A Brief History of Violence; or, Guns for show, knives for a pro

A few incidents of gun violence have made me realize that you could do a pretty solid blog consisting of nothing but the day's reports of gun deaths.

America (or the United States of same) has a problem with gun violence. Guns are easy for the wrong people to get. Criminals. Crazy people. Even when safeguards are put in place to keep guns from being sold to these people, there is a thriving "secondary market" of stolen guns being sold to anyone with cash.

I have blog friends from all over the world. I'd love to see some of them come to America to see what it's like firsthand. But many of them are afraid to come here. In their minds, if they come to America they will be carjacked, raped, shot, and murdered, not necessarily in that order. I've tried to assure them that the odds of this happening to them on any given day are less than 1 in 100, so they shouldn't let such a concern keep them away. They haven't responded favorably to this argument yet.

Still, it's not like the United States is the only country with a problem. England and Japan have had some pretty spectacular stabbing incidents recently. Canada just had an incident of a man beheading a stranger on a bus, while Greece had an incident of a man beheading his girlfriend - and then carrying her severed head around with him for a while.

When I was in Ireland - I'm not sure if this was my 2006 visit or an earlier one - a man was beaten to death with a toaster. Not a fast or pleasant way to go.

Locally we had an incident a few weeks ago where someone tied up two people while holding them at gunpoint, and then killed them - using hammers and what I believe are being referred to as "other construction tools." Chisels? Screwdrivers? I have no idea.

When I met Chelsea Clinton in Scranton earlier this year I had a few seconds to talk to her. Nothing much. Not that I was being rushed at all, and in fact I could have hung out with Chelsea at a nearby bar/restaurant afterwards, but I didn't want to delay the nice lady who took my picture and her daughter from getting to talk to Chelsea. So I think all I said to her after the picture was taken was something like, "I have a lot of friends who are afraid to travel to America. I hope your mom helps change that." I wasn't just thinking about our culture of violence. I was also thinking of the ever-more-draconian steps that are being taken to discourage any visitors from coming to this country, all in the name of National Security.

I don't know what the answer to any of this is. I don't know how to solve the problem of gun violence in America, or non-gun violence everywhere. I don't know how we can strike the correct balance between maintaining a free and open society and maintaining a level of safety and security. I don't know what I can do to make this country less frightening to my blogging friends from other countries.

Any suggestions?


TITLE REFERENCES: "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking; "A History of Violence", the graphic novel and later film; and a quote from "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels", when a mild-mannered chef's friends realize there's a side of him they never suspected.

Post-Apocalyptic Family Circus

Hanging out at the Comics Curmudgeon certainly gives you a new perspective on the funny pages. Some comics just beg to be parodied. This is the first thing that came to mind when I saw the 8/3/08 Family Circus:

But on further consideration, the looks of concern on the faces of the children in the original strip suggested they weren't just hoping that someday they could break down by a shopping mall.


And that farmhouse in the background? Was that element added to ease the sense of menace that comes with a family stranded in the middle of nowhere? Apparently Bil Keane never saw The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.



BONUS! Strictly 4 My Mudgez: This ad appeared on my site today.

Let's start with the bee-grinding! But why grind your own bees, when you can get them already ground?

Is SiteMeter's site infected with a virus?

OK, this has happened twice during the course of today's exciting Internet adventures. The first time I wrote it off as just one of those things, and I wasn't sure that the virus that my AntiVirus program had snagged was associated with the particular site I had opened.

But it just happened again. I opened the SiteMeter News/Announcements Weblog, and - BLIP - I got a message saying that my Webroot AntiVirus had just stopped the virus Exp/SWFScene-A from installing itself on my computer.

What is this virus? Is this just some innocuous bit of code that my AntiVirus is misinterpreting as a virus?

You know what? I have no idea. It's been a long day, and I really don't feel like starting another online investigation. I'll e-mail this post to SiteMeter and see what they can figure out.


UPDATE, 8/3/08, 9:24 AM: Just tried it again and got the same thing. What does it mean? I'm guessing that "Exp" stands for "Exploit" and "SWF" for "ShockWave Flash." I don't think this pops up if I open the link to the specific post dealing with this issue. So is it connected to something that's on the main page that isn't on the specific post? Maybe the "Blogworld & New Media Expo" button on the next post down? And most importantly, is this a real virus, or is it something being misinterpreted as a virus?

This virus message always pops up after I deny a cookie from mafna.info. I can't find any information about this site, though it gets a side-mention on this page about Web Spam techniques.

UPDATE, 8/4/08, 9:18 PM: Just got a response from SiteMeter support:

Thanks for writing. We are currently aware of the problem and it has been resolved. If you are still experiencing the same problem or have any other questions, please let us know.

...Which sounds like a bedbug letter. So I'm not sure how to interpret it. But I do know two things:

1. SiteMeter's News/Announcements Weblog looks different today than it did yesterday. Was there a virus lurking in one of the now-missing images?
2. I can't upload the screen grab I just took of the new look to the SiteMeter News/Announcements Blog - or any other images. What's up with that?

UPDATE, 8/4/08, 11:07 PM: Looks like Blogger fixed the problem with image uploads. Here's the new, simpler, and virus-free "SiteMeter Weblog." Notice the differences from the above image.

Now virus-free!

OrganicSon's Alien Nation

Here's a new blog by someone I chat with - Alien Nation by OrganicSon. From the introductory post:

Welcome...
To my site. Just call me Flash. This site is my way of expressing my art, my love for comics, technology, God, surfing, hockey, and anything else I can think of. So please check back as often as possible I will be updating daily with more thoughts and art by me....Flash.

OrganicSon has had blogs in the past, but he's starting fresh with this one. Will he keep it going? How long will it take for him to establish regular readers and make it onto the popular search-engine indexes? We'll just have to watch and see! Be sure to visit Alien Nation and watch his progress!

Hornets, frozen in death

You know what? You really don't want to see images of dead hornets still clinging to their nest as they were last week when they stepped out to deal with the assault on their home, only to fall prey to the potent insect neurotoxin that had permeated the entire structure. No, you'd probably much rather look at this picture from inside the "food tent" (really a permanent building) at the St. Mary's Parish Festival last night. (Still going on tonight! Hurry, hurry, hurry!)


Or perhaps you'd rather see images taken along the main concourse, as people from St. Mary's and all around the area line up to buy potato pancakes and pierogies and french fries with vinegar and beer and soda, and hand over their money in games of chance to win donated prizes?


Or maybe you'd rather look at the crepuscular rays of the setting sun as it went down last night over what was once the nursing home where my grandmother lived her final years?


Or perhaps you'd like to look at this billowing cloud, so full of water, forming over a mountain range to our south just an hour or so ago?


Well, whatever. You've had your chance. Turn back now if you don't want to see dead hornets.



Are they gone now?

Good.

I honestly felt bad about killing these insects, even if they are the dreaded Bald-Faced Hornets, which I still haven't established conclusively. These are predatory insects whose primary food is other insects - often very destructive insects. They play a valuable role in the ecosystem. In any case, who am I to decide who shall live and who shall die?

But they were on the side of my mom's house, right along a narrow strip of lawn I have to cut regularly, in striking distance of a well-travelled sidewalk, two neighbors' houses, and a line of blueberry bushes that I planted years ago where I regularly harvest blueberries with my nephews. They posed too much of a threat. I couldn't let them stay.

So I killed them.


And there they are. A week's worth of weather has possibly moved them around a bit, and their location in the shadows under the eaves makes it hard to get a good, sharp image. But you can see at least two of them locked in place - one at the very opening of the nest, and one ready to launch from the front.

Too bad. That's a beautiful nest, and they are really beautiful insects. But they posed a threat - to my mom, to my nephews, to my mom's neighbors, to people walking down the sidewalk, even to me. I couldn't abide that.

So they're dead now. I killed them. They don't pose a threat any more.

SiteMeter causing site errors in Internet Explorer

UPDATE, 8/2/08 2:34 PM: Apparently the crisis has been resolved at this time. We may now all go back to being stats whores.

UPDATE, 8/2/08 4:19 PM: This post gives an explanation of the source of the problem: a known bug in Microsoft Internet Explorer, one of those "clear as mud" things I mentioned yesterday. So the fault is with Microsoft for allowing this bug to persist, and with SiteMeter for failing to test any modifications on what is, despite what its detractors say, one of the most popular and widely-used web browsers.

Something has gone wrong with SiteMeter. Attempting to open any sites on the Internet that use SiteMeter - including SiteMeter's own site - through Internet Explorer yields this error message:

For the record (and the Google spiders) this message is "Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site"...whatever. "Operation aborted."

I first noticed this on SuperTiff's site last night. It didn't kick in right away - usually I had a few seconds to get in and read a bit and maybe even post a comment. (I move quickly online. 30 seconds is a hell of a lot of time to me.) But no other sites that I visited had a problem.

Tonight I couldn't open SiteMeter. This is usually the first thing I do, to make sure my own IP address isn't counted by my SiteMeter. Then I discovered I couldn't open Another Monkey, either...or a bunch of other sites. But some sites I could. The difference, I realized, was that the sites I couldn't open all had SiteMeters installed. The sites I could open, didn't.

But why just SuperTiff last night? Well, SiteMeter groups users onto lots of different servers. So my thinking is, whatever issue is affecting SiteMeter was on the server that her SiteMeter is housed on, but not the ones that any of the other sites I was visiting used. But now, this issue is affecting all of their servers. Whether this is a virus spreading through their servers or a poorly-vetted upgrade that has gradually been installed over the past two days, I do not know.

I researched this error message a little when I first started getting it today and got bewildering explanations that were clear as mud. But then I followed up on my SiteMeter hunch and found a help discussion thread on Blogger where someone else had already arrived at this conclusion - and someone else offered a solution: simply go onto your template through the Blogger site and remove SiteMeter. And that's just what I did - though I first backed up the html code to a text file on my computer so I could easily restore it when SiteMeter finally resolves this issue.

Which I hope will be soon! I'm getting near another SiteMeter milestone - I hope i didn't sail right past it without noticing! Though for the time being my visitors will not be counted. Too bad...I'll bet this post will generate a lot of visits.


Related:
http://www.oneprojectcloser.com/general/sitemeter-crashing-internet-explorer-sites-august-1-2008/ - This post has been extensively plagiarized by other sites successfully trying to steer search engine traffic towards themselves.

http://runlonger.blogspot.com/2008/08/internet-explorer-cannot-open-internet.html - For a slightly more extreme solution to the problem, which should allow you to visit sites that still have SiteMeter code.

http://motls.blogspot.com/2008/08/fix-internet-explorer-7-with-sitemeter.html - An explanation of the root cause of the problem.


UPDATE, 8/2/08, 2:23 PM: Looks like the problem is being resolved. I've undone the restriction recommended by Will and have reinstalled my SiteMeter code, and everything looks OK. My SiteMeter is showing 3 hits for today, while my AdSense hit counter says 179 people have stopped by today. Ironic that a SiteMeter failure would be the cause of so much (unrecorded) traffic.

Goodness, I haven't felt so much camaraderie in the Blogosphere since the great Smenita crisis of 2005!

UPDATE, 8/2/2008, 4:54 PM: Finally, an explanation from SiteMeter!

SiteMeter IE Issues Resolved

August 2nd, 2008

Dear SiteMeter Users,

We have become aware of a compatibility issue with our SiteMeter tracking code and IE 7 (possibly IE 6) browsers that started sometime last night.

The problem was related to some work we were doing on the backend system for our upcoming website launch.

We’ve identified and resolved two separate but related issues -

1 - IE Users viewing pages - There was a problem with users who placed their SiteMeter tracking code outside of their HTML Body Tag. Because of the changes we made this created a failure for visitors viewing sites using Internet Explorer 7.

2 - Accessing SiteMeter and Stats - Individuals trying to access or view their SiteMeter stats by clicking on their SiteMeter logo/icons were unable to gain access. This again appears to have affected only individuals using IE7.

At this time both problems have been fixed and our services are fully operational.

For those who removed the SiteMeter code from your pages please be assured that the problem has been resolved and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

Sincerely,

The SiteMeter Team

Come in alone, 'cause I'm frail and bedazzled

I'm tired. Semi-cooked. I wasn't quite expecting to mow my lawn when I got home today, but I did anyway. The good news is, it hasn't been raining so very often lately, so the grass grew a lot less than it has in previous weeks. The bad news is, I had to water the plants at my house: two cherry trees, three Roses of Sharon, four sunflowers, five tomatoes, six blueberry bushes...hmm, that's an odd progression. Though the replacement cherry tree and two replacement blueberry bushes don't look like they're doing so well, so the numbers may not quite line up in the future.

I had the My Bloody Valentine song "Come In Alone" from Loveless stuck in my head as I wrapped things up, and I started to wonder how much Smashing Pumpkins were influenced by them. MBV has been called "the most influential band you've never heard of", and many bands trace at least some part of their heritage to them - especially to the Loveless album. If you don't have it yet, pick up a copy.


And if you have any chance of seeing them on the current tour - their first one in over fifteen years! - please do. And then tell me what it was like.

Mary Worth goes to a concert

Here's the Smashing Pumpkins song "Frail and Bedazzled" in a fan-made video.

St. Mary's Parish Festival this weekend, August 1 & 2

The Parish Festival for Our Lady of Czestochowa, Nanticoke, a.k.a. Saint Mary's, will be held this Friday and Saturday, August 1 and 2, 2008, at the Holy Child Grove in Sheatown (directions, sort of; these are to Guardian Elder Care, a nursing home located in front of the grove.)

Saint Mary's Parish Festival, or Church Bazaar, or "Picnic" (to use the more genteel term) used to be a thing of legend. For years these were held in the parking lot behind the church and school and were three-day events, starting Friday night and wrapping up Sunday night. Sounds of polkas could be heard for blocks around, and the smell of frying food permeated the area for days. Beer flowed like water, parked cars clogged the streets in the neighborhood, and young punks rubbed elbows with the elderly. Yet somehow, I never remember any fights or other disturbances.

2005 is the last year St, Mary's had a traditional Church Bazaar. November 2005 was the first time we had a Fall Festival, an indoor mini-festival. We didn't have a Church Bazaar or Fall Festival in 2006, but we did have a "Spring Fling" in 2007. There was no Church Bazaar in 2007. I don't recall if we had a Fall Festival in 2007, and there was no Spring Fling this year. But this year we are having a Parish Festival. It may be our last.

We won't be having the Festival at our traditional location this year because the hardware for cooking and serving food is gone from our parish. Discarded, perhaps, or sold. Maybe it was redistributed to another area parish, much like our traditional antique manger scene figures disappeared from Saint Mary's and mysteriously showed up this past Christmas at Holy Trinity down the street. Whatever the case, we no longer have the capability to hold a festival on our own grounds. So we are forced to hold the bazaar several miles away. All those people who used to walk from their homes to their neighborhood parish festival - well, too bad.

Not that it may matter soon. Parish consolidation continues under shutdown manager Bishop Martino, and St. Mary's is one of the parishes shortlisted for closure. It's not set in stone yet, though Bishop Martino has displayed a George W. Bush-like tenacity when it comes to sticking to decisions he's made. So in a few months, all of the Catholic parishes in Nanticoke may be crammed into a single church with poor handicapped access, no air conditioning, and an already-overcrowded parking lot. I wonder if maximum occupancy codes apply to churches?

Whatever. Please come to the St. Mary's Parish Festival this weekend. It may be the last one, ever.

Josh Fruhlinger has a Posse

Josh Fruhlinger has a Posse

OK, I guessed at Josh's height and weight based on his appearance on Jeopardy last week, where he towered over everyone else on stage by at least a foot. The image is, of course, an homage to the Andre the Giant has a Posse images.

My inspiration for creating this was the fact that I was stuck for about twenty minutes behind a meth addict in line at the grocery store today. (All the other lines offered even more horrifying options.) That's the sort of thing that makes me want to just go home and play with the Adobe PhotoDeluxe program that came with my scanner.

When I got home and checked my e-mail I was delighted to see that the amazing Dean Booth, master of post-publication comics modification, had accepted, finalized, and uploaded my latest humble effort. You don't have to be a fan of Mary Worth, or even be familiar with the strip at all, to get the joke: Mary Worth and Dr. Jeff go to a Concert.


UPDATE, 7/30/08: Based on feedback from Josh himself, I have corrected his height and weight - he was playing against tiny, tiny people on Jeopardy, and it is a tribute to his humanity that he did not simply crush them with his bare hands and claim first place for himself. I have also adjusted the image color to more closely resemble the Andre the Giant has a Posse image, and changed the font (mostly) to Akbar, which is based on Matt Groening's lettering in the Life in Hell comics.

Solar Eclipse, August 1, 2008

Image from the NASA Eclipse Web Site

If you live in a narrow band of the Northern Hemisphere extending from Canada across Northern Europe through Russia, Mongolia, and China (as illustrated above), you have a chance of seeing a total eclipse of the Sun this coming Friday, August 1. If you live in a much larger band that covers parts of extreme northeastern North America, much of Europe (sorry, Spain, Portugal, and southern Italy and Greece!), all of mainland Asia, India, and parts of the Arabian Peninsula, you have a chance of seeing a partial solar eclipse.

There's a lot of good stuff about this eclipse online. Rather than try to rehash it, I'll just point you to some of the sites:

NASA's Eclipse Page for the Total Eclipse of August 1, 2008
An excellent site with tons of images and links. Part of the NASA Eclipse Web Site.

Wikipedia page for Solar Eclipse of August 1, 2008
Well, it's Wikipedia, so everything should be taken with a grain silo of salt. Still, it has (at this moment) some nice animations and cool links. Including...

A very cool interactive Google map that shows you what you will see - and when!

The World Clock - for converting all those UTC timings to your own local time.

If you can see this, I encourage you to. Eclipses are rare and amazing things. Please share it with your friends. Just be sure to view the eclipse safely - except during those few seconds of totality, you need to protect your eyes from the sun's rays. Here are some ways of doing it.

An Ode to China on the eve of the Beijing Olympics

My humble effort, a salute to China as it hosts the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing August 8th through the 24th. Permission is hereby granted for this poem to be republished, and I fervently hope it is distributed widely throughout China! I encourage others to express their sentiments in a similar manner!


An Ode to China on the eve of the Beijing Olympics

Finally you made it, and no one can deny
Rightfully you host the Olympics at last!
Every eye shall gaze, every heart shall thrill,
Every spirit soar as the Games begin!
Triumph of the nation that has shown the world
Indomitable spirit, unbreakable will!
Bronze and Silver and also much Gold,
Eternal glory awaits those who win!
To you, O China, let these Games bring much joy!

Yayyy, I'm in the club

I apologize for the poor quality of these photos,
but I was as close to this nest as I cared to get.

I was mowing the lawn at my mom's house when I noticed an insect on the lilac bush I planted about five years ago. It looked like a hornet, but it was black.

Black.

Oh, crap.

You know, if it weren't for Michelle I wouldn't know anything about these insects. And if it weren't for Mark I wouldn't appreciate just how dangerous these insects can be - assuming that they're the dreaded Bald-Faced Hornets. (Scroll down about 3/4 of the way on Mark's post to the part that begins with the words "It's not every day that" in pink.) I didn't scrutinize the insect closely enough to see if it had a white face, though the fact that I wasn't attacked when I mowed under their nest suggests that they may be a more relaxed sort of insect.

Whatever. Tonight, after sundown, they die.

• Hat - check
• Balaclava - check
• Goggles - check
• Long sweatpants and sweatshirt - check
• Boots - check
• Leather gloves - check
• Position of cover and easy retreat - check
• Can of spray Wasp & Hornet killer with 22 foot range - check
• Lack of sufficient sense to leave this to a professional - check

I wonder if I should also deal with these guys, who are living just above my position of cover:


We'll see. Whatever. If I die, tell Keira Knightley I love her.


Update, 9:00 PM: I didn't die. I don't know if they did, either - the balaclava made my goggles fog up, and it was all I could do to be sure I was hitting the damned nest. I soaked it - I don't know if that does any good - and I made sure I doused the entrance. As it was after sunset, around 8:45, it was a little hard to be sure but I thought I saw a hornet come out of the opening and freeze there. The poison I used is an insect neurotoxin, I think, so hopefully I applied enough to poison the nest. I think I only used 3/4 of the can - I saved the rest to cover my retreat, just in case.

The beginning of the end

Throughout my childhood today marked an important turnover point. This is my grandmother's birthday. Every year on this day as much of the extended family as could manage would head over to her house for a party. She would make a cake for everyone, a two-layer version of her Marigold Glory cake with vanilla-coconut icing, and we would all sing "Happy Birthday to You" and "Sto lat" and then sit in the kitchen - around the kitchen table, in chairs scattered along the walls, on the piano bench pressed into service as seating for a group of kids, my grandfather enthroned in his rocker with his pipe - and have cake and ice cream and coffee. Then someone would start playing the piano, or my uncle would break out his accordion, and all the older folks would drink coffee and beer and sing Polish songs while the kids gathered around the TV in the next room to watch reruns of Star Trek or the John Pertwee-era Doctor Who.

A week later our Parish would have its annual Church Bazaar in the church parking lot just up the hill, but by then Summer would be well along its downward slide to the beginning of school. My grandmother's birthday was that turnover point where Summer began to end. It always snuck up on us unexpectedly; the days had been getting shorter for over a month, but at the same time they had been getting hotter. Suddenly we noticed the ripening grapes, the later sunrises and earlier sunsets, and the profusion of Back-to-School sales. September was on its way.

My grandmother died ten years ago this December. She fell a dozen years short of the hundred wished for in "Sto lat", but the parties had become more subdued events well before that. My grandfather, with his deep but raspy laugh, had passed on decades before her, and I'm not sure what happened to his original rocker. The piano has not been played as part of a gathering in many long years. I last heard my uncle play the accordion at his 25th wedding anniversary in 1997, eight years before he died. My aunt, his wife, now has the old kitchen table and chairs.

I have the house. And the piano, and the piano bench. And my grandfather's rocker, if it's still in the house. I put one of my own in the vacant spot it had once occupied several years ago, and I replaced the kitchen table and chairs and even the "extra" chairs.

The grapes are having a bad year. Partly that's my fault - I wasn't aggressive enough about pruning them, or weeding below them, or spraying them with fungicide early enough in the season. Partly it's due to the hot, wet summer we've had, which has produced ideal conditions for black rot on grapes. Still, a few may make it through to Labor Day this year, just like they did last.

Purple grapes, rear arbor, August 31, 2007

Our Parish will have its Church Bazaar next weekend, though not in the usual location. Someone sold off all of our heavy-duty cooking gear some years ago, or relocated it to some location where it is shared with other Parishes in the city. The 2008 St. Mary's Church Bazaar will be held on the grounds of the Holy Family center August 1-3. This may be the last year for this Church Bazaar, as this may be the last year that St. Mary's exists as a Parish.

The days will continue to get shorter, and the nights will get cooler, and school will begin before Summer has a chance to truly end. And we will be able to look back on this day and say, "There. That was where it all started to go wrong. That is where Summer began to end!"

Happy Birthday, Babki.

Sto lat, sto lat,
Niech żyje, żyje nam.
Sto lat, sto lat,
Niech żyje, żyje nam,
Jeszcze raz, jeszcze raz, niech żyje, żyje nam,
Niech żyje nam!

...or is McCain just delusional?

From the Associated Press:*

McCain credits Bush for drop in oil price
By TOM RAUM

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. (AP) — Republican John McCain on Wednesday credited the recent $10-a-barrel drop in the price of oil to President Bush's lifting of a presidential ban on offshore drilling, an action he has been advocating in his presidential campaign.

The cost of oil and gasoline is "on everybody's mind in this room," McCain told a town-hall meeting.

He criticized Democratic rival Barack Obama for opposing drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf.

Bush recently lifted the executive order banning offshore drilling that his father put in place in 1990. He also asked Congress to lift its own moratorium on oil exploration on the outer continental shelf which includes coastal waters as close as three miles from shore.

"The price of oil dropped $10 a barrel," said McCain, who argued that the psychology of lifting the ban has affected world markets.

Barron's derided McCain - and all politicians - for expressing the belief that they are somehow responsible for the ups and downs of the oil market. (Note that sections of the Barron's report look like expanded and rewritten sections of the AP report. )

Unfortunately, I can't find a complete version of McCain's quote. I thought I heard it on a news insert on NPR's Morning Edition today, but I can't find it now. Local NBC affiliate WBRE had an exclusive** interview with McCain that contains the first half of the quote (from 1:04 to 1:09). I'm wondering if that's the source of the quoted statement in the AP article.



UPDATE: Not that I'm advocating violence against a Presidential candidate, but John McCain says the incredibly brickable phrase "It is what it is" three times in less than 20 seconds, at 1:47, 1:53, and 2:04.

UPDATE, 7/26/08: That George Bush is a genius! Gas prices dropped to $3.92/gallon at Sam's Club in Wilkes-Barre on Thursday, and were $3.88/gallon yesterday!

...or was it McCain's speech that drove down prices?

...or maybe Obama's European tour?

...or perhaps the solar eclipse coming up on August 1, visible in a very limited area in far northern Europe?

...or...


*Note: MSNBC, CBS, and countless newspaper outlets have simply parroted the AP story. Another story referred to the "junior varsity press corps" being sent out to Wilkes-Barre. So much for the hard-working folks in the mainstream media. "Oh, it's in Wilkes-Barre? We'll just run the wire report. Send Willy if he's done inventorying the stockroom."

**As Jennifer pointed out in the comments, local ABC affiliate WNEP also had an interview with McCain while he was in the area, though I didn't find that one while hunting on YouTube. I guess what set me off was the claim by CBS that Katie Couric had an "exclusive" interview with McCain - the juxtaposition of the headline with the AP article on McCain's visit made me think they meant "exclusive while he was in Wilkes-Barre", but I see now that the line says "spoke exclusively Tuesday to..." What the heck makes something "exclusive", anyway?

John McCain thinks you are very, very stupid

Why else would he approve this ad?



Narrator: "Who can you thank for rising prices at the pump?"
Chanting voices fading up: "OBAMA! OBAMA! OBAMA! OBAMA!"

Fade up picture of Emmanuel Goldstein - oops, sorry, Barack Obama.

From the Wilkes-Barre Citizens' Voice:

With Arizona Sen. John McCain scheduled to campaign today in Wilkes-Barre, Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign on Tuesday attacked a new McCain television commercial airing in Pennsylvania that blames the Democratic presidential candidate for high gasoline prices.

To rebut the commercial, the Obama campaign called on U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Scranton, who called it “particularly pathetic.”

...Casey said the ad is “misleading” and has “some gross misstatements of fact” that no one will believe, considering Obama has served fewer than four years in Washington.

“I think John McCain should demand his money back from his media consultant,” Casey said. “For John McCain, who’s been in Washington for 26 years, to blame rising prices at the pump on Barack Obama is really ridiculous. And it shows the kind of desperation usually you don’t see in a campaign until late October when things aren’t going real well.”

The McCain campaign declined to say how much it is spending on the commercial or where it is airing.

“What’s particularly pathetic is Barack Obama’s continued opposition to exploring for more domestic energy sources and providing a temporary gas tax holiday for hardworking families,” said Paul Lindsay, a McCain spokesman, in an e-mailed statement...

"No, we're not pathetic, you're pathetic!"

The really pathetic thing is, some people will actually fall for this crap.

Jonathan Alter: Autotroll

I don't know if the word officially has some other definition, though with any luck (and the grace of the editors, who I trust will correct an egregious typo), this definition will soon appear on my list of defined terms on Urban Dictionary:

autotroll
1. Someone who makes deliberately inflammatory or outrageous statements on his own website or other forum in order to attract attention and/or traffic.
2. The act of making such a statement.

Johnathan Alter autotrolls by attacking bloggers in "All Umbrage All the Time" just to get bloggers to talk about his article and link to it.

Alter's article appears on page 29 of the July 28, 2008 edition of Newsweek. It also appears online on Newsweek's website, though I won't drag Alter down to the level of us mere Netizens by providing a link.

Not only will I not drag Alter down into the digital mud with the rest of us, I also won't burden his employer's servers with what little traffic I might send their way by way of a link. I still get the occasional hit for my link to Newsweek essayist Anna Quindlen's "Write for Your Life", in which she wistfully calls for...well, I'll let you read that post in case you're interested. Let's just say that the answer to what she's calling for is a four-letter word that starts with "b" and ends with "log", even though she herself never uses the term, or shows any awareness of such a thing. Still, here's an excerpt from what Alter wrote, the thing that set me off:

Bloggers rarely pick up the phone or go interview the middle-level bureaucrats who know the good stuff. It's a lot easier to chew over breaking stories and bash old media. Where do they get the information with which to bash? Often from, ahem, newspapers.

Alter weasels out of being held to this statement with the qualifiers "rarely" and "often." Oh, folks like Gort and Mark Cour and David Yonki go out and do their own research, conduct their own interviews, establish their own networks of contacts? Blog entries that they write are regularly pirated, plagiarized, and republished as "exclusives" and "scoops" by the local mainstream media? Well, pshaw, they're the rare exceptions! Them, and hundreds of thousands of other hard-working bloggers like them.

Alter's whole tone is one of Old Media good, Blogging bad, and who can blame him? With the blogosphere thick with writers that put him and Anna Quindlen and George Will to shame, it is entirely possible that one day Newsweek will look at its balance sheet and ask, "Why are we paying these people the money we're paying them?"

Magazines are destined for the recycling bin. Newspapers are pressed into service as fish-wrappers and puppy-trainers. Radio and television broadcasts escape into the aether and are gone, unless someone deliberately records them. But words on the Internet have an enormous staying power, as many an impetuous writer has learned to his regret.

Ironically, Alter's words on the printed page are destined to grace the bathrooms of many a subscriber for the next few weeks until they are unceremoniously gathered up and put out for recycling - except for those few copies that will grace the waiting rooms of doctors and dentists and car-repair shops for decades to come. But the online version of his article, the version preserved on the Internet that he despises so much, has the potential to float around in some form for much, much longer.

The Comics Curmudgeon is in Jeopardy!

...or should I say on Jeopardy. And by "The Comics Curmudgeon" I am not referring to the site itself, but rather to the blogger and founder of the feast, Josh Fruhlinger.

From this post:

...Tuesday, July 22, your humble blogger will be appearing on the game show Jeopardy! Will it be the first installment in an epic Ken Jennings-style saga of money-winning, or will I flame out ignominiously on the first try? Does Alex Trebek secretly share my love of Rex Morgan, M.D.? Do I at least wear a nice tie? Tune in to find out! The show is syndicated, so check your local listings for time and channel. And, if you happen to live in Baltimore or not too terribly far from it, feel free to join me and my friends as we watch the show. We’ll be at P.J.’s Pub at 3333 N. Charles St. in Charles Village — right across the street from Hopkins Homewood campus and next door to Barnes and Noble. In Baltimore the show starts at 7 p.m., but we’ll be gathering starting at 6 p.m. for pizza and booze!

Josh is personally responsible, by way of his site, for rekindling interest in the funny pages in a lot of his readers, including me. He's also very funny and very smart. Here's hoping he was given categories like "Mark Trail's World of Nature", "Advice-Spouting Biddies", and "Afflictions Visited by Tom Batiuk Upon His Creations."

As Baltimore is approximately 3.5 hours from where I work and I don't get out of work until 4:30, I'll have to catch Josh on TV here...or, if the weather holds up, I'll catch him on videotape after I mow the lawn. Here's retroactively wishing you good luck, Josh!

The sky was gold

Gold sky at sunset

July 20, 2008

Nanticoke, PA

Title reference: Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life"

Apollo 11 lands on the Moon: July 20, 1969

Image from NASA's JSC Digital Image Collection

Thirty-nine years ago today, humans first set foot on another world.

I'd love to post a video, but YouTube appears to be down at the moment (9:37 AM, July 20, 2008). And the NASA folder of Apollo 11 movies is currently empty. What's up with that? I'd make a joke about NASA faking the moon landings, but some people take that "Moon Hoax" crap seriously. Oh, well, you can go here to see everything NASA has online about Apollo 11.

UPDATE: You can go here and select images and video from many NASA missions, including Apollo 11.

UPDATE 2, 4:40 PM: YouTube is up again. Maybe it was never down for anyone except me. Michelle has reminded me of the site http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/, which I'll have to check next time. Here's one of the many relevant videos.



If I didn't make it perfectly clear in my post about Tasmin Archer's song "Sleeping Satellite", the "eagle" to which she refers in the third line is the Eagle, the Apollo 11 lander. I suppose I could have saved that post until today, except I didn't even realize that today was the anniversary until I saw it on one of my many calendars. Also, with YouTube down, there wouldn't be much to post.

I have created a new label called "The Moon" for all of my posts about the Moon. I've only re-tagged about half of the relevant posts as of this writing, but I'll keep working on it.

Phil Plait has a post commemorating this event over at Bad Astronomy.

Another Monkey Consumer Price Index, 7/19/08

Here's the second edition of my personal Consumer Price Index, the list of how much I paid for common things. See how your prices compare!

Today's currency conversions, according to XE.com:

$1 =

• 0.50033 GBP (British Pounds)
• 0.63080 Euros
• 1.00568 Canadian Dollars
• 1.02805 Australian Dollars
• 5.07950 NOK (Norway Kroners)
• 106.965 Japanese Yen
• 1,154.35 Iraq Dinars
• 5,200.05 Turkmenistan Manats
• 18,681,527,512.36 Zimbabwe Dollars

Gasoline
7/14/08, 87 octane, Sam's Club, Wilkes-Barre PA: $3.999/gallon
7/18/08, 87 octane, Sam's Club, Wilkes-Barre PA: $3.979/gallon

Groceries
From Weis Market, Nanticoke, PA, 7/15/08:

Milk, 2% milkfat, half-gallon: $1.94
Dozen Eggs, size "Large": $1.50 / dozen (sale price, normally $1.77 / dozen)
Bread, Maier's Italian Seeded, loaf (1 lb. 4 oz., or 567g): $3.19

Orange Juice, house brand, half-gallon: $2.50

California Celery, 1 stalk: $2.69
Cherries: $3.99 / lb. (sale price, normally $4.99 / lb)

Whiskas Cat Milk: $1.15 / container

From Gerrity's Market, Hanover Township, PA, 7/19/08:

Apples, Macintosh: $3.49 / 3 lb. bag
Cherries: $3.99 / lb. (sale price, normally $4.99 / lb.)

Whiskas Cat Milk: $2.99 / 3-pack

Other:
Haircut, $10 plus $2 tip
(This is from the last barber in Nanticoke. He runs an old-fashioned barber shop, but only keeps it open for a few hours each week. He's older than he looks but younger than he seems.)

First Class Stamps, 42 cents each

Shaving Soap, Williams brand, 1.75 ounces: $1.49
Shaving Soap, Van Der Hagen brand, 2.5 ounces: $1.99
(I bought two of the Williams and one of the VDH. I had a little scare when I walked into the drugstore and didn't see any shaving soap, or brushes either. But then I saw that they had actually been relocated to a higher, more visible, more accessible shelf. Still, I bought two cakes of the Williams - all that they had - and one of the VDH. This should last me at least a year. How many cans of shaving cream would I go through in that time?)

How do your prices compare?