What's the deal with this damn school in Georgia having its first integrated prom? Huh? I didn't really get it until I read the story just now - I saw the headlines all day yesterday, but this is freaking ridiculous:
Many Southern schools have kept social activities segregated years after court-ordered integration. Though some schools still crown dual homecoming queens or have separate social clubs, Taylor County High School was one of the last to hold separate proms.
I am a huge backer of personal property rights and I do not believe that the government has any authority to "force" private business to integrate or behave in ways different than the beliefs of the owner, but this kind of shit is just downright back hills George Wallace racism. These are public school for crying out loud - how in the hell have they been able to get away with this stuff for so long? The government, including schools, should be 100% color blind! I am going to look into this one and I will be revisiting the topic in the future. Damn.
"The videos focus on values without mentioning the value of Jesus," writes Otto Selles, of Calvin College in Michigan, in the intellectual journal Books & Culture. "I have another quibble: VeggieTales are sorely lacking in the gender equity department. They present vegetable characters that are mostly guys, created in the image and vocal talents of the series' (male) creators."
Nawrocki accepts this criticism, in part, but has his own views.
"We didn't want to show Jesus as a vegetable," he says. "We felt that would be stepping over the line."
Thus, most of the Bible stories adapted for VeggieTales come from the Old Testament, because the central characters, often prophets, are human and fair game for good-natured satire.
When I was staying with Tony's family three weeks ago and watching these videos with the kids, I did notice that they all seemed to be out of the Old Testament, but that was all. Very interesting that they don't do any New Testatment stuff. I guess they could sell this stuff in Israel, too? Ha ha.
I am not afraid of getting a speeding ticket in Houston, under most circumstances, especially on a freeway. Why? Because it's easy to go to court and raise hell and it's hard for the prosecutor and the cop to prove that there was a specific reason why you deserved a ticket while everyone else around you didn't. And if that one doesn't work, you can also argue that the cop pulled over the wrong car - how is he going to argue that he got the right car when there are 20 cars speeding by every second at 70 miles per hour? Trust me, I have gone to traffic court twice and gotten off twice. Never gone to trial - the judge and the prosecutors tend to just throw out the cases that make them feel like they have to do some work and that's what they've done to me both times. They would much rather just pick on immigrants and other people who don't understand the process and who would rather just walk in, pay a fine, and go home. It's a joke.
Red lights and lane changes are a different story - I don't want one of those tickets because then it all hinges on the cop's opinion and the whole system is just blatantly stacked against the defendent in those cases.
Anyway, there is an article in the HOUSTON CHRONICLE this morning about the new 55 mph speed limit that has been implemented because of "clean air" laws. The police admit that it's going to be hard to prosecute people under these limits because going faster than 55 mph isn't necessarily "unsafe".
First off, if there are any muslim countries that I am particularly worried about, they are in southeast Asia: Indonesia, Malaysia, Philipines. I say that because not only are these guys a bunch of crazy Koran-quoters, but they live in the jungle and can easily hide, and there are a lot of islands in those countries. There is a story today on the subject on MSNBC.
Saturday morning... big party at the house tonight.... expecting 200 people.... crap, I have work to do....
Probably not going to be a lot of updates the next few days. I'm going to be extra busy today and tomorrow and then I'll be at a conference in New Orleans on Monday and Tuesday. Couple of things I want to talk about right now, though.
Bill Buckley weighs in with his opinion on the Jenin "massacre". This is similar to what I said earlier about the Palestinian's needing a massacre in order to help their cause, but he also has some pretty heavy stuff to say about them being dishonest:
[speaking of another supposed "massacre" during the 1967 war] Pryce-Jones's inquiry went beyond the streets of Gaza City. He found what he thinks now is a clue to understanding in these times. He found this in an unlikely book, the 19th-century memoirs of Isabel Burton, wife of the famous explorer and linguist Richard Burton. There was this sentence in her text: "Out of the very stones they will fabricate such a tower of falsehoods that you can only stand and gape in wonder and admiration at their fruitful invention." The stereotype of the Arab as a born liar had been acknowledged, when Mrs. Burton wrote, by experienced English observers including Sir Henry Layard, the excavator of Nineveh, Field Marshall Kitchener, and Lawrence of Arabia. We learn from Pryce-Jones that Mrs. Burton was exceptional in having the human sympathy to perceive "that the lying was a sign not of innate bad character but of creative self-defense in circumstances of relative weakness."
Tuesday afternoon, I got into a terrible argument with the guy who runs the tuxedo shop that was contracted for Nichol's wedding. His customer service skills are terrible and I get the distinct impression that he was vague about his return policy just so he could have a better chance of boning me for his excessive $20 late fee when I took my tux back that day. I will never give that store any of my business again - I sure hope none of my friends decide to get married and force me in that direction.
Nonetheless, I lost my cool and I said some bad words and it was just a bad situation on Tuesday that should not have happened. So I wrote the guy a letter and mailed it first thing wednesday morning. He called me yesterday and thanked me for my letter and apologized to me too and it was all rather cathartic. Like I said, I won't ever give the guy my business again, but I felt bad and I am glad I apologized.
Tony DeWitt is a pretty smart guy. I'm going to have to given him an actual title like "Associate Blogger" or something like that for all of the good stuff he sends me. Here is his taken in Jenin:
I think that something else entirely is going on here. Think about it. What would be the point, or outcome, of a U.N. investigation into Jenin? To come to a common understanding so all our history books are in sync? No. The Palestinians are trying to use the U.N. as a weapon to fight against Israel.
While the Human Rights Watch found no evidence of a massacre, they did find evidence of "war crimes". What just happened at the U.N.? They just voted the International Criminal Court into existence. The Palestinians are trying to use this artificial U.N. construct to try and get Israeli leaders extradited to Brussels and put on trial. Or, perhaps, to use the threat of doing so to pressure Israel not to carry out such operations in the future.
News broke this morning that FBI agents had asked for an investigation of
Arab men taking flying lessons in the US prior to 9-11. Have you seen
anything print worthy?
Nat
1.) Cynthia McKinney and her backers are going to see this a justification for her wacko comments a couple weeks ago, even though I do not believe that the FBI or the government would have let the attacks happen if they had known of the actual plot; and
2.) The scariest part is that none of the people investigated in the original alert were associated with 9-11. That means they are still out there, even though I am sure the FBI probably knows more about them now.
Mark Coplen, who normally likes to bitch about my spending time on the blog, sends in this contribution this morning. I wasn't going to comment on the story because I didn't have much to day. Luckily for me, Mark says it for me:
John - be careful - big brother may be guiding you to do the man's work.
Interesting read.
Mark
http://msn.com.com/2100-1103-897367.html
Aren't we all just rats in a cage? Despite all our rage?
Bojak is spending the day at the vet. His skin allergies have been bothering him lately - the damn dog can't keep licking himself and scratching and it's gotten so bad that he's worn away all the fur in a couple of spots on hit back. Damn dumbass dog.
So he's going to get a bath, a cortizone shot, and some TLC from Dr Bays for the whole day. Sounds to me like he's going to the spa instead of the vet - I'll just make sure he stays away from the pedicures...
Dr Bays is awesome - many thanks to her for babysitting and putting up with the most hardheaded mutt in the universe - it's great to have such a good friend as Laura.
I get the distinct impression that my posts just suck this morning. Nothing is flowing and I feel like I am trying to force some issues here. Sorry if this sorry crap isn't up to par with my usual not-so-sorry (but still crap) crap.
Here is an example of a business story that on the surface appears to be bad news, but in reality it isn't. I like THE ECONOMIST because it is an honest publication that reports facts and doesn't try to whip up any sort of emotion in its readers. In other words, it's unbiased.
The story itself is about the telecom industry and how the industry has pretty much got its ass kicked over the past couple of years because the fundamentals of the business were so skewed. A lot of companies have gone out of business and a lot of grand business plans have gone in the gutter. Shoot, I used to work in telecom and I lost my job in November. The article is very good and not only explains what happened in the industry specifically, but it also gives a good sense of how industrial fundamentals and business decisions will eventually end up reflected in a company's stock price.
It's never good on a personal level when people lose their jobs or when stockholders lose money, but from a purely economic point of view, it's good for the economy as a whole because all of that capital and labor, while it's no longer being employed in telecom, is being redeployed into industries that can generate a better return on them as inputs into the business cycle. The telecom industry isn't going anywhere - there will be plenty of supply to meet demand - it's just that there used to be too much supply and not enough demand. Now that situation is getting fixed.
Think about it this way - unless you used to be a telecom employee or you lost a lot of money in the stock market because you thought PSINet was a bargain, you probably haven't noticed much of a personal effect on yourself from the telecom meltdown. You still have your DSL, you still have your cellular phone, and you can still call your parents in Minnesota whenever you want. And all of that can be done as cheaply as ever, right? So what's the big deal? There isn't one. That's the point. The economy is a great thing - it's efficient and it's clean and the stock market is a big piece of making sure that it keeps working that way.
And yet another example this morning that people who report on the economy and have platforms to make comments on the economy should at least learn a little something about economics before they go and run their mouths about how bad things are. Specifcally, I am referring to the news that the unemployment rate in April was as high as it's been in eight years.
The U.S. unemployment rate jumped to 6 percent in April -- the highest in nearly eight years -- as the labor market struggled to recover from a recession that led to more than a million job cuts in 2001.
No kidding.
Do these people understand that the unemployment rate is inversely proportional to inflation? Do they understand that our economy is actually stronger because interest rates (as a reflection of inflation) are lower? To a degree, a little unemployment is a good thing because if everybody had a job there would be crazy pressure on real wages and inflation would go through the roof. It's basic economics, and instead of decrying the news, maybe they should be explaining what it means. I'm not bitching because I don't think it's relevant news - I'm bitching because the reporters are trying to be sensationalistic about a story that really isn't a big deal.
Here in Houston (Baytown, actually), a grand jury has recently found no cause to indict a group of police officers in the death of Luis Torres. Mr Torres wandered away from party late last year and got into some trouble with the cops. He got violent and he died accidentally when the cops tried to retrain him. His family and the hispanic community obviously think there was excessive force involved and that the guy wasn't completely competent due to a medical condition. The cops say the guy was threatening and wouldn't obey their commands.
Not a big deal, except that this quote caught my eye:
League of United Latin American Citizens local director Johnny Mata reacted angrily to the grand jury's decision.
"The message is very clear. It's open season to kill Mexicans and other Hispanics, people of color, African-Americans, and you won't get punished. I mean, irregardless of how horrific the scene is on video, autopsy reports,"' he said in a press conference.
Um, no. The message was that the cops didn't use excessive force in this specific case. Get it straight, Senor Hyperbole.
If there is anything that burns my ass, it's minorities decrying normal police actions as being racially motivated. It's leads to a waste of time and resources on the part of city governments and it lessens the credibility that those groups might have whenever a real racial incident takes place.
Would someone please explain to me what is so difficult to understand about what happened in Jenin? The place was a snakepit of terrorists and bad guys. Why is there so much debate and hand-wringing over what Israel did in the camp? The bad guys were there, they were inflicting damage on the Israeli civilian population, so the soldiers went in and wiped them out... that is the whole point of war.
If the Palestinian civilians don't want to be mistreated or policed, then the answer is very simple: don't support the terrorists and don't let them build bombs in your living room. If you do, then you are a terrorist yourself and you deserve the consequences.
What is especially funny, and completely indicative of the primitive Palestinian mentality and their duplicitous nature, comes from their insistence that a "massacre" occurred in Jenin when even Amnesty International says there wasn't anything of the sort.
No matter how few bodies have been found, people in Jenin remain convinced that Israeli soldiers committed a massacre here. But there is a growing consensus among human rights groups, international aid workers and even some Palestinians that no massacre took place.
Palestinians have maintained since Israel's attack on Jenin and the West Bank town's refugee camp last month that between 300 and 500 Palestinians were killed.
"Everybody saw what happened," said Abdul Karim Saadi, 26, who said he was wounded by Israeli gunfire while sleeping in his bed. He lifted his shirt to show a long raw scar on his stomach and a bandage on his shoulder.
However, Israeli government officials have said that 54 Palestinians died, all but seven of them members of militant groups that had turned the camp into a terrorist haven. Twenty-three Israeli soldiers also were killed.
They are "convinced" because, in a perverse way, these people want to be killed - they want there to have been bad things that happened because that's the only way they can justify their irrational hatred of all things Israeli. This is why they provoke fights and commit terrorist acts - no one is going to condemn their deadly acts, so they simply engage in more and more of them until they can elicit a violent response from the Israelis. They then turn around and parade the response as evidence of "oppression" to the foreign press. Unfortunately, it didn't work this time, the foreign press and all of the other foreign agencies involved, didn't buy the story and the poor little Palestinians are sad and whining about it. Not only did they not get their "massacre" - they lost their bomb factories and their houses. Oops.
The news is out... and I'm not on the list of PEOPLE MAGAZINE'S50 most beautful people. Dammit. I thought my new haircut was sure to put me over the edge.
I have been wanting to write about Musharraf's "referendum" in Pakistan this week, but I couldn't find the time to come up with something coherent to say. Good the we have THE ECONOMISTbecause it can say it for me.
A couple weeks ago, Andrew Cuomo made some comments about George Pataki's seeming irrelevance during the 9/11 attacks and the response and cleanup. These were very calculated remarks designed to attack Governor Pataki and plant some seeds of doubt into the minds of New York voters. Now it seems that Cuomo is the one who is fast becoming irrelevant as his remarks seems to have had the exact opposite effect than he had intended. His poll numbers are sinking fast, thanks in no small part to his comments. Oops.
You know, normally I think the atheists and agnostics who sue governments over 1st Amendment issues are whacko and need to just shut up and realize that our country is a Christian country. If you don't like nativity scenes, don't look at them, but don't sue the government just because you want to call attention to yourself as an atheist. Normally.
But I think that this case is different. It seems that there is a high school in Iowa where it's traditional for graduating seniors to sing the Lord's Prayer, and I agree, that's wrong. There is a difference between recognizing a religion and actively compelling participation by people who don't share the same beliefs.
Ahh... Ahhh... Ahhh... awww, so close. For once I thought Jill Nelson had written a thougtful piece for MSNBC instead of a politically-motivated shreik of political hysteria ("Soylent Green is people, but just WHITE people. How typical in America!"), but alas, it didn't quite turn out that way. What started out hopefully:
IN A WORLD in which so much seems beyond our control, this move to regulate what consenting adults do in the privacy of their homes strikes me as be absurd but not surprising. Can’t protect ourselves from terrorist attacks, gas-gouging and economic conspiracies by the oil companies? Depressed about manipulation of the financial markets by the scions of Wall Street and the right-wingers running the used-to-be-called Justice Department? Don’t despair, America! You can always attack everybody’s favorite evil-doers, the smokers!
Turned into more familiar territory for Ms Hysteria:
Call me paranoid, but I see an unintended but decidedly fearful symmetry between the attack on the rights of smokers to do what they want in their own homes and the ever-increasing curtailment of our civil rights by the Justice Department.
Concerned that it's a slow news day and you need something to scream about instead of taking the time to write a thoughtful piece on legitimate news stories? Don't despair, Ms Nelson! You can always attack every liberal's favorite monster, John Ashcrot's Justice Department!
See, I usually don't even read Ms Nelson's work because it's way too predictable - too much bitching about supposed "injustices" and not enough actual news value. Anyone wonder why?
And actually, the rest of the article is pretty sensical and lays out her opposition to the story about banning people from smoking in their own homes, but the cheap shot is just sorry. Sorry sorry stuff.
Natalee Newton contributes a little morality tale this morning:
>This is funny. Hope all is well in your world today!
>
>The Ant and the Grasshopper
><
>CLASSIC VERSION:
>
>The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer
>long, building his house and laying up supplies for
>< the winter.
>
>The grasshopper thinks he's a fool, and laughs and
>dances and plays the summer away.
>
>Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The
>grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in
> the cold.
>MODERN VERSION:
>
>The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer
>long, building his house and laying up supplies for
>the winter.
>The grasshopper thinks he's a fool, and laughs and
>dances and plays the summer away.
>Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press
>conference and demands to know why the ant should be
>allowed to be warm and well fed while others less
>fortunate are cold and starving.
>CBS, NBC and ABC show up to provide pictures of the
>shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in
>his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
>America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this
>be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor
>grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
>Kermit, the Frog, appears on Oprah with the
>grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing "It's
>Not Easy Being Green."
>Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the
>ant's house, where the news stations film the group
>singing "We Shall Overcome."
>Al Gore exclaims in an interview with Peter Jennings
>that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the
>grasshopper, and calls for an immediate tax hike on
>the ant to make him pay his "fair share".
>Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity and
>Anti-Grasshopper Act, retroactive to the beginning of
>the summer.
>The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate
>number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay
>his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the
>government.
>Hillary Clinton gets her old law firm to represent the
>grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and
>the case is tried before a panel of federal judges
>that Bill Clinton appointed from a list of
>single-parent welfare recipients.
>The ant loses the case.
>The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up
>the last bits of the ant's food while the government
>house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old
>house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain
>it.
>The ant has disappeared in the snow.
>The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related
>incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over
>by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once-peaceful
>neighborhood.
>And that's why I'm a Republican!!!
From the mail bag, Craig Friou is back with another good one. And you know, I was thinking, I don't write enough about poker in this blog, and I love to play poker, so let's talk about poker, which is the subject of Craig's email.
Ethical question #1- What should you do if you see another guys cards?
Tell him or keep quiet?
Is it unethical to use it to your advantage?
Does your answer change in a casino vs home game?
Does your answer change if the dealer dealt it too high vs the player
holder his cards too far from his chest?
Do the stakes change your answer?
Like all other answers in questions when it comes to poker, my first answer is to say "it depends".
First off, I would never cheat or otherwise try to see someone else's cards. No way. That's wrong. But if someone is accidentally showing his cards to me thanks to his own incompetence or his own cluelessness, then my answer changes, although my basic opinion is this: poker is a game of edges and advantages, and it is not wrong or unethical to take advantage of someone else's mistakes - taking advantage of such information would then be purely my own decision and everything I do with such information is perfectly ethical.
Now, if it's a friend of mine and I am more interested in playing for fun than for money, then I will tell him of his mistake and I probably wouldn't use the information (as best I could) against him. If it's a friend of mine we are playing seriously and competitively (for higher stakes, usually) and the friend should know better then I probably wouldn't tell him and I would use the information. That's just poker. Obviously, the skill level of the said friend comes into play - I would probably be more inclined to speak up to a friend who is new to poker than I would to a friend who is not and knows how to play.
If it's due to dealer error, then I will speak up because then it's the dealer's fault and it's probably hurting me as much as it's hurting everyone else.
Ethical question #2- If you make a deal with your buddy to split
tournament winnings prior to going into a tournament, can you adjust your
play accordingly? Specifically, can you intentionally lose a hand to him
to build up his small stack?
As I don't play in many tournaments, my answer isn't as easily given. My instinct is to say "no", but I really can't verbalize why.
Ethical question #3- If a guy calls his hand differently than the cards
call it and nobody notices but you, are you under a moral obligation to
tell everyone?
This depends on the house rules, and as most games, even casino and vegas games, are "cards speak" then there is usually no ethical problem speaking up because we are just clarifying information that is apparent to everyone in the game. If we are playing in a "call your hand" game, then the answer is a little more touchy. Again, my answer depends on the skill level of the players involved and my motivations for playing (higher stakes make it more serious, btw). I would probably say something earlier in the night and be less inclined to speak up once the guy should have had time to get used to the rules.
Ethical question #4- Is is ok to give bad advice to another guy, knowing
that if he takes your advice, either you or your buddy will win?
Does your answer change in a casino vs home game?
Do the stakes change your answer?
I will NEVER knowingly give bad advice with the express purpose of cheating someone out of their money. That is cheating and it completely turns the game from a poker game into a dishonest game of conning someone out of money. I would never do that, even if it's someone I cannot stand or someone I don't like. Generally, if someone asks me for advice, again depending on who it is and depending on my motivations for being in the game, I might give the best advice possible or I won't give any advice at all. That's an easy question.
Now, if someone is playing and they don't understand the game, depending on my motivation, I would have no problem taking advantage of their ignorance of the rules, especially if it was someone I didn't like. If they asked a question about the rules themselves, I would give an honest and complete answer, but the question of specific advice would remain. Ask Canonico about the time we played with Mike Terrell last summer in Snyder. To this day he claims we cheated him out of about $300 in one night playing Omaha. We didn't cheat him - we just took his money because he was too drunk to understand the game and too dumb to ask the right questions about the rules.
Anyone else have any comments?
ALSO, poker night for tomorrow night is very likely to be canceled due to lack of interest. If anyone would like to play with us tomorrow night (we need at least one, and preferably two, more players) send me an email before the end of the day.
Bill Clinton wants his own TV talk show? What? While I think the man would do a better job of it than, say, Magic Johnson, does he have any sense of shame? Does he have any concept of the dignity of the office of the president? I thought the whole point of giving ex-presidents a salary was so that they could go off into retirement and live comfortable, dignified lives without having to resport to capitalizing on their fame to pay the bills. I'm not saying that ex-presidents shouldn't be in the public eye, but there is a HUGE difference between Jimmy Carter working for Habitat for Humanity and "Bill's Book Club".
Although the talks are only preliminary, one source said Clinton's interest was serious and said he was demanding a fee of $50 million a year and had aspirations "of becoming the next Oprah Winfrey," the paper said.
NBC officials would not comment on Wednesday, and Clinton's office in New York did not respond to an inquiry about the prospective talk show.
Television industry sources say chances are slim that Clinton would commit to such a plan once he understands the demands of the job, the Times said. The 55-year-old former president has told some Hollywood executives who have asked about a potential TV career that the rumors are untrue.
Of course he denies it, but how many other times have we heard him deny things?
Brent Bozell had a pretty scathing criticism of Jesse Jackson last week. I am not a big fan of Jesse because I feel he doesn't do much of anything except get indignant about things that he has no connection to and I just can't figure out why people seem to like him so much for doing so little. So he was on the balcony with Martin Luther King when MLK was shot. So what? We don't worship the janitor that found Elvis dead in the bathroom, do we?
But I digress. Bozell's comments are aimed at the media's fawning over him, and he makes some good points:
In the bubbling fury after the contested 2000 election, the National Enquirer took the glow off the Jackson aura by publishing internal documents that revealed that the political preacher of progressivism was paying off a former lover (complete with love child) in exchange for her silence. When Jackson was forced to admit his multiple mistakes, reporters didn't go into scold mode, which would have been de rigueur with a Republican. This was Jackson; they went into mourning. As ABC's Cokie Roberts puts it, "I think he's an important voice in public debate, and I think that having it now lose some authority is too bad."
That attitude -- preserving Jackson's cracked Humpty Dumpty appearance of moral authority because it's good for America -- is still on display.
The titan arum at London's Kew Gardens is blooming again. A very rare flower, but probably not appropriate for a prom corsage. It's 10 feet tall and smells like a mixture of rotting flesh and dog excrement. Ugh.
Bill Safire has an interesting piece on what he calls the "Intrusion Explosion" - the increasing tendency of the government and businesses to encroach on the privacy of individuals through more advanced technology. One thing that bothers him (and me) is the idea of using surveillance cameras not just for limiting losses from shoplifting, but to also monitor customers' movements and browsing patterns within a business.
Forget all about old-fashioned consumer surveys or even focus groups. The hot new technique in exploring your buying decision is called "observational research" or "retail ethnography." This buying-spying uses hidden surveillance cameras, two-way mirrors and microphones concealed under counters.
Stephanie Simon reports on the front page of The Los Angeles Times that cutting-edge market researchers are now zooming in on faces and fingers as customers ponder a decision to buy a product. Though a subtle sign at the entrance says the experimental store is "in test mode" and "your opinion counts," most people are unaware that their every facial tic is recorded and analyzed.
First off, Arafat got out of jail yesterday, and for a while it looked like the situation at the Church of the Nativity was going to hell until it calmed down somehow. I am not pleased with Arafat's release, because now, what has changed from last month? Absolutely nothing. The suicide bombers will start all over again and the Palestinians will actually benefit from the deal because now they have more "injustice" to cry about.
Speaking to reporters at his office minutes after Israeli tanks lifted their siege of his Ramallah headquarters, Arafat shook with anger and pounded the table with his fist, calling Israelis “terrorists, Nazis and racists.”
“It’s an ugly crime,” Arafat said of the fire. “I call on the international community to take immediate measures in the face of this horrendous crime. Those terrorists, Nazis and racists, how can we tolerate them after committing this crime?”
Is this guy just supremely stupid or am I missing something? I suspect the former. Who is surprised that there is absolutely no remorse from Arafat? No inkling of a realization that it is he and he alone who is responsible for all of the crap that falls down on him? He can blame Sharon and the current Israeli government - the world can blame Sharon and the current Israeli government - but the fact is that the current government came about because Arafat wouldn't deal with the previous government that was much more favorable towards him.
All it would take - ALL it would take is for Arafat and the Palestinians to quit murdering Israeli civilians and agree to live in peace and all of this would stop. It's that simple. Yet they won't, and now, instead of this being a turning point - instead of the world finally moving into a direction where an end is in sight, the past month will just be another nasty incident in a history full of nasty incidents. Nothing has changed, nothing was accomplished, nothing was gained. This makes me sick.
But at least I'm not dead - which I am afraid will be the result of this for some unwitting innocent Israelis in the near future.
Veganism is cool - I respect that decision - but it's a decision that only consenting adults can make. A couple in New York has been arrested for endangering their infant daughter by feeding her only vegan foods. Babies need a lot more protein and other nutrients than adults.
First, look at this picture - ignore the ad part and just look at the picture of Kenney Chesney. I may be alone in my opinion here, but the photo is simply not flattering and don't think it conveys the image that 'ole Kenny is trying to portray. He looks less like a cowboy and more like an effiminate 10th grader or maybe an alien ranchhand. Or a bobblehead doll...
The picture is a cropped image from the album cover, which itself is much more flattering.
There is a bizarre story out of southern California today about a rift between some Christians and some witches. Seems that the witches were holding some kind of pagan ritual in a parking lot when some Christians showed up and tempers flared. The pagans claim that the Christians, including an off duty sheriff's chaplain, interfered in the ceremony and therefore conspired to violate the civil rights of the pagans. The Christians claim that they were just there to pray and where within their rights to be there. Very interesting indeed - I am sure the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Nonetheless, I am a little bit intrigued by some of the details of the pagan ceremony, which don't sound much like any true pagan ceremony I have ever seen.
The witches and warlocks of Lancaster, California, also happen to practice an ancient, Earth-centered religion known as Paganism, which involves invoking spirits and spells, concocting herbal potions, praying to an array of gods and goddesses, and performing mock "animal sacrifice" rituals by melting chocolate bunnies in fondue pots and eating the gooey remains...
They interrupted a sacred ritual, she told Reuters. "When we yelled 'Sacrifice the chocolate rabbit' they jumped out of their parked cars and started to circle us. They were praying hard. It was really chaos. But we were focused because we were determined they weren't going to stop us and force us to hide."
"They believe we are Satan-based and we're not. We don't believe in the entity so therefore he doesn't exist."
An argument ensued. The sterno flame blew out, thus sparing the bunny from sacrifice. The Pagans, men, women and children, pressed on, making-do by eating pretzel sticks dipped in pretend melted chocolate, to symbolize the joining of God and Goddess. Meanwhile one from their ranks called sheriff's deputies to report a disturbance.
Is it just me, or does this sound more like a Monty Python skit?
Michael Moore is an idiot. The buzz surrounding his new film on the Columbine tragedy proves it all over again. He likes to say things that are clearly divisive, just for the sake of being divisive and therefore thinking he has somehow made himself look smarter in the process. He is an egomaniac, and a stupid egomaniac to boot.
One subject that has caught my interest lately is that of a guy named Dennis Lee. Dennis Lee, quite simply is a nut and a scam artist. Here is a link to his homepage, and if you have time it's rather humorous to click through some of his inventions and beliefs, especially if you have even a basic science education or some familiarity with the electric power industry. I'm not going to even try and begin to talk about all of his wackiness here because I could write all night and I wouldn't even come close to everything I could say on the subject - so just read it for yourself and think back to physics class while you do.
If you don't have time to do that, then at least check out Eric's Page where there is a summary of Lee's claims and some pretty humorous articles, including one about his show in Hartford, Connecticut in 1999:
Lee then went on to discuss "The Fourth Law of Motion". What? There are only three laws, you say? He asked the audience what the third law was, and somebody replied that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Lee explained that the fourth law is that you can take that reaction, turn it around, and add it to the action -- effectively doubling the output of something like a motor. He showed us a drawing of a motor and some gears, and explained how "status quo" scientists are so stupid they mount the frame of a motor rigidly to a structure and only use the shaft to power something, effectively throwing away half of the available output. His drawing purported to mount the frame of the motor to other gears, and gear that motion in with the motion of the output shaft. The "conventional thinking" regarding the effect of this gearing setup would be to double the torque while halving the speed of the output shaft - leaving the output power unchanged. Not only would it not buy you anything, it would add the complexity of getting the electricity to the now-rotating motor frame and add additional frictional losses.
Here is the article I was looking for earlier, about the general state of scientific knowledge of Americans today. Seems that too many people think that Miss Cleo is real:
In the survey of American attitudes toward science, the study found that doctors and scientists were the most respected of the professions, but it also found that “belief in pseudoscience is relatively widespread and growing.”
A survey of 1,574 adults found that 60 percent agreed or strongly agreed that some people possess psychic powers or extrasensory perception, a premise that is generally discarded as unproven by most scientists.
Although 57 percent of those surveyed disagreed that UFOs came to Earth bearing aliens, about 30 percent believe that some reported objects in the sky are really space vehicles from other civilizations.
The scientific validity of astrology — the belief that an alignment of the planets can affect events on Earth — is rejected by 60 percent of Americans, as is the idea that some numbers are lucky while others are not. But 43 percent say they still read the astrology charts at least occasionally in the newspaper.
I found this science test on MSNBC while looking for another article. Take a look - there are a couple of questions that are pretty difficult. I won't give away my score, though.
I know a lot of people don't like Michael Moran, but I think he's a straight shooter, not afraid to criticize anyone, right or left, and he's a great writer. He also agrees with me on the subject of Yasser Arafat:
Yasser Arafat won his freedom from Israeli captivity this week after being confined at gunpoint to his Ramallah compound for more than five months. He achieved this by accepting a deal he could have cut with the Israelis five months ago if his main concern had been the lives of those he claims to lead.
The deal, brokered by the United States, calls for him to turn over to U.S. and British authorities the suspected assassins of an Israeli cabinet minister and others who arranged a shipment of arms from Iran that Israeli gunboats intercepted late least year. Having agreed to those terms, Arafat is now free to roam the shattered remnants of his realm...
It boggles the mind, and pains the heart, to think of the opportunities this selfish man has passed up. At the top of the list is his refusal to accept a ground-breaking offer for control of almost all of the West Bank and Gaza, plus a chunk of East Jerusalem, by the Labor Prime Minister Ehud Barak. The offer, put forth first at Camp David in the summer of 1999 and later at Taba just before Barak left office, failed primarily because it did not deal sufficiently with the issue of Palestinian refugees living outside the occupied territories. Arafat feared, probably with good reason, that a deal signed that excluded a “right of return” for the millions still in refugee camps in Lebanon and scattered throughout the world might lead to his assassination.
I understand that the Palestinians people as a whole aren't bad or evil, but for the most part nations are their leaders.
Just finished watching the original "Oceans 11" on the Starz Mystery channel. Great flick. Not the most developed script in the world, but the point of this movie isn't in the details, it's in the stars of the show. Great movie - Sinatra and Martin and Lawford and Davis are smooth. Even Mr Roper from "Three's Company" (Norman Fell) is in the movie, and so is Caesar Ramero. Pretty cool.
Oh, this is funny. PETA is suing the National Dairy Board for false advertising, alleging that the "happy cows" in a billboard ad are actually sad. Very funny.
I swear that when I read this the first time just now at The Corner, I thought of Freud and I was dissettled. Then I thought of Carrot Top, and I was cool with it.
OPERATION TARMAC [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
450 airport-security officials at 15 airports arrested for fraudulent ids and the like. Should Secretary Mineta, perhaps, be held responsible for this continued mess?
Posted 8:44 AM
I need to apologize for all of the typos and errors that are so resplendent in all of my posts. I waste enough time writing this stuff, and I write it so fast that I misspell a lot of words and make similarly dumb errors. I also have a bad habit of only "half-editing" something to where I will write it, then come back and decide to change it but in my haste I only change it halfway or I will leave in words or phrases from the old text that just makes for near unintelligible syntax. Just bear with me and thanks for reading my drivel.
If anyone is interested, I might be willing to hire a proofreader. We would have to work out the details, but I am always one to spread a little reward and compensation when I can.
It's hard to believe that the Rodney King riots were more than 10 years ago. I remember watching the whole thing on TV and just being amazed at the whole scene. I was a senior in high school then, about a month before graduation, and I remember the whole scene so well because it all occurred while I was in Lubbock competing at the regional track meet. NEWSWEEK has a good piece this week in revisiting a neighborhood that was hit hard and the NEW YORK POST has a good followup on Rodney King himself.
Time for me to go off and bitch about a bunch of damn populist Senators and Congressmen who are in the news this morning for no other reason than they want to be in the news in front of their constiuencies. Can someone please, PLEASE pass a law or write an executive decision or SOMETHING that would force our elected politicians to be somewhat knowledgable about the subjects they are debating? In other words, these jackasses need to go take a first year microeconomics class before they start bitching about pice fixing and market movements. I am bitching this morning because of the news that Congress is "concerned" about fluctations in oil prices and are blaming "anticompetitive" behavior. There is no actual basis that these companies are doing anything other than obeying the normal laws of economics, but as these guys need to get reelected and they want to look good in front of their just-as-ignorant subjects, they are going to rail like idiots about "evil" corporations.
Generally, I am going to say this - IT IS NOT ILLEGAL TO WITHHOLD PART OF YOUR INVENTORY BECAUSE YOU DON'T WANT PRICES TO GO DOWN! NOR IS IT WRONG OR UNETHICAL! IT IS SIMPLY WHAT EDUCATED PEOPLE CALL THE "MARKET" AND UNDERSTAND TO BE THE NATURAL ORDER OF TRANSACTIONS IN A CAPITALIST SOCIETY. Got it? Good.
This story is all over the news this morning, so I have chosen the MSNBC story (from the WASHINGTON POST) to specifically talk to.
Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the subcommittee’s chairman, is opening two days of hearings on the report today and has summoned oil company officials to explain why gasoline prices in recent years have routinely fallen and risen sharply again, particularly during the spring and summer as families head off on vacations.
Very simple - the answer is included within the question for crying out loud. Think about it - for most of the year, gasoline demand stays relatively constant - people go to work and drive around town and generally they are going to drive a consitent amount of miles every day. All of these people acting in aggregate form a large-scale demand curve, which stays pretty constant. Similarly, there are 155 operable oil refineries in the United States, and in aggregate, they put out about 7.5 million barrels of gasoline a day. Combined, these supply and demand curves yield a price that is acceptable to both the users and the producers. In the summertime, though, families tend to go on vacation and they tend to drive more. This increases the number of miles being driven and gasoline being consumed, but at the same time, the number of refineries, and their capacity, has not changed. This means that there's not as much gasoline to go around as before and certain users will be more willing than others to pay for gasoline and they will bid the price up. This is common sense.
“Because of the decline in the number of domestic refineries, total domestic refining capacity is slightly lower than it was 20 years ago,” the report said. “At the same time, demand has increased. A tight market optimizes profits for a refiner.
This is patently wrong. A tight gasoline market will eventually optimize profits for oil producers in the long run, because the costs of producing the crude oil is not dependent on the cost of an input. Refiners on the other hand, must pay for crude oil in order to make gasoline, and the refiners know this and automatically raise prices for themselves. Revenue may increase for a refiner when prices go up, but the cost of its inputs also increase as well and profits remain the same.
Levin said he is also concerned about how gasoline prices posted by the major oil companies in specific regions and neighborhoods tend to ebb and flow in tandem with each other, a practice he called “parallel pricing.”
Maybe it could be that gas stations in a given neighborhood all have the same demand and the same customers, and oftentimes, the same ultimate supply source for gasoline. There's that pesky "market" concept coming back to bite you on the ass, Carl.
Levin said that under current antitrust law, “it’s not illegal to have the same price relationship up and down. The question is even if you can’t prove collusion whether it ought to be at least evidence of an antitrust violation. It seems to me it should.”
Of course you think it should be, you dick, because then you could haul these guys in front of your committee and get your ignorant mug plastered on the TV for a couple of days while you "fight for the little guy" and slander and insult the oil company executives in the name of "justice".
When I had the time to teach in the Junior Achievement program, one of my favorite exercies was to help the student apply their lessons about supply and demand through real life everyday examples, and to them, one of the most tangible and fluid markets to use as an example is the gasoline market. There are thousands of firms involved, millions of customers, and a universal demand and subsitutability among brands that makes it a perfect example to teach how demand and supply affect prices on a daily basis. I realize that one role of the government is to protect consumers and that oftentimes, large companies will take advantage of their market power, but gasoline certainly isn't one of them. That's obvious to anyone with even a basic economics education.
Has anyone heard of the big lottery dispute in New Jersey? A group of coworkers pooled their money for tickets into the Big Game a couple weeks ago, and started getting suspicious when one of the winning tickets was purchased in their town and the guy who had bought the tickets didn't show up at work for three days after the drawing. Turns out that the guy didn't have the winning ticket - he had the flu.
Does anyone know the legal precedence for such a situation? I think it's pretty clear that a lottery ticket is a bearer-instrument, meaning the only winner the state (and the law) recognizes is the person holding the ticket. Nonetheless, would there be an enforceable contract among the members of the pool if he decided not to pay? I am curious what precedent there would be.
A topic that I find really interesting is the vulnerability of New Orleans to destruction from a massive hurricane. The Discovery Channel has had a couple of good shows on the subject recently, and now there is an interest story in the NEW YORK TIMES this morning. There are some really cool maps included with the story, and if you have ever been to New Orleans and been as amazed at the geography as me, I would say that it's worth a look. One thing is for sure - a flood might cause lots of property damage endanger a lot of people - but it might just also clean the place up.
The 4405CAM is now up. I will add a permanent link on the left side of the page. It's probably going to be pretty damn boring, but it might be cool to check out during the party this weekend.
UPDATE: When we are not at home it will be boring, otherwise, live shots of Chris watching TV in his underwear will be guaranteed to lure visitors to our site. And as an added bonus, he even threw in the occasional crotch scratch last night. Damn, that's riveting stuff!
Also, it's too late since you went to bed, but I think you'll probably be a little miffed a letting this one by:
"Forrest is about the only person I know who can equivicate the X-cam with automobile dealerships..."
The typo is no big deal, but using "equivocate" instead of "equate" sounds like something you yourself would rant about. ;) Although I myself am sure it was just getting late...
I also need to make an apology this morning for publishing obscenities last night within a published email. I debated about doing it last night and then I decided that in the interest of accuracy I would leave them in, but this morning the person wrote the email pointed out that he would rather not have his name associated with those words in public and in retrospect, I am changing my mind about the importance of accuracy versus sensibilities. I apologize and will make a rule from now on that the only profanity to be uttered in this space will be my own.
I am back from the dregs of jury hell. I didn't get picked, and frankly, I don't understand why they summon 4-5 times as many people as they need when all they are going to do is just pick the people at the front of the line, who for the most part, I might add, probably couldn't think their ways out of paper bags. I will write a long post on the subject tonight, nonetheless, I have a rant or two up my sleeve.
Forrest also sent an email with comments on my diet philosophy that I posted last week. Before I respond to that, I want to make sure I have some data to back up my assertions. Give me a few days and I will get a response out.
As for sentence diagramming, you have read The_Language_Instinct, right? It sounds like you're generally in agreement, except when you say: "Just as you can't study algebra without first understanding the order of operations and one cannot study trigonometry without first learning algebra, one cannot write a sentence until he understands what goes into making a sentence." Well, I think that's not true at face value; your brain develops to instinctively, not consciously, construct sentences (which is why we can talk way before we can sentence diagram.) It helps to understand the rules when creating extra-complex structures, but one can certainly write a sentence without consciously understanding the rules behind it; one's brain just *knows* it to a certain degree. I believe there are lots of musicians and artists and designers, who were quite uneducated in the cognitive theories or analytic study of their pursuits, who excelled at applying the theory but did not "understand" it explicitly. (E.g. I heard the Beatles never took music theory.) Art is not the same mindset as science. An athlete performs complex movements but can easily be totally clueless on the formal physics theories. He can learn through intuition combined with trial and error. In fact, athleticism *requires* procedural memories that by their nature can be described but themselves are learned neural calibrations that cannot be conveyed to someone else. I remember a physics professor calculating the optimal geometry for a flying buttress and showing examples of cathedrals that came very close, even though they did not have the calculus with which to harness the theory. Now, in all of those pursuits, including sports, analyzing and applying the theory behind it helps you take it to the next level, but it's not a prerequisite for everyone. You can have someone tell you the best way to try to swing, but if you practice completely alone, you'll still pick up a swing (though it will probably be suboptimal). Furthermore, as Steven Pinker would say, the rules can change and vary between languages, and while there are evidently global rules, just studying one language doesn't make it evident what they are. So, the point about contrasting 2 languages is very good, but I hope you didn't mean to imply that the rulebook doesn't change for a given language, since that's how they came to differ in the first place. Moreover, the rulebooks we've had so far often did not bear appropriate scientific scrutiny and thus possess artifically constrained and fundamentally inconsistent rules. Perhaps now that we've codified the rules AND educated the vast majority of this (and are undoubtedly converging on more accurate rules based on biology rather than "language mavens" due to advances in linguistic science), it may change more slowly. But I think it will continue to change, because even though we'll start to speak the same language (English), local variations must always abound like those between gene pools, through the not-completely-understood dynamic of Babel (what I call the undoubtedly chaotic forces that continue to reshape the language in a population). If you haven't read The_Language_Instinct, you must (but I'm pretty sure you have?). Finally, let me say that I am well aware that I could benifit from a more rigorous application of linguistic theory to my grammatical structures, as evidenced in the above. ;)
-F
No, I haven't read the book, but I just ordered it. I will be sure to report back. In the meantime, I will admit that Forrest has forced me to clarify some of my statements, and I will say that in order to write better setences and fully develop the potential of one's language you must understand the rules associated therein. Certainly some people have a savant gift for language in much the same way that other people can play music or paint, but those people are in the minority. One of my main beliefs on this subject is that we all have a natural aptitude towards language - we don't have to study it to necessarily use it (although reading and writing do require at least a little education as opposed to just talking). Nonetheless - that's my whole point about the value of studying a foreign language - precisely because speaking and communicating comes so naturally to human beings, we resist having to study the mechanics of language because the inherent value of such scholarship isn't readily apparent. Once the value of such study is learned with a foreign language - where as adults we must learn the language rather than developing into it as babies do - then the value of focusing the study back on English becomes clear and we grow both as speakers and as writers.
I am going to Russia this summer on a mission trip with my church. Siberia, actually, and in my spare time I have been surfing the web looking for information on Tomsk, the city where we will be staying for a year. First, I found a weather almanac, and then I found a really cool timezone map. Notice that we will be there the second week of July and yet, the temperature will be the hottest of the year. Um, I guess I better take a sweater.
We will be there during the "white nights", and we will be spending time in Saint Petersburg where the sun sets at midnight and rises at 4:00 in July. Wow.
BTW, please don't send me gay jokes about Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gregory Hines, or Lionel Ritchie. "Say you, say me" blah blah blah.
Let me introduce you to my little friend, Forrest Schaaf. Forrest is an interesting character, godbless him, but I love him. And I don't mean I love him in the way that he once claimed he loved me in a sublime attempt to complete unsettle my nerves and make me jump out of the window in the Line Street apartment in Somerville back in the summer of 1994 (the very same window that Brad dropped the window unit air conditioner out of).... but I digress.
Forrest has a way of noticing little things and bitching about them in such a way that is all his own. Here is the email he sent me this weekend - it's rather entertaining:
Looked at your blog again.
Sometimes typos turn out really funny, the "raputured souls" of the last Jesus truck picture just sounds funny.
But I digress. My point is that that damned seX-cam INVARIABLY is advertised to spy on chicks. I mean, I'm sure they wanted to call it the XXX-cam, and had to settle for one X. EVERY SINGLE AD I'VE EVER SEEN (and I've seen a zillion since I currently use Yablew!) has some chick. The suggestion is obvious, but it's very funny how they have to keep it implicit. Like there's a half-naked chick and they sell a camera you can "hide anywhere", and they say things like "Be safe!" I'm suprised Yahoo hasn't caught hell for having peeping-tom-tool ads non-stop. I hate those ads. HATE 'EM, HATE 'EM, HATE 'EM!!! Goddamn it. You know why? Because they are trying to make money off peeping tom pathetic pussies, AND THEY'RE POPPING UP WINDOWS ON *MY* BROWSER TO DO IT. It's way worse than selling porn, which Yahoo would obviously not allow. Aarrrgghh, I hate 'em! I hate fuckers that try to slip through the cracks and annoy me in the process. Just like those asshole dealers that stencil or glue their name on the car and think some jackass has enough crack to still buy it. (And judging from all the BMW of SF cars I see on the roads, apparently people do.) Am I ranting? I guess I need a blog. Anyway...
Forrest is about the only person I know who can equivicate the X-cam with automobile dealerships, but I think he has a point about "slipping through the cracks" and annoying him. I don't know why dealers' tags on automobiles is annoying to him, but the point is well taken that just like the damn x-cam and it's popup windows, the dealers do their work without asking for our permission first. Very profound.
Normally, the only judicial nominations I care about are for the Supreme Court. We have one of those every 3-4 years or so in this country, and they are fun when they're here, but in the meantime, all of the other nominations and processes really just don't catch my attention. I know that they should, but they don't. I have found one today that has caught my attention, however - and that is W's recent nominations of Miguel Estrada. to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Apparently, this is one of the most prestigious judicial appointments possible besides the Supreme Court and Mr. Estrada would be the first Latino to hold as high a position in the history of our country. This is good for hispanics, right? It's a big day for hispanics, yes?
Apparently not, according to an editorial in today's HOUSTON CHRONICLE. Certain ethnic organizations in our country consider this guy to be the equivalent of the hispanic Clarence Thomas. Not that they have any problem with him being a Latino - it's just that he's not the right kind of the Latino. Or he maybe he is the "right" kind of Latino and that's the problem according to Rodolfo F. Acuna, the author of the editorial. Before I get into the main point that I would like to make, I want to point out one glaring weakness in Mr Acuna's argument:
When a Latino runs for an elected position, at least people get the opportunity to know that person's record and decide for themselves whether the person is fit for the job. But when a Latino is appointed to a position, the appointee reflects the ideology of the person appointing him or her, and the people whom the appointee is supposed to represent have no say in the matter.
Fortunately for us, Mr Acuna didn't write the U.S. Constitution, else we would have nothing but a uniformity of ideas and no political discourse. This guy is incrediby naive if he doesn't understand that political appointments are just that - political. We can't elect everybody - are government is called a "representative democracy" because we elect people to represent our interests in the workings of government. Miguel Estrada might not be elected to this judgeship, but George Bush was elected to the Presidency. Ergo, Mr Estrada is representative of the people through their election of the president. That's Political Science 101 (Government 10 for you Harvard grads). Something tells me that Mr Acuna has no problem with this system when there is a Democrat (or at least someone he agrees with) making the nomination, but it's a very weak and poor argument for him to attack the system when he's really attacking the nominee.
Now that we have established Mr Acuna lack of political acumen, here is his argument against Estrada:
With Estrada, we have a person who does not identify with the struggles or aspirations of a huge percentage of U.S. Latinos. Indeed, he appears never to have experienced discrimination or unequal educational experiences. Estrada has publicly opposed affirmative action and consistently sided with large corporate interests.
Even more troubling, Estrada is a member of the Federalist Society, an ultraright legal network. Its founders include the Pioneer Fund, which subsidizes research on race and intelligence, and the John M. Olin Foundation, which opposes the interests of Latinos in matters dealing with race, ethnicity, immigration and affirmative action.
The tactic of the Bush administration is insidious. Like his father before him, Bush is seeking to appoint an unrepresentative member of a minority to a position on a high court, one who does not have our interests at heart.
This is exactly the kind of thing that pisses me off about racial polictics and identity-based organizations - note that when I talk about this, I am talking at the same time about Clarence Thomas and his relationship with certain members of the Black political establishment. The critics have no concept of the fact that these nominees - these people - have their own thoughts, personalities, and beliefs. To these people, if the nominee is not representative the left-handed school of beliefs of that group, then he is not representative of the group, period. This is wrong.
The biggest tangible problem that these groups have with Estrada is that he doesn't favor affirmative action - or at least they say that's why. The real reason is that he has proven over the course of his life that affirmative action policies are completely unnecessary when someone actually has the talent to move up in the world.
Mr Acuna fails to mention that Estrada immigrated to the United States from Honduras at the age of 15 not speaking a word of English. Despite that hardship, he graduated from Harvard Law School just ten years later. He didn't get to where he is because of affirmative action - he got there because he is talented and worked hard to achieve his goals.
It seems to me that these groups are sending exactly the wrong message to their constituency - instead of tearing down Mr Estrada, they should be holding him up as an example of hispanic achievement. However, in doing so they will be discrediting their own necessity for being - that hispanics and blacks don't need the assiatance of these groups to achieve in life - so they will work to discredit the nominee because he is a threat to their own livelihood.
Mr Estrada is a example of the fundamental un-American nature of affirmative action and race-based preferences. He didn't need these things to succeed in life, even from his especially disadvantaged background and neither does anyone else. The whole idea of our country is the freedom of opportunity - an opportunity that, contrary to what people like Mr Acuna have to say, really does exist as Mr Estrada has proven.
Three years ago there was a series of murders here in Houston and southeast Texas that were eventually traced back to a Mexican national who roamed around from town to town on freight trains. They were pretty gruesome murders and the guy came to be known as the "Railroad Killer". It was a pretty scary time until he got caught - a lot of people were panicking. Once they caught the guy, his name was Angel Maturino Resendiz (aka Rafael Resendiz Ramirez), a lot of really kookie crap came out in the trial for one of the murders and it now turns out that the guy is responsible for maybe 10, or even up to 20, more murders besides the one for which he was convicted. These were heinous crimes - most of his murders were by bludgeoning his victime, and most of the crimes also had an element of sexual abuse, too. I remember the day they caught him three summers ago - a phalanx of news choppers followed the police cars around town, protestors and gawkers were crowded around the courthouse. It was a big deal.
It's a rather funny story, but it's also pretty sad. The guy is on death row and some woman from Cleveland, Ohio (I am not making this up) somehow saw him on TV and fell in love with him and wrote him a letter. He wrote her back and the rest is history. Why in the hell anyone would fall in love with this guy is beyond me - the man looks like a monster - but this woman says she is serious. My favorite part is her own analysis of the situation:
Nancy Resendiz speaks scornfully of the woman who married Hillside Strangler Kenneth Bianchi in 1989.
"I saw in the paper that some girl who married the Hillside Strangler showed up at the prison in a limousine and got out wearing a wedding gown," Resendiz says. "That's an invitation for people to consider you a crackpot."
She takes the same derisive tone toward people who buy paintings by Angel Maturino Resendiz, the serial killer awaiting execution on Texas' death row.
"Loony toons," she calls them.
Yet this 50-year-old Cleveland, Ohio, woman hopes to marry Maturino Resendiz one day soon. She is one of a small number of women nationwide who have become the girlfriends or wives of serial killers...
Resendiz, who legally changed her last name in a Cleveland probate court earlier this year, said she does not fit the profile of women who fall for serial killers. She said she is not pursuing fame, does not condone Maturino Resendiz's killings, and holds no delusions about the nature of their relationship.
According to the couple, a minister married them in the prison visitation room during a religious ceremony nearly a year ago. The marriage remains unrecognized by the state, however, because they had not obtained a marriage license.
Resendiz does not sound like she is viewing him through rose-colored glasses when she says he is a paranoid schizophrenic -- as some psychiatrists have concluded -- who would kill again if he were released. She loves him, she says, despite his flaws.
"Don't let your readers think I'm some kind of flake. I'm well-educated, middle class. I own my own house. I own my own truck," she said.
Oh crap, she owns her own truck, I guess that makes everything cool.
But it gets even better because it seems as if this is a case of (very) mistaken identity:
During recent phone interviews, Resendiz said the two met and fell in love in Cleveland during the summer of 1983. Maturino Resendiz said he was working as a landscaper at the time.
But Maturino Resendiz was in prison from 1979 to 1985, serving a 20-year prison sentence after being convicted in Miami of burglary, auto theft and aggravated assault. He was paroled on Sept. 3, 1985, then arrested in Oklahoma five weeks later on a charge of falsely representing himself as a U.S. citizen; he received an 18-month sentence.
In a later interview, Resendiz seemed stunned at the news. She called back a few hours later and acknowledged that she must have confused Maturino Resendiz with the man she fell in love with in 1983. But, she added, "it doesn't make a difference at this point. Even if he's not the guy from 20 years ago, it doesn't make a lot of difference."
My God, this is beyond funny - "Well, I thought he was the guy I fell in love with 20 years ago, but it turns out he is a murderer and a rapist. I don't care."
First of all, Sharon is finally giving in and lifting the seige of Yasser Arafat's compound. All I can say is "here we go again." There will be 3 sucide bombings within the next week, I predict, and Arafat will be right back up to his old tricks. Dammit, W, let the Israelis finish the job and tell Abdullah to go to Hell.
OK, it's Sunday afternoon and I finally have time to blog. We got Nichol and Yvonne married off last night. Great time had by all. There has also been a lot of news the past couple of days and I have received some good emails that I want to share. On with the show!
