Sonia Sotomayor doesn't represent me

Dear Leader Obama singled out 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor several months ago as his nominee to replace Supreme Court Justice David Souter. She fulfills the basic liberal requirements of being a Hispanic female.

The media touts the fact that she graduated from Yale. George W. Bush did, too.

The media focuses on the adversity and challenges that she has faced in her life. I wager that I have faced more. Am I more qualified than she is? Perhaps so, by that measure.

The media does NOT talk about how Sotomayor has already demonstrated that she doesn't respect the US Constitution. She joined a 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in this past January's Maloney v. Cuomo case (Maloney v. Rice) in which the court upheld a lower court decision that the 2nd Amendment of the United States Constitution does not apply to the states. (The case concerned a New York lawyer's claim that the New York state ban on nunchucks violated his Second Amendment rights.) This means that states and cities can arbitrarily deny your 2nd Amendment rights to self-defense via any sort of a weapon.

The Maloney v. Cuomo decision runs somewhat counter to the earlier D.C. v. Heller case from June 2008, where the US Supreme Court held that the District of Columbia's ban on personal firearms ownership was unconstitutional.

An upcoming decision in Nordyke v. King may declare that the 2nd Amendment DOES apply to the states via "incorporation," where the 14th Amendment says that specific amendments to the US Constitution also apply to the states. In that event, the battle will be set to be decided by the Supreme Court. However, if Sotomayor is on that Court, then she will simply vote to uphold her original decision as part of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.

This would not be good for the US Constitution.

Her racist comments that "a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life" are offensive, too. Sure, that was a quote concerning discrimination cases. Nevertheless, if a white man had said something like that, he wouldn't even be in the running for the Supreme Court. But Sotomayor is given a pass. I think that's inappropriate and automatically disqualifying.

She has also made comments about her belief that Appeals courts are "where policy is made." I disagree. Courts are for enforcing the law. Not about inventing policy.

Being a justice on the Supreme Court is about applying the Constitution as it is written, not as the justices wish it were written. Sotomayor doesn't understand that.

But, let's assume, for a quick nauseating moment, that she is entitled to use racism and sexism to make her legal decisions. Under that definition, unless she has gray-green skin, boneless tentacles and the normal prime numbers of 3, 11, or 17 eyes, she is unable to represent me or my interests.

For all those reasons and more, she is a bad choice to be a jurist on the highest court in the nation.

I hope Dear Leader Obama is forced to make a better choice, a smarter choice than the mere racial-gender-quota-filling one of Sotomayor.

Carbon Leaf, "On Any Given Day"

I like this band. I thought they were Scottish, from Terry Clark's vocals and their use of bagpipes and pennywhistles, but they are from Richmond, Virginia. They are classified as "folk rock," instead of "Brazilian polka metal" as their guitarist has claimed.

(Unsurprisingly, I have lived and worked in Richmond, which was the capital of the Confederate States of America. You can see Civil War trenches and cannon emplacements near the airport.)

Goodbye, satellite radio

XM Radio turned off internet access for its radio subscriptions recently. Now you have to pay separately for it.

A month ago, I could have switched to XM's Internet-only access and paid $7.95 a month for it.

Now the English-as-a-second-language customer service rep at XM tells me that all they can do is let my radio subscription run out, because they don't do refunds. And if I want internet-only access, I have to call Sirius.

I checked Sirius.com, and the price for Internet-only access is now $12.95 a month.

I don't think so.

I originally picked XM because I liked their channel lineup better than Sirius', and XM had better business smarts than Sirius (which paid shock jock Howard Stern half a billion dollars to carry his moronic show). Now that Sirius and XM have merged, there's nothing left worth listening to, certainly not for $13 a month. That money would be better spent on ammunition.

There are thousands of radio stations available on the Internet for free, which far outstrips the 80+ stations on Sirius.

To listen to those thousands of radio stations, various manufacturers would rather have me buy an internet radio that finds them automatically, but I can find them on my own, thank you very much.

Sigh. Goodbye, satellite radio. You were fun while you lasted.

An amusing quote

As shown on http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/...

It wasn't my turn to watch Messier 87, so don't blame me

Big chunks of the galaxy Messier 87 are missing.

I don't know where it went. It wasn't my turn to watch it.

Must go see "Up"

The dog in the trailer for "Up" makes me laugh. Like the paleo-squirrel in the "Ice Age" movies, it would be worth going to see "Up," just for the dog.

Go see "Star Trek"

I enjoy the "Star Trek" franchise. All the series (except "Enterprise," which was annoying) and all the movies. That sort of makes me a purist.

As a purist, I expected Paramount to botch the latest movie, which is an attempt to reboot the entire "Star Trek" franchise by starting an alternate timeline with the original crew of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov. From the commercials on TV, the new movie looked like a comic-book version of "Star Trek," made for short-attention-span schoolchildren.

Nope. I was wrong.

The movie captures the rough-and-tumble essence of what made the original "Star Trek" series great. It captures the life, the vigor, the newness, the endless possibilities of the original series. And it does it with pizzazz, heartfelt emotion and great one-liners.

I like it very much. So much that I'm going to go see it again.

You should also.

The joy of Linux

The Windows XP installation on one of my laptops is dying a slow, creeping death. Various things stop working periodically, then start again. It's very annoying.

So I downloaded Linux from www.ubuntu.com. Ubuntu is a variant of Linux (there are dozens, if not hundreds). Ubuntu seems to be popular.

I downloaded it, burned an install CD from the download, and installed it to run as a dual-boot (selectable between Windows XP and Ubuntu).

So far, it works well. We'll see what else transpires.

Arguments against organized religion

I believe in God, and in the power of prayer to change reality. I have felt God's touch, lifting me, helping me. I have seen His power helping others.

But I have never been a fan of organized religion. It always devolves into a small group of people using a belief system as a cudgel to dominate others.

Exhibit A: A whole generation of people victimized by the Catholic Church in Ireland.

Exhibit B: People who convert to Islam in prison, who are arrested later for plotting terrorism. I think it's appropriate to scrutinize the mosques involved, even though they always deny any role in the perpetrators' plans or actions.

Exhibit C: I know people who are devout Christians, who have a terrible time finding a church where they can practice their faith and not battle over dogma. I think at a certain point in a person's spiritual development, they tend to discover that religion is not the same as faith, and they discard the religion.

Exhibit D: I know people who practice religion, who don't believe a word of it, who have no faith. That seems to be the emptiest spiritual existence of all.

Pictures of the USS Cod, SS-224

This is the USS Cod, SS-224, a Gato-class submarine which entered service in the US Navy in 1943. She went on seven patrols between 1943 and 1946 when she was decommissioned, sinking at least 12 enemy ships totalling 37,000 tons, and damaging another 36,000 tons of enemy shipping.

Her stats are here. She carried 6 officers and 54 enlisted men, along with 24 torpedoes (fired from 10 torpedo tubes (21-inch-diameter)), two 40mm antiaircraft guns and a 4.5-inch deck gun.


Her bow planes are folded up against the hull.


You can see how narrow the ship is, at least at the knife-like bow, which is hollow to allow water to flow in and out of the ballast tanks.

The conning tower has two 40mm antiaircraft guns mounted fore and aft.

The insignia indicate the enemy vessels sunk by the Cod. I know that the "rising sun" insignia represent enemy warships, while the regular "meatball" insignia represent merchant shipping. I'm not sure whether a hollow circle means "damaged" versus "sunk." I also don't know what the horizontal-bar flags mean. The outline of a ship with the number 26 indicates 26 "junks" (sailing ships) sunk. The O-19 and the martini glass commemorate the Cod's rescue of the crew of the Dutch submarine O-19, after the O-19 ran aground on Ladd Reef in the South China Sea. The O-19's crew threw a legendary party for the Cod's crew after Cod returned from her patrol.

The forward AA mount.

This is the submarine's periscope.

The aft deck gun, a 4-1/2-inch gun, which was not standard for submarines. I believe it's been partially disassembled and part of the barrel is missing, but I could be wrong, because it's not a type with which I'm familiar.

The aft AA mount, the periscope masts and an early radar antenna. This submarine was pre-snorkel, so it could run underwater only on batteries, instead of running on diesel engines and "breathing" through the snorkel while submerged.

One of the sub's bronze propellers. She had 4 GE V-16 engines of 5,400 shaft horsepower/4 megawatts each, driving 4 high-speed electric motors hooked to two props like this one. She could make 21 knots on the surface and 9 knots submerged, with a range of 11,000 nautical miles and an endurance of 75 days on patrol.

All the Myriad Ways, part 2

I was watching "The Road Not Taken" episode of Fringe from two weeks ago again. In it, Olivia and Peter interview Michael Carlin, a conspiracy theorist who thinks that the people who have died from pyrokinesis are test subjects in a supersoldier program designed to resist the coming invasion of renegade Romulans from the future. Mmm-hmm. (The real concern, of course, is Martians in the present. But we like conspiracy theorists because they're useful decoys.)

Anyway, the character of Michael Carlin (seen at about 22:00 in the Hulu link) is played by Clint Howard, who has a long and storied career in movies and television, including the role of Balok in Star Trek's 1966 episode, "The Corbomite Maneuver." Carlin was perhaps seven years old at the time, playing a baby-faced alien who talks to others via a scary-looking puppet so that people will take him seriously.

Balok's ship, the ISS Fesarius, is the size of a small moon.


"Balok" threatening Kirk.


The real Balok, played by Clint Howard.

Clint Howard today.


I only recognized him from his mouth and his eyes. He actually has not changed that much.

I also saw part of "Take The Lead" last night, a movie starring Antonio Banderas as a ballroom dance teacher working in an inner-city high school. One of the students was played by Jasika Nicole, who now plays Agent Astrid Farnsworth, the FBI lab assistant to mad scientist Walter, on "Fringe."

Pictures from Stump Pass State Park, Florida

A bunch of oldsters try to decide where to do their nature walk. I refuse to join this group - I am about four decades too young for them. I just go along to take pictures and to administer CPR to the ones which fall by the wayside.


This is one of the more succinct writeups I've found for how to distinguish one type of mangrove tree from another.


Beach sunflower (Helianthus debilis).

An osprey (Pandion haliaetus). This one has a fish. Another one buzzed me but I was too slow to get the camera into action.


A girdled Australian pine tree (Casuarina equisetifolia). The park service girdled all the Australian pine trees on this island about 15 years ago, to kill them. This was done because Australians are allelopathic, in that they produce chemicals which kill existing nearby plants and inhibit the growth of new ones. Fifteen years ago, the only vegetation on this island consisted of Australian pines. Now that the pines are dead, a wide variety of plant life now grows there.


All this vegetation is new, since 15 years ago.

Blossoms of a sea grape tree (Coccoloba uvifera).

Nickerbean (Caesalpinia bonduc).

An Australian pine stump.

I love the twisted wood of this fallen tree.


Red-bellied woodpecker (Melanerpes carolinus).


Vicious thorns. I can't remember the name of the plant.


Sea purslane (Sesuvium portulacastrum), a succulent herb that grows on the beach. The leaves taste like a pickle, which is why they are called sea pickle.


Dead Australian pine trees.


The traffic is pretty thick on the intracoastal waterway. The roar of engines and the stench of fuel is pervasive on the weekend.


The water is very shallow here. This scene reminded me of the intro scene from "King of the Hill" where they're all drinking beer on the street and the wife pulls up in the car. And of course, the "Family Guy" spoof.

This is Stump Pass. It's a favorite place for boaters to anchor and sun themselves.

The remains of an Australian pine tree, killed as the sea erodes the beach away. Note the dual set of roots; one for low tide and one for high tide.

A day lily, I think. Genus Hemerocallis, but I have no idea of the species.

A baby pineapple. I hope it gets much bigger.

Announcement to the world: "I have more money than brains"

In the Cars section of The Wall Street Journal today, which someone kindly left in the men's room at work (a nice change from the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Sports section, which is best used for personal hygiene), [name withheld to protect the terminally stupid] of New York said:

"My wife and I drive a 2005 Porsche Cayenne with 67,000 miles. Although it has had numerous mechanical problems from the start and is costly to repair, we love the drive and feel of the car. We have begun looking for a new sport-utility vehicle or station wagon that would give us a similar German-like drive. What would you recommend?"

Translation: "I have more money than brains. Please stop me before I buy another piece of crap."

(Longtime readers already know from previous posts here and here and here that I hate German cars, particularly Volkswagens, because they encourage people to drive badly. And they are badly designed. And they are exceedingly unreliable by Japanese standards. Marginally unreliable by US standards.)

Columnist Jonathan Welsh missed the perfect opportunity to tell [name withheld to protect the terminally stupid], "Sir, put down your keys and step away from the vehicle. You are clearly too stupid to be allowed to buy a car on your own." Instead, Mr. Welsh suggested the Volkswagen Touareg or the BMW X5, which is the automotive-advice-equivalent of handing a package of Twinkies to an obese diabetic.

Way to go, Mr. Welsh. You are helping to ensure the continued accuracy of Thomas Tusser's quip, "A fool and his money are soon parted." Meanwhile, [name withheld to protect the terminally stupid] will soon have another opportunity to help kick-start the economy through exorbitant repair bills on his newest German junker.

I just had to laugh at [name withheld to protect the terminally stupid]'s willingness to admit his foolishness in the pages of a national newspaper.

(No offense intended, of course, if you own a German vehicle. But you would do well to get rid of it before it drives you into bankruptcy.)

The season finale of "Fringe"

I enjoyed the season finale of "Fringe," and its toying with different possible universes. I especially like the scene at about 40:00, where mad scientist Walter goes to visit a grave somewhere, a grave with a headstone that is inscribed with the name of Walter's son Peter, who died at age 8 in 1985.

Who, then, is the adult Peter we know in the series, the cynical, wisecracking Peter who's always castigating Walter for being a rotten father when Peter was young?

A Peter from another universe, whom Walter abducted to replace his own son Peter, whom Walter apparently killed with his experiments (they make occasional mention of a grave illness that Peter suffered when he was 8).

Walter feels very guilty about that, as well he should.

Funny. You never really know someone, do you? They could be from another universe entirely.

Obama's fuel-efficiency diktat is a good thing

Dear Leader Obama announced yesterday that he is ordering new fleet fuel efficiency standards for all cars and trucks sold in the US, raising the fleet average 5 percent per year beginning in 2012.

By 2016, the fleet fuel-efficiency standard for all cars sold in the US will be 39 miles per gallon, and 30 miles per gallon for light trucks and sport utility vehicles. The current standards are 27.5 mpg for cars and 23.1 for trucks.

I think this is a good thing. With the automakers in such distress, there's no better time to force improvements in fuel economy. The technology already exists. Let's use it.

A petroleum geologist friend of mine who worked for a major oil company for many years insists that the oil companies have always colluded with the US automobile manufacturers to keep fuel economy low, in order to sell more fuel. I think that's perfectly plausible.

Obama's decree will certainly help to disrupt that cozy relationship between the auto industry and the oil companies. In fact, I would argue that it doesn't go far enough.

• They could do far better by reducing engine displacement and horsepower so that cars simply can't go as fast. Why would your car need to go more than 80 mph, for example? It doesn't.
• They could re-impose the 55 mph federal speed limit for highways. It's been done before. (However, it wasn't nearly as effective as public propaganda would make you believe.)
• With lower speeds, they can reduce cars' safety requirements, and therefore their weight, which has ballooned in the past decade because of those safety requirements. Personally, I think human life is extremely overvalued in the United States. Continually making cars safer simply encourages drivers to take those safety features for granted, and to drive faster. If people are acutely aware that their vehicle is dangerous and that speed kills, then they are likely to drive slower to help maximize their survival. (The ones who aren't aware, or who don't care, are more likely to die. It's a self-correcting equation.)

Of course, the fuel efficiency requirements begin the year that Obama's term expires, so that he can't be blamed as easily for the results.

Based on the domestic automobile industry's behavior for the past 40 years, it's clear that they will not improve fuel efficiency voluntarily. They have to be forced to do it. Although government meddling is generally a bad thing, in this case it's a good thing.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine was pretty good

So, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" was pretty good, given that it is based on comic book characters. Lots of fighting, blowing things up, wild stunts, improbably durable / immortal people.

I think some of the best moments are in the first ten minutes of the movie, where the introductory credits roll, and we see how Logan and his brother Victor grow up. They know they're mutants, and they wind up fighting in every major war since 1861. They're immortal, after all, and they seem to like fighting. The picture freezes with each actor's name, turns into a black-and-white photo, morphs into a photo of the next war, and the motion resumes. The uniforms and the weapons change, but Logan and Victor stay the same. It's very interesting.

I am not an expert on X-Men lore, but it seems from the X-Men 2 movie where Logan had flashbacks of his conversion to an adamantium skeleton, that the process was long, painful, and involved repeated procedures. This movie seems to contradict that.

And when he strikes sparks from his claws, it makes me laugh. Sparks consist of burning metal. If he's scraping metal from his claws, they will become dull and pitted. How does adamantium regenerate? I don't know. I didn't think it did. I thought it was indestructible. But sparks indicate that it's not.

It was nice to see Ryan Reynolds as the wisecracking swordsman Deadpool, and later as a different mutant. But I liked him better in "Blade: Trinity." He had more to do there, more dialogue, and his smart mouth was more essential to his character in "Blade."

And if Wolverine's nemesis has an adamantium skeleton like Wolverine, why isn't it impregnable like Wolverine's?

It's a comic book movie. It's not supposed to make sense. Heck, this movie makes Jackie Chan's movies seem like great literature. "Iron Man" was a logical tour de force by comparison.

But overall, "X-Men Origins" was pretty good. I'll watch it again when it comes out on video, and pick it apart some more. ;-)

Frou Frou, "Breathe In"

A co-worker of mine turned me on to Frou Frou. I have never heard this tune before, but I like the bouncy bass and her breathy voice.

UPDATE: I didn't realize, but Robin Tunney, who plays Detective Lisbon on "The Mentalist," appears in this video. The world is such a small place.

Going to see "X-Men Origins" tonight

because if I don't go when I'm thinking of it, it will leave the theatres, and then I will forget to rent it, and then I will catch snippets of it on TV in 2011, and it will irritate me.

So to forestall irritation two years from now, I will watch it tonight. I expect it will suck, but maybe not. Wolverine is the most interesting character of the bunch, anyway. I was glad when Scott (Cyclops) was killed in the last one - he was REALLY annoying.

This way, I can clear my head of the plot before seeing "Star Trek" this weekend with my darling wife. I hate seeing more than two movies in a week, and definitely I can't watch more than one a day: I conflate the plots in my head, and I can't remember which movie was which.

Not that any of it matters anyway.

Nothing stops the mighty blade...

...of my dinky little lawnmower. It's not meant to do what I'm doing with it (mow down thickets of vines) but it certainly tries its best.

It took me two days this weekend, about 4 hours, to mow down everything that was trying to come up on our lot next door, particularly all the smilax vine (the most horrendous vegetable life on this planet). The smilax does not yield willingly, but hacking at it with the mower eventually defeats it.

It's a mulching mower, so the blade churns everything up into little pieces, or it tries. The blade is in terrible condition now, after six months of this kind of work. But when it gets bent so badly that it's a safety hazard, I'll pull it off and replace it, and resume the work.

I hate smilax.

Hulu ROCKS

Especially because they have Firefly. You need to watch it.

Dyspareunia is a real pain in the you-know-what

Here's an interesting article about dyspareunia (dis-puh-ROO-nee-uh), which is persistent or recurring pain in the genitals that occurs just before, during, or after sex.

I am fortunate that I don't suffer from it. But I had a partner once who did.

At the beginning of our relationship, her enthusiasm must have overwhelmed any pain she might have felt. But several months into our relationship, her dyspareunia made itself apparent.

I was quite surprised. She had told me that she had been quite athletic and experimental with her previous lovers, and I'm sure that they would have run into this problem with her. Perhaps they did. But it was entirely new to me.

When she told me to stop in the middle of sex, I did.

The next time, I was much more gentle and concerned for her comfort. And still she told me to stop in the middle.

Perhaps I was a slow learner. But we tried several more times over the course of several weeks, and each time, we had to stop.

That was the first time I had encountered dyspareunia. I sure didn't like it. ;-)

I felt badly for her, and I took extra pains (no pun intended) to pleasure her in ways that didn't cause her discomfort.

Then, as our relationship progressed, I discovered that she also suffered from several other maladies . . . clinical depression, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel, general laziness, an inability to hold a job, and an offensive sense of entitlement.

Gradually, I became unsure of how much of her pain was real, and how much was in her head. Nevertheless, I was patient. I didn't pressure her for sex. On the contrary, I worked with her on it for a year. If she wanted to try, we tried. If she didn't, we didn't.

But I finally gave up on it. It just wasn't worth the trouble. We tried occasionally, but the end result was always the same.

So we stopped.

Doctors aren't sure what causes dyspareunia. There are many possible causes, and even more possible remedies for it.

But even if it's not correctable, I'm sure that a well-balanced, otherwise-healthy dyspareunia-sufferer could make a relationship work in spite of it. Sex isn't everything, of course. Sex isn't very important in the grand scheme of things. If you have a good, strong, loving relationship, dyspareunia is a minor inconvenience, like baldness or snoring.

As it turned out, dyspareunia was probably the least of my ex's problems. The sum of all those problems are why she's an ex. ;-)

Pictures from the Cleveland Indians baseball game

The Indians lost to Chicago last night, 7 to 4. That's fine. It was a nice game anyway. I played with my camera, a Kodak EasyShare 8.2 megapixel snappy that my darling wife found on the beach. It works fairly well, even though the shutter speed is slow enough for me to fetch a cup of coffee before it decides to finally fire.




The scoreboard is an electronic wonder. It made my eyeballs twitch from visual overstimulation.

I remember when most large downtown buildings in American cities had water towers on top of them.

Progressive Stadium (named for Progressive Insurance) has a ring of luxury boxes on the second level above the bottom row of stands, and on the end, facing the third baseline, is a strange multi-level restaurant, protected by a zig-zag glass structure.

The White Sox are in gray. The Indians are in blue. Here, the White Sox pitcher, catcher, and shortstop confer.

Many players from different teams know each other. They chat while they wait for something to happen. Baseball involves a lot of waiting.

An Indians batter connects with the ball and flings the bat away before he commences his run.

I took about 100 photos to get this one, of the ball leaving the White Sox pitcher's hand. It's the white streak on the left side of the photo.

A similar one of the Indians' pitcher. Slow shutter speeds let you be a bit creative.


I like the stadium at night - it's prettier. But it must be VERY hard to see the ball when it's coming at you, standing in the outfield.


The scoreboard at night.

The Cleveland Indians lost, to no one's great surprise...

The score was White Sox 7, Indians 4. I left around the sixth inning. It was getting cold, my lower stabilizing unit was going numb, and I could see, at 5 to 4, where the Indians were headed (a desultory slouch toward a loss). So I went home, did some work, and went to bed.

I will post some pictures either tonight or tomorrow. I got some interesting action shots.

I can believe some unbelievable things...

...but this one sprains my believer.

Take me out to the ball game

My client has decided that the hotel with which they have a direct-bill, long-term relationship, is too expensive nowadays. So they have asked me to relocate. I chose a nice Marriott TownePlace Suites in a western suburb, far from the rough neighborhood where my current hotel is. I will change hotels this weekend.

However, this means that if I'm going to see a baseball game at the Cleveland Indians stadium across the street from my current hotel, I need to go this week.

So I will go tomorrow night. The Indians will play the Chicago White Sox. Sadly, the opponents are not the Chicago Cubs, who are my favorite baseball team on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being "Not Caring Much About Baseball" and 1 being "Not Giving A Shit At All"). And the opponents are not my local jungle team, the Tampa Bay Rays, who are playing the Indians later in May after I move to the new hotel far away.

But at least it's a game. I have not been to a live baseball game in a decade. I enjoy live baseball games. It's something about the atmosphere . . . the crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd, the smell of hot dogs and peanuts, the possibility of suffering a concussion from a foul ball.

I am looking forward to it.

It will probably rain. ;-)

All the Myriad Ways

The "many worlds interpretation" of quantum mechanics says that every single possible event that could occur in the universe actually does occur, creating an alternate timeline for every outcome. Infinite possibilities, infinite outcomes. A boiling fountain of probability, spewing forth a new alternate universe every instant.

The esteemed science fiction author Larry Niven wrote a short story in 1971 called "All The Myriad Ways," which addressed this concept. Read it . . . it's very interesting.

The TV show "Fringe" also addressed it the other day, in the episode "The Road Not Taken." Olivia, the protagonist, begins flipping between alternate universes, using information she found in an alternate universe to solve a mystery in this one.

I'm starting to like that show more.

Flaming on the plane

I saw a handsome young man on the plane the other day. He was polite and he spoke well. His movements, his posture, and his speech patterns said that he was gay. Extremely so.

I thought, it would be such a shame if he wasn't gay, and was sending people completely the wrong message about his sexuality. Because those behaviors are often learned behaviors. I have met gay men who can turn them on and off at will. I have also met straight men who exhibited those behaviors quite by accident.

I hope he meant to display those behaviors. I would think that life would be more difficult for him if it was an accident.

A torturous stream of consciousness

Ha, Slate has an article about... well, I'm not really sure what it's about.

• A torture scene in the new Star Trek movie.
• The torture scene is reminiscent of the Star Trek: The Next Generation's sixth season episode, "Chain of Command," in which a Cardassian commander tortures Captain Picard for information.
• The Bush administration was evil for advocating torture, even though the methods they advocated were not, in my opinion, torture.

Anyway. I don't think the author of the article really knew what she wanted to say.

I haven't seen the new Trek movie (it comes out tomorrow, and I never go on opening weekend because everyone and their uncle and their dog will be there, and I don't like crowds of people) so I don't know about the torture scene. But it reminded me of David Warner, the man who played Gul Madred, the Cardassian who was torturing Picard in the "Chain of Command" episode of NextGen.

I first saw David Warner playing the Devil in the 1981 film "Time Bandits." Then I saw him playing Ed Dillinger, the villain in 1982's "Tron," both inside and outside of the computer. Tron appears regularly in the TV show "Chuck," in the form of a beautiful Tron movie poster on the wall of Chuck's bedroom.

I liked "Tron" a lot, because it was the first computer-animated film. The twin 32-bit computers that were used to create the computer graphics for the film were built by Perkin Elmer, a company for whom a relative of mine once worked. Perkin Elmer also made the mirror for the Hubble Space Telescope using computer-controlled polishing machines, and it was a major public relations disaster for the company when the telescope was launched in 1990, 11 years after work on the mirror began, and it was discovered that the mirror had been ground too flat at the edges. It was only out of shape by 2.3 microns (2.3 millionths of a meter), but it was enough to require a separate shuttle mission in 1993 to give the telescope "eyeglasses" to help it see better.

Back on track... David Warner also appeared in "Star Trek V" as a Federation ambassador, and in "Star Trek VI" as the Klingon High Council chancellor.

I always liked him as a villain. He has such an urbane, polished evilness about him.

Stormtroopers of Death, "The Ballad of Jimi Hendrix"

I'm not a big fan of Jimi Hendrix. I don't particularly like his blues-rock style. I don't care for his drug-addled lifestyle which led to his death from an overdose in 1970. I don't really see the genius that other people see in him. I suppose you had to be there, in the 1960s, to see it. Some of my friends think he's amazing. I'm amazed that they're amazed.

But I do admire his ability to play a right-handed guitar upside-down, left-handed. He would re-string his guitars so that the bottom E string was facing up, like a normal guitar. The way his Fender Stratocasters were designed, the pickup makes the upper strings sound brighter, and the lower strings sound more mellow. Stringing it backwards, as Hendrix did, made the upper strings mellow and the lower strings brighter. This is part of Hendrix's unique guitar sound.

In this tune, Anthrax (alias The Stormtroopers of Death) play the first few bars of Hendrix's "Purple Haze." That's it. That's the end. True musical genius. Really.

Well, it's about #%*&ing time they arrested Drew Peterson

Drew Peterson was finally arrested for the murder of his third wife. His fourth wife is still missing.

He is the 2000's version of O.J. Simpson.

Pictures of the Cleveland Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

I did take some pictures of my visit to the Cleveland Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Sadly, pictures inside are not allowed, and the guards are everywhere. So I took pictures outside.


The Cleveland Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.


I believe these are cherry trees in bloom. I could be wrong. I am not that familiar with plants that are not invasive, sharp, or poisonous.

This is the backside of the Great Lakes Science Center next door. It has a giant wind turbine, one of the only ones I have seen in this area.

This is "The Spirit of Goodyear," a Goodyear blimp based in nearby Portage County, Ohio. (I once attended a college for a year in Portage County, but I didn't know that the blimp was based there.) This blimp orbits my hotel regularly, droning through the sky over baseball games held at the Cleveland Indians stadium.

The Key Tower, the tallest building in Cleveland. It is 290m to the top of the spire.

The Hall at night, or night-ish. A slide projector in the plaza beams a series of images in rotation upon the square upper face of the building.

I remember the old days, when the blimps had a grid of white incandescent bulbs that were barely able to spell out intelligible words. Now they have full-color LED panels which cover most of the sides and bottom of the gas envelope, and which can display full-color, full-motion animation. Goodyear calls this "Eaglevision." I like the waving American flag in this particular animation sequence.

This is my hotel, next to the Cleveland Indians baseball stadium. There's a game nearly every night. I can tell if the opposing team is a serious rival by whether there is space to park in the hotel's parking lot. The more serious the rivalry, the more crowded the place is. Sometimes the game is also broadcast on ESPN, so I can watch the stadium from my room and watch the game on TV. It's very strange.

The Accidental "Grandfather"

So. I said I would talk about my "daughter" having a baby. You can tell I'm not particularly pleased about it.

She had such promise. Her single mother, a well-educated psychologist, adopted her from Vietnam when she was a baby. She was always surrounded by a bevy of her mother's friends and acquaintances, who all participated in her parenting, a la the liberal mantra, "it takes a village to raise a child." She went to an elite arts school. She made good grades. She was a great ballet dancer.

But she never learned discipline. Instead, she learned how to manipulate people. She would just go around her circle of parents and ask for something until she found someone who would give it to her. Which was not a good lesson to learn, I think. She liked us well enough, because we were always loving and supportive. We gave her our time, instead of material things. We tried to influence her thinking and her ethics, though I don't think we were particularly successful.

Whatever influence we had diminished greatly when we moved across the country, away from her, when she was 15. We paid for her tickets to come visit us for a week or two every year, which she appreciated, and we talked on the phone every month or so, but we could see that she was drifting away, hanging out with unsavory friends, being drawn into a life of parties and alcohol and drugs. After her "friends" stole her purse and other possessions, and broke into her car, she decided to clean up her act a little. But it wasn't enough.

She went away to college, to a party school, and unsurprisingly, partied her way into flunking out. She also got pregnant by a co-worker and moved in with him, an African immigrant whose family promptly declared ownership of the fetus. My "daughter" stood up for herself, admirably, and left.

I had several long talks with her, trying to explain that it was a mistake to have the baby. Single, without a college degree, without a real job that would provide for her and the baby, she was condemning herself and her child to a life of poverty, compared to what she COULD provide if she would only wait a few years until she was established with a degree and a career and, ideally, a husband. She needed to either abort, or give the baby up for adoption, but she could not keep it because she could not provide for it.

She wouldn't hear of it, though. It was murder to abort the fetus, she said. Since her mother is a devout liberal from the 1960s, I'm not sure where my "daughter" got her ideas. I certainly didn't supply them. And she wouldn't think of giving it up for adoption.

As she talked, it turned out that, like many girls in her situation, she wanted the baby because she wanted its unconditional love and acceptance. Which is a lousy reason to have a child. She didn't appreciate me pointing that out, either.

So I was unable to change her course. I gave up, knowing that to persist would only piss her off to the point where she would not talk to me. And I knew that living far away from her, we would not suffer the consequences of her decision.

She wanted us to buy her a ticket so she could come visit us, an annual routine for us. This time we said no, we wouldn't pay for a ticket, because if she's old enough to make adult decisions like having a baby, she's old enough to pay her own way now. She was very surprised and disappointed. But we thought it was prudent, because we knew that if we were still in the same city with her, she would show up on our doorstep and want to stay, especially after her mother made it clear that she and her pregnancy were no longer welcome. Our physical distance, across the country, insulated us from getting drawn into our "daughter's" evolving, self-made dilemma. So having her come visit while she was pregnant (or after the baby was born) was asking for trouble.

Perhaps it seems cold, but our reaction was not unique. Nearly all of her circle of "parents" gave her the same message. "Do the right thing for your situation, and either abort the baby, or give it up for adoption, but you are in no position to keep it. "

Of course she wanted to keep it. So she wound up in a halfway house for unwed mothers with criminal records, paying rent to stay there because it was the only place she could afford on her meager customer-service wages. I refused to feel guilty about it, because it was her choices that put her there.

Eventually she had the baby sometime in February. He's healthy, and so is she. She called me at the time ("Good news! You're a grandfather!" she said), and I was appropriately congratulatory and loving and encouraging, but my hearts were not in it. I know what she could have achieved, and I know that that life is statistically no longer possible for her. And I didn't choose to be a "real" father, so I have no particular interest in being a "grandfather" either.

She may surprise me, though. It's obviously her spiritual duty to place herself and her child in this situation. There must be a lesson that her soul is supposed to learn from this. She tells me that she's already discovered a wellspring of strength within herself, after all her family and many friends shunned her. Well, I said, that's good. She'll become a better person.

Her mother finally relented and let her move back home rather than leave her in the halfway house, but that situation won't last because they can't stand each other. My "daughter" hopes to move in with a friend across the city next month. (Arrangements to move in with various other friends have fallen through repeatedly, so we'll see.)

She's working again after a few months of not working, hostessing and waitressing at a restaurant while she goes to phlebotomy school at night to learn how to draw blood. Apparently phlebotomists are in great demand, and they get decent wages and good benefits. It's a far cry from her dream of being a cetacean biologist or an oceanographer, but I suppose she's had to redefine her dreams to fit her situation.

I hope she does okay. But she'll have to do it on her own. We still love her, of course. But we're not going to get sucked into her problems.

Sometimes emotional (and physical) distance are the best thing for a relationship.

Mick Karn, "Saviour Are You With Me?"

Not my favorite Mick Karn tune, but the man is a genius, on the level of Pino Palladino. Unlike Palladino, though, who's played with a myriad of bands as a session bassist, Mick went in a less-commercial direction after he left the band Japan (the lead singer, David Sylvian, stole Mick's girlfriend). Mick has done several solo albums and has collaborated with various people, including Sylvian and his old Japan bandmates for a brief, unhappy stint. This tune, from 1982's "Titles" album, is representative of Mick's fretless bass work. He played all the instruments on this album, and sang all the vocals. It's a wild album. Buy it. It's only $5 on Amazon.

Excuse me, I PAID for those...

After the White House Military Office Director, Louis Caldera, sent the president's airplane skimming over New York City in order to take publicity photos of it with the skyline in the background, Dear Leader and his administration justifiably took a lot of flak for it. Although the city police and government and aviation authorities were informed of the flight, the White House also told them not to make it public.

So of course the low-flying 747 scared a lot of people, for whom the September 11th attacks seem like only yesterday.

A White House spokesman called the flight "stupid," and most people seem to agree.

Now the White House refuses to release the photographs that were taken of the the president's airplane during that flight. No reason given, really, and the photographs are not "classified." Dear Leader simply won't make them public.

That flight cost at least $328,835 to make. Those pictures have already been bought and paid for by the taxpayers. Unless they are classified for military reasons, which they aren't, they should be made public. Not because it matters, particularly, but because those pictures are the property of the people of the United States of America, just as Dear Leader Obama and his minions are the employees of the people of the United States of America.

Which, of course, Dear Leader forgets, as do his legions of worshipful drones.

Let's see those fancy pictures that cost so much. That might make such a monstrous waste of money (as is Dear Leader's trillion-dollar Porkulus spending) seem slightly less insulting.

UPDATE 05/06/09: Dear Leader Obama now deigns to release ONE photo from the flight. Just one. Maybe. Perhaps it's rude to point out that he's waffling (just like Bill Clinton), but I think it's important to note that if he was a real leader, he would have done the right thing from the beginning, with no waffling. But no, he's not a real leader, so waffling is to be expected. As much as people loathed George W. Bush, he was not a waffler. He stood up for what he believed in, which, though often wrong, was admirable anyway.

The Bird and the Bee, "Love Letter to Japan"

I love her smooth voice, and the pidgin Japanese at 2:40. It's not really my kind of electronica, but it's a very effective earworm.

The Joy of ECT

I saw my friend R the other day. She suffers from a bad case of depression. She's in her 60s, and spent some time this spring in a psychiatric hospital, where she discovered that more than half of the female patients who were there for psychiatric treatment also had a bad urinary tract infection. Apparently there's a correlation between UTIs and depression in older women.

Anyway. She's out of the hospital, her UTI has cleared up, but she's still depressed.

She went to see the chief of psychiatry at a major university in Atlanta. He told her that psychiatric drugs are effective in patients over 60 years old only about 8 percent of the time.

So the next step is to get Electro-Convulsive Therapy, or ECT. What used to be called electroshock treatments. ECT has come a long way from the 1930s, when it was invented. Now a typical patient receives a couple weeks of treatment, three or four treatments a week. The patient is sedated, the electrodes are energized for only a few moments, and the brain reboots. The beneficial effects (the abatement of depression) can last for months, though most patients require re-treatment within 6 months to maintain equilibrium.

More than 1 million people get ECT every year around the world. Even the host of CBS' Late Show receives ECT regularly, said my friend's doctor.

The main drawback seems to be short-term memory loss (usually retrograde amnesia). The patient's memory usually returns, the doctor explained to my friend, but even if it doesn't, "your life sucks right now. Who'd want to remember that?"

(I like him already, and I haven't even met him.)

So my friend will go to Atlanta soon and get a regular jolt every few days for a couple of weeks.

I hope she returns in better condition.

"I'll call you right back" etiquette

I spoke with one of my "daughters" yesterday on the phone. I hadn't talked to her since she called me to tell me she had her baby, back in February. (I will talk about that in a different post, [eyeroll].)

She sounded good. The baby is fine, she's working again, hostessing at a restaurant, planning to move out of her mother's house at the end of the month.

"Hold on, can I call you right back? In ONE minute, I will call you back. I have to key in a code at the gate," she said. I think she was going to work, or something. I said that was fine.

I hung up, put the phone back in my pocket, and went back to work, knowing that she would NOT call back.

And she didn't. That's her annoying way of ending a conversation. Not, "I have to go now, but I'll talk to you soon." Not, "Let's talk again in a couple of months." It's always, "Can I call you right back? I'm in the middle of something." Even if she called me.

In addition to her mother failing to teach her how to (a.) study effectively, (b.) finish college, (c.) avoid getting pregnant, and (d.) avoid being a single parent at nineteen, her mother also failed to (e.) teach her proper phone etiquette.

Such as "do not promise to call someone back and then fail to do it."

Or "do not make up some excuse to end the call. End it politely and honestly, if you're done talking."

No. Sadly, my "daughter" didn't learn that.

That's okay. I know what to expect from her. ;-)

The Ting Tings, "That's Not My Name"

This has to be one of the most fun songs I've heard in awhile. Very singable.

This is the original UK version. I like the minimalist white background and the rotating turntable.

This is the US version. I like the nighttime football game/pep rally setting, with everyone in shadow except for the reflective tape on their clothing and their signs. Very cool.

Four little words just to get me along
It's a difficulty and I'm biting on my tongue and I
I keep stalling, keeping me together
People around gotta find something to say now

Holding back, everyday the same
Don't wanna be a loner
Listen to me, oh no
I never say anything at all
But with nothing to consider
They forget my name (ame, ame, ame)

They call me "hell"
They call me "Stacey"
They call me "her"
They call me "Jane"
That's not my name
That's not my name
That's not my name
That's not my name

They call me quiet
But I'm a riot
Mary, Jo, Lisa
Always the same
That's not my name
That's not my name
That's not my name
That's not my name

I miss the catch if they throw me the ball
I'm the last chick standing up against the wall
Keep up, falling, these heels they keep me boring
Getting glammed up and sitting on the fence now

So alone all the time at night
Lock myself away
Listen to me, I'm not
Although I'm dressed up, out and all with
Everything considered
They forget my name (ame, ame, ame)

They call me "hell"
They call me "Stacey"
They call me "her"
They call me "Jane"
That's not my name
That's not my name
That's not my name
That's not my name

They call me quiet
But I'm a riot yeah
Mary, Jo, Lisa
Always the same
That's not my name
That's not my name
That's not my name
That's not my name

Are, you, calling, me, darling?
Are, you, calling, me, bird?
Are, you, calling, me, darling?
Are, you, calling, me, bird?

The universe provides what you ask for, but sometimes it's very literal...

My darling wife and I had discussed getting a boat, since we live next to the ocean. But everyone we know who has a boat, lets it sit in the yard, and they never use it. So we couldn't commit.

Then a friend offered us the use of one of his boats if we'd keep it for him. He's being forced to find new homes for two of his three boats, since he is only allowed to keep one of them in his yard.

We went over on Friday to pick one out.

One is a wooden antique from the 1950s, not seaworthy, and he said "I just wanted to show you this one, I don't want you to keep it for me." He forgot that he had shown it to me before, and that I had feigned interest then, just as I did now.

One is a 20-foot-ish fiberglass V-hull stick-steer, with the motor in pieces in the bottom of the boat. It sheared a pin somewhere in there, he said, and his homeless friend is going to fix it. (My friend and his wife are diehard liberals, who collect junk and hard-luck cases. If their homeless friend (who is supposed to house-sit for them this summer while they're gone) doesn't rob them and burn down their house, I will be mildly surprised.)

One is a 12-foot skiff with a bimini and a motor which allegedly runs. But he keeps all of his boats outside, uncovered, and this one has wiring hanging out of the gunwales so the lights and the bilge pump probably don't work, and a squirrel chewed through the fuel line recently (I pointed it out to him). He said he'd fix it before he leaves at the end of the month.

The 12-foot skiff is in the best shape, but that's not saying much. I think that having the use of one of HIS boats will not do us much good. It will likely strand us out on the water, or sink, or both.

The universe always gives you what you ask for, but sometimes it's very literal. Yes, we could have a boat if we wanted it.

I'm not sure we want it. ;-)

Kraftwerk, "Pocket Calculator"

One of my favorite robot-pop tunes from 1981. I like the bouncy bass line and Ralf's stilted English.