were trying – no colony in the history of the world had broken from the parent country before. Simply stating the resolution made them all candidates for the hangman’s noose. But they not only resolved for independence, they proclaimed it, loudly and defiantly, in the midst of numerous military defeats.

Yes, we have a checkered past. So does every other country on the planet. I’m not going to let the mistakes of our past (or even of our present) impact my pride in, and love for, my birth country. A country is nothing more than a collection of people. People have always been imperfect. It stands to reason, then, that a country will also be imperfect. What matters is not that we make mistakes, but what we do once we recognize them.

The experiment begun in 1776 is still going strong. Amid triumps and tragedies, with victories and defeats, proud moments and shameful incidents, we have survived. May God grant that it always be so.

Time Flies When You’re Having Fun

14. June 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General

PACMAN turns 25

I might have attended more classes, had this game never been created. Well, this one and Joust. And Gorgar, the masochistic pinball machine. And Missile Command. And QBert. Oh, and don’t forget Donkey Kong. And the little guy who kept climbing up the outside of the skyscraper while people threw things out the windows at him.

How did I ever get my degree?

Hmmmm…….

12. June 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: A Href, General, General Nonsense

So now we know – don’t give me any logic problems. The math result surprises me – math was my always my worst test result, in my past.

Your IQ Is 115

Your Logical Intelligence is Average
Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius
Your Mathematical Intelligence is Exceptional
Your General Knowledge is Exceptional

A Quick and Dirty IQ Test

(found the link at blonde sagacity)

Thanks, Timmer!

12. June 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General

I’ve finally made time to watch the Firefly discs that Netflix sent me. while “Serenity” was a little too choppy for me, I’ve found myself glued to the couch for the other episodes… so much for all the items on my “must do this weekend” list.

It’s a shame this series never made it — it’s awesome, and I’ll be recommending it to everyone I know.

And I thought big cities were dangerous!

18. March 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General

According to this story, sent to me by my sister in Ohio, there was a shooting in the small town near where she lives. Two people dead (including the shooter), one wounded, witnessed by an 18-yr old high school senior who lived next door to the female victim (wounded), and by a 17-yr old across the street, who sat with the woman while they waited on the ambulance to arrive. It’s actually my sister’s town, but she lives outside of town. She thinks she might know some of the folks involved, but since there were no pics of them in the article, she’s not sure.

Mockery Can be Fun

10. March 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General Nonsense, Media Matters Not

While I agree with Kevin that it’s best to let the newly-retired anchorman fade quietly into the woodwork, I can still enjoy a wee bit of mockery. Especially when it’s cleverly presented.

Iowahawk gives us the final story in his “Detective Dan Rather” series, this one called “The Big Snooze.”

For any who loved Sam Spade, this is worth reading.

Excerpt:

It was a blustery March morning in Manhattan. I hiked up the collar on my trenchcoat and stepped out into a fresh sheet of snow that had fallen in front of the seedy West 80’s flop house I call home. Pretty stuff, that snow. But just below the surface it can conceal something icy, something treacherous. Something that can make your Florsheims lose their grip, set your arms and legs windmilling spastically, cause you to make a violent, jarring, assplant into a frigid sidewalk filth-slushee. And in my line of business it’s all part of a day’s work.

My name is Rather. And I’m a dick.

Enjoy! (I’m heading back over to read his earlier works in that series)

hattip to Slarrow

Phooey

09. March 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General

According to my newest email from Delta Airlines, my preferred carrier (on which I’ve travelled over 250,000 miles in the last 10 years), effective March 15 they will no longer have pillows on their flights.

Thus they go the way of American Airlines, who had already removed their pillows. Apparently, they can save hundreds of thousands of dollars by not providing any pillows at all.

Unfortunately for me, airline pillows were what I used for lumbar support in their crappy coach seats. Two pillows behind my back, and I was comfortable for the entire trip, and didn’t have a back ache at the end of it.

Phooey.

How to Fix CBS

03. March 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General

Peggy Noonan (one of my favorite columnists) offers some sensible suggestions to CBS on what they could do to return to their glory days. She makes a lot of sense to me.

There are a couple parts I really liked. One is where she addresses what she calls “the myth of Cronkiteism.” Addressing the question of why the networks spend millions of dollars on the news anchor, she says:

Because they’re mesmerized by a myth–the corny and no longer relevant belief that the anchorman makes the evening news, that if he’s popular it’s popular.

This is the myth of Cronkiteism. Decades ago everyone in the news came to believe the “CBS Evening News” was No. 1 in the ratings because of the magic of Walter. The truth is Mr. Cronkite took over the evening news in 1963, a bland, plump fellow, a veteran of United Press International with a nice voice. (snip)
Then John Kennedy was shot, and suddenly, for the first time in the TV era, all eyes turned to television–to the Tiffany network, with the best coverage. And Walter did good work. Soon corporate headquarters realized the evening news could be a moneymaker, a profit center. They pumped more money into the news division, which was still dominated by the ethos of the Murrow Boys, the great journalists who witnessed and took part in Ed Murrow’s one-man invention of CBS News. They created the best broadcast. Mr. Cronkite was its front man. He came to be broadly respected because his show was broadly respected.

Mr. Cronkite became the first megastar TV anchorman, and a generation of programming executives misunderstood why. They thought this was the lesson: first the anchor, then the popularity. This was the opposite of the truth: first an excellent broadcast, then the anchor’s popularity.

The other was related to another of her suggestions, which is to take the money they would pay a mega-star anchor, and use it to put more reporters in the field, all over the world.

Then open it up–trust your correspondents in the field. Let them tell you the story. Don’t tell them what the story is from New York, after you’ve read the Times and the Washington Post. Let them tell you the story. Let them be our eyes.

What really happened today in Iraq, what are U.S.soldiers doing, what’s the mood in the green zone among people who’ve been there a while? What are they selling in the local candy store in Tikrit, what are young men doing for jobs, what are mothers making for dinner, what’s available to put in the pot, how are the schools going, is it usual for an 8-year-old girl to go to school each day or has that gone by the boards because of war? What do American soldiers think of what Americans back home think of the war, what is their impression of our impression? What does a “letter from home” look like now? Is it a DVD? What is it like to live in a place where everything’s been fine and calm for 10 days and you know you’ve turned a corner and just as you’re thinking this there’s an explosion 10 blocks away and suddenly you hear sirens and people are cowering in doorways?

As I said, Peggy makes all kinds of sense to me. I’m curious as to what Sgt Mom would think, since she’s our resident expert.

The Other Flood…

23. January 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General

Somehow I missed hearing about this one. But the blogosphere is on top of it. Follow the links for more info about the flood in Costa Rica, and the relief efforts underway there.

News article
Blog post

Hat tips: Queen of All Evil
In Search of Utopia

Remembering Rick Rescorla

23. January 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General

Mudville Gazette is where I first learned about Rick Rescorla, Vietnam Veteran, Army Reservist, and one of the 3000 people who died on Sept 11, 2001. He didn’t make it out, but due to his actions, 2700 of his co-workers *did* survive.

If you’ve never heard of Rick Rescorla, you need to learn about him. You can do that here.

If you *have* heard of him, then you might be interested in knowing that a couple years ago, his widow and some of his friends founded the non-profit Richard C. Rescorla Memorial Foundation, “to keep present the magnitude of Rick’s life and to promote the virtues Rick lived by – duty, honor, courage, and patriotism. ”

The foundation is now raising money to erect a bronze statue of Rick at Ft Benning, GA, in the National Infantry Museum. Details are posted at Mudville Gazette, in the form of an email from Susan Rescorla. The foundation has raised 1/3 of the money they need for the sculpture, and need help raising the rest of it.

From what I’ve read, this is a man worth remembering. I hope you think so, too.

Reina-Gilberta

15. January 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: A Href, History

Baldilocks does it again, pointing me to the gems of the blogosphere. Today’s gem is a survival story from WWII, posted at Discarded Lies.

Book List

14. January 2005 · Comments Off · Categories: General

From E-Claire, who got it from The Cheese Stands Alone:

Copy the list from the last person in the chain, delete the names of the authors you don’t have on your home library shelves and replace them with names of authors you do have. Bold the replacements.

here’s my list (with over 1000 books at home, these were just the first names that came to mind):

1. J.K. Rowling
2. ~~William Gibson~~ JRR Tolkien
3. ~~Neil Gaiman~~ Dick Francis
4. ~~Neal Stephenson~~ Madeleine L’Engle
5. Terry Pratchett
6. ~~Charles Stross~~ Elizabeth Moon
7. ~~Rex Stout~~ Anne McCafferey
8. ~~Paul Di Filippo~~ Earlene Fowler
9. ~~Eric Garcia~~ Terri Blackstock
10. ~~Bruce Sterling~~ Tom Clancy

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