the art of writing is discovering what you believe
YouTube – Pink- Dear Mr President – Live:
Pink performs Dear Mr President Live in NYC. It’s a controversial song from her new album that all people should hear.
I don’t know if “all people” would see beyond the visual of an attractive blond woman condemning the actions of the occupant of the White House. I mean, she can’t be serious or credible if she’s not a doughy white guy, preferably with thinning hair.
Had to pre-order this. First in a projected 5 volume series? Who knew?
Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip – Book One (Hardcover)
April 8 – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
April 8 is the 98th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (99th in leap years). There are 267 days remaining.
My natal anniversary today.
Looking at the worthies I share the day with, I have to think the Buddha offsets Tom Delay. And I get Sonja Henie, Jacques Brel, Julian Lennon, and Robin Wright Penn. The NY Times says that Tony Perez, Jack Bruce, and David Byrne will also cut the cake today.
The BBC has a headline claiming Kurt Cobain killed himself on April 8, but the story makes clear it was the 6th. The NYT notes the the first smallpox vaccination was administered on this date in 1796 and that Lewis and Clark left St Louis with the Corps of Discovery 202 years ago today.
Now there’s a schism I’d like to see . . . .
Making Light: Darwin fish found:
Won’t change their minds. They’ll say it’s a fake.
So maybe that means they won’t have to deal with it; but they’re just begging to have their kids suffer a catastrophic loss of faith when they discover that it’s demonstrably not a fake. You can only go so far in inculcating denial. Beyond that, the person has to want to deny the evidence.
Or that it was put there by God to test our Faith.
God Almighty is infinite truth and light, but the God we deal with here on earth is lying to us? Doesn’t that make them some unpleasant variety of Gnostic?
Also, could they please explain what other apparently solid data is eligible to be dismissed in that fashion? Yes? And how they can tell the difference? One step past that point in any direction, they’ll fall into “some parts of creation are More Real than others“: a muddy, fetid philosophical swamp that breeds errors by the swarm.
“What do we know, and how do we know that we know it?”: There’s a reason it’s a classic.
Or worse, it was put there by the Foul Deceiver to undermine said Faith.
Ooooookay, so Satan is a creative force, and had a hand in the creation of the world? That can’t be anything but Manichaeanism: a recurrent Christian heresy, explicitly rejected as doctrine by all the major denominations.
There’s your real problem with Creationism: it’s incompatible with Christianity.
Gotta be careful what you say. Someone might be listening, someone who can pick apart your threadbare logic into its slender threads . . .
What a good idea. I wonder what other containers will fill this need?
eBay: Plastic Film Cans for 120/220 roll film (item 7605790972 end time Apr-07-06 09:37:21 PDT):
If you do much field shooting with 120/220 film, you know how handy it would be if medium format film came in waterproof plastic cans like 35mm film does, so you wouldn’t have to worry about the paper tab cominug unglued and unwinding in your bag, or rain falling on your film and warping the backing paper, etc.
As it happens, old-style 13-dram pillbottles from before the Tylenol poisoning scare are a perfect fit. They’re dark amber, watertight, snow-proof, and hold 120/220 format rolls perfectly. They’re a close enough fit that film still in its wrapper won’t rattle around, but exposed, unwrapped film will, so you can tell fresh and exposed film apart without even opening the bottle.
Looks like these are pretty common in the pharma trade, as cheap as 9¢ apiece.
The transgressions of William J. Clinton were deemed worthy of censure by a long list of members of his own party, and a handful of the opposition. On the list of co-sponsors for a bill rebuking the incumbent . . . . *crickets*
(as usual David Horsey sums it up.)
A list of co-sponsors of S.RES.398, “A resolution relating to the censure of George W. Bush”
None.
Via Liberal Oasis, a list of Senators currently serving who co-sponsored S.RES.44 (106th Congress), “A resolution relating to the censure of William Jefferson Clinton”:
Democrats:
Republicans:
Both of Massachusetts’ Senators, both of whom are still serving, voted to rebuke Clinton but are silent on a rebuke of Bush. What do they have to lose? Nothing. And to gain? Perhaps some respect, maybe even self-respect. If Clinton’s acts were deserving of censure, why not Bush’s?
I had my thallium stress test today. Tedious, but uneventful. The worst was the 4 hour fast, which ends up being a bit longer once the test is factored in, followed closely by the caffeine ban — 24 hours prior.
First a catheter was placed in my arm (interestingly, I could still flex my arm as it it weren’t there). A small dose of thallium was injected, flushed through with saline.
Then 22 minutes in a radio-imaging scanner, a long bed/platform with a pair of imaging cameras that rotated around me, a few degrees every few minutes. The treadmill was next: lots of sensors were affixed to my torso — 9, perhaps 10 — all leading into the controller for the treadmill. Then off I went for a brisk walk until my pulse was throbbing away at 150 bpm. The remaining thallium was injected into the catheter. Held that pace for 2 minutes, and then it was time to sit down, cool down, and then wander the halls for 20 minutes.
Back into the scanner for 16 minutes and that was that. Took about 2 hours total. The cardiologist will read the results and call them into my GP who can then tell me it was all for naught.
My knees were the biggest problem during the treadmill. I won’t say it was easy to get my pulse up to that level: it took a few minutes and from 140 to 150 was a slow going. But my knees starting complaining much earlier. They’re high-mileage, I realize, but I really don’t want to to replace them. My father has had both of this replaced, and while it’s been an improvement, I hope not to get to that point.
Now to go find a geiger counter I can mess with: I know the security checkpoints will notice me for the next month. I’ll find out later this week if federal office buildings have the same sensitivity . . .
Now playing: John Coltrane Stereo Blues by The Dream Syndicate from the album “Medicine Show”
I missed this back when the war in Iraq was still a dream in the eye of many a warhawk . . . . I knew there were some people with their own millennial fantasies, but this is just naked bloodlust.
But there’s a much more basic reason to crush Saddam Hussein’s regime. The Islamic world — mainly the Arab Islamic world — needs to realize that it has failed. Medieval Islam cannot compete with liberal capitalism either economically or culturally. Unfortunately, that message has taken several hundred years to filter through. There is nothing like cataclysmic military defeat to teach the lesson more rapidly. One could point at the examples of Japan and Germany after the Second World War. But the Muslim world provides its own case study. Ottoman Turkey only began to pay attention to Western science and organization after its first serious military defeats at the hands of Austria and Russia in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The US needs to destroy Saddam Hussein’s regime because he’s a bad man, sure, because he may conceivably be connected with Al-Qaeda, because he’s developing weapons of mass destruction, because a friendly Iraq would alter the balance of power in the Middle East, sure, because of all of that. But the US needs to destroy Saddam Hussein’s regime mainly because the West needs to humiliate the Arab world, and dispel the Islamic millennial fantasy.
Inhabitants of Iraq, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries must realize that medieval Islam and strongman dictatorships are bankrupt. Arab political systems have held back progress, and even the Islamic traditionalists who deny those Western notions of progress will have to accept the objective measure of military accomplishment. Let the US send 40,000 soldiers against an Iraqi army ten times the size; let the defeat be total; and let Arab people realize that liberal democracy isn’t just a soft western indulgence, but the most effective form of social organization on this planet, and it is their future, if they want a future.
This is just tragically wrong, despicable, and ugly. If you wanted to crush and humiliate a regime that is holding back progress, Saudi Arabia would have been a better choice. But even then it would be a bad idea. I wonder if Denton has wised up at all in the intervening 3½ years? 40,000 soldiers? How about 4 times that many? As noted in the Times this weekend, Iraq’s defenses were crumbling before the war started.
Now if Iran does make a move, they can rightly say “yeah, and with whose Army?” now that we have wrecked ours. So much for humiliating the enemy, when all we seem to have done is emboldened the real enemy while settling old family scores.
Now playing: Psalm by Roxy Music from the album “Stranded”
curie – definition of curie by the Free Online Dictionary, Thesaurus and Encyclopedia.:
cu·rie (kyŠrē)n. Abbr. Ci A unit of radioactivity, equal to the amount of a radioactive isotope that decays at the rate of 3.7 × 1010 disintegrations per second.
I’ll be enjoying 3-5 millicuries at the start of my procedure today and then a booster of 30-40 at the peak. Since this is an exercise-based test, I expect it could be over in 20 minutes, given the appalling shape I am in.
