Having the word "nude" in my posts continues to boost my hit count from first-time visitors. Gotta love that.

Oh, and before I forget, "debbie's boob job". There. That ought to do it.

Anyway.

Not much going on at home other than trying to keep out of the floor installer guys' way. Last night, my dad and I had to fix the stairs going up to the master suite. I've never liked the way it "felt" walking up and down those stairs. The floor installer put a level on them yesterday and found out why: the whole staircase was tilted down. Every step dropped about 3/8" from back to front. So that took up all of last night. I was very tired for some reason, so we went to bed early. That's pretty much our life.

The floors should be completely done today. The next step is getting the doors in and trimmed out so we can put down baseboard molding, then start working on trimming out the windows. I'll probably make a major Home Depot run at some point and pick up one of those small table saws and a good power miter. There is a lot of detail work at this point, and I'd prefer to have decent tools so I don't make a complete hash of it.

Not much really caught my eye while skimming my usual internet sources. It looks like the Year of the Natural Disaster continues. We have Wilma heading towards Florida, and Pakistan is still trying to deal with the aftermath of the earthquake there. I just realized today that I had not mentioned the earthquake since it happened. I guess I'm just getting "disaster fatigue" or something. In any case, you can read all about it here, here, here, here, and here. Wilma went from a tropical storm to a Cat 5 in 24 hours, but it isn't expected to stay at that strength for long. Currently, it is expected to be "only" a Cat 2 by the time it hits Florida. What can I say? What can anyone say except "Hold on; here we go again!" If I ever end up living in a hurricane-prone area (and the more I grow to hate winter, the more likely that becomes) I won't own anything I can't pack up and drive off with, including whatever I live in. In any case, for those that enjoy watching train wrecks, this is where you want to hang out for the next 48 hours.

I received an e-mail today about David Brooks' editorial "Mind Over Muscle" in the New York Times. In it, he discusses that girls do better in many respects in school than boys do. I can't get to the article because it is hidden behind TimesSelect, the latest attempt by a newspaper to charge for access to its web page. But I am pretty sure Brooks is making the same observations I made back in May here and here. I have no idea what conclusions he may come to: I don't know that I have ever read his editorials. But just to reiterate my position: the male and female bell curves have the same median, but different shapes. Our schools, and more and more our colleges as well, are doing two things that favor females. One is that typical male behavior is now considered a mental illness and is treated with a class of drugs that have been known to cause brain damage in pre-pubescent children for forty years. The second is that our schools are geared towards those that fall near the median (say, 95 to 105 IQ). Those left behind (largely male) drop out and become our criminal underclass. Those bored to death (again, largely male) disrupt the classroom until they are drugged into submission and mediocrity. These are our future aerospace engineers, computer chip designers, scientists, etc. I would think it important to consider just what the hell we are doing. Or not. I'm set, and to be selfish, I'm more than happy to have the competition eliminated before they even get out of the starting gate. But I will be dead in 20 or 30 years; anyone planning on living longer may want to give this some thought.

I was also e-mailed a copy of an editorial from a Tampa newspaper on immigration and assimilation. Whenever this topic comes up, I notice a failure to distinguish between illegal and legal immigration, and refuges (who may be here legally or illegally). The editorial focuses on the PC yapping that we offend immigrants with our customs. I will take the points one at a time and respond to them based on my experience and the numerous immigrants I have known.

"...if you wish to become part of our society, learn the language!"

I've never met an immigrant that didn't think it important to learn English. No one fights against Spanish-language instruction harder than immigrant parents who know from bitter experience that a lack of English skills closes far too many doors. If this is meant as some sort of diatribe against those that speak English with an accent, then all I can say is that I am far more concerned about blacks born and raised in the United States that are less capable of speaking standard English than someone fresh off the plane from China.

That's not to say that there are not enclaves along our southern boarder where Spanish is the primary language. But again, one must distinguish between legal immigrants that have made a decision to move here and become part of the United States, and illegal immigrants who largely are here to earn American dollars to take back home with them. The first group will work hard to learn English, and their kids will speak standard English without a problem. The second group has no reason to learn any English above what they are forced to learn. I'm not concerned that this group does not know English; I am concerned that they are here at all.

"'In God We Trust' is our national motto. This is not some Christian, right wing, political slogan. We adopted this motto because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation, and this is clearly documented."

Here, the writer is either hoping his audience is ignorant, or is displaying his own. Some of this nation's founders did indeed self-identify as "Christian" although I doubt their theology would be allowed within 100 miles of any modern, evangelical church. But many, including the most prominent, were most certainly not Christians as they denied the deity of Jesus. Thomas Jefferson published his own version of the Gospels that excluded Jesus' miracles and all mention of Jesus' deity. Thomas Payne wrote devastating critiques of the Bible that concluded the whole thing was a fraud. Samuel Adams was a brewer, so you know he was a Satan-worshipper. No self-respecting evangelical church would allow a beer-drinker through the door, not alone someone that brewed the stuff. George Washington was a deist, and so on. Our nation was founded on common law and an intentionally secular government.

And "In God We Trust" is indeed a right-wing political slogan added to our currency in the early 1900's, just as "under God" was a right-wing political slogan added to our pledge in the 1950's. And I have yet to find an immigrant offended by either one. I find a lot of American-born PC police having a problem with them and trying to use offence of immigrants as the excuse for removing them, but not immigrants themselves.

"If Stars and Stripes offend you..."

Again, I have to wonder if the writer has ever laid eyes on an immigrant. Personally, I find flag-wavers to be offensive, but not because of the flag per se, but because the person waving it invariably uses patriotism as an excuse to violate the free-speech rights of anyone they disagree with. But I have never met an immigrant of any stripe that is offended by our national flag. In fact it seems ludicrous to suggest that a legal immigrant that has likely spent years jumping through bureaucratic hoops to get here, or a political refugee that likely risked their life to flee political persecution to seek refuge here, would then complain about something as trivial as a piece of cloth. Only coddled Americans bother to get their panties in a twist over such things. However, I'm sure many of the foreign-born would recognize the kind of person that would write such a editorial, and be disturbed by the similarity to people they just left.

And I should have known that Snopes would have something on this. It wasn't an editorial in a Tampa newspaper, it was a letter to the editor of a local Georgia newspaper. I also find it interesting (and somewhat disturbing) that a Google search turned up thousands of sites uncritically posting this piece.

And that is really all I have time for.

It pays to be perverted, I guess. My second highest hit count for one day was Friday. Almost all the traffic was new visitors searching for "nude" or "nude girls". The only day that has drawn more hits was when I was blogging about people searching on "debbie's boob job". I wonder if I could keep my hit count high by just incorporating the words "nude" and "boob" into my posts every day.

I also get a chuckle from where these people come from. Don't tell me we can't destroy radical Islam with massive porn air-dropped over Mecca. The most irresistible force in the universe is a man's desire to view naked people.

Anyway, this Saturday, my girls lost two more (1-0 and 3-0). Defensively, we are doing great, but we can't get our offense to work. Everyone knows what to do and where to move on the field, but our passing and traps need a lot of work. We have a drill for that and we will be running it for the majority of practice tonight. We ended up playing the same team twice in a row because the other team never showed. Next week, we will be playing the same two teams on our field for our last games. I would love to win both of them. I think we can, if we really buckle down.

One more week and soccer is over. I wonder what I will find to do with all my spare time?

Vox Day has a new column up in defense of polygamy. Anyone who reads Vox regularly may find that a bit odd, but he makes a good point. I have never understood the criticism of gay marriage on the grounds that it will lead to polygamy. News flash: the Bible allows for polygamy. And, as Vox points out, polygamy has been the norm for all of human history except for here and now. A reversion to polygamy would simply be a return to normal.

Of course, I have stated many times that this whole marriage debate would not be happening if the Western churches would not have made a deal with Satan and given government control over marriage.

Maybe more later, but probably not. I have to take off early because of soccer practice tonight. I don't expect a big turnout as it is currently pouring down rain and about 50 degrees F. Maybe the rain will blow over by 5pm and it will just be cold.

Last night was a very light practice as almost no one was there. That didn't really surprise me much. Our practices are supposed to be at 5pm, but there was a varsity game scheduled for the same time, so I moved practice back to right after school. That knocks out a lot of people that have other commitments, plus we have a couple out with injuries. As of this moment, I have exactly 11 reasonably healthy people for Saturday with two back-to-back games. I expect the girls to be some tired puppies on the way home.

The guys varsity team lost 3-2. The teams were pretty evenly matched, although Kalkaska looked a little flat in the first half. There were a couple goofy things going on off the field. The Boosters were trying to charge admission. I didn't even realize it until after the game when I saw the sign. Oops. I know I didn't pay, and I'm pretty sure that no more than a handful of the other spectators did. You can park and walk up to the field from any direction, so I'm sure that most of the people were unaware that they were supposed to pay. The second weird thing was the cheerleading squad. They were 20 minutes late for the game, did no cheering whatsoever, and in fact from what I could tell, were barely aware that there was even a game going on. I finally made some sarcastic comment at some point in the second half and was told they didn't know any cheers. OK, just how much practice does it take to be on-time for the game, face the field, pay at least partial attention to what is going on, and, even if you are completely ignorant of the game, yell and clap when everyone else does? And why have they not learned even a generic Kalkaska Blazers cheer over the last two months?

In any case, that took up most of the night. Progress on the floors in the house continues and I've decided that I really like it. It is going to look very nice when it is done. It already looks nice. Most of the work on the main floor should be done today, which means that in addition to the road trip for soccer on Saturday, we also have to do some major moving to clear the upstairs and Nestina's bedroom.

Other than that, not much on the home front.

I found a new web site that seems interesting via one of those internet friend-of-a-friend things. I haven't had much time to read through the articles, but I will certainly be doing so over the next few weeks. Everyone has a tendency to romanticize certain points in their personal or even human history. That is largely harmless, until you start basing major chunks of your public policy on what is essentially pure fantasy.

Jerry Pournelle opens himself up to serious assault by the PC police. He doesn't say anything that hasn't been known as fact for decades, but we all know what you can't say, and who you can't say it about. The money quote:

...if you sort people by IQ into "training schools," "general education," and "educational schools," with sorting points around IQ 85 and 115, fully half the black students will be in the "training schools," and almost all the rest will be in the general education pool. There will be some blacks in the "educational schools" and those who get there will do as well as their white and Asian companions, but anyone would be able to tell which school was what merely by looking at the student population.

Which, of course, is the one fact that can never be spoken. Only now it has been. Expect to see Dr. Pournelle branded a racist, and attempts made to have him silenced. That is nearly impossible in the age of the internet, and is impossible with someone with the credentials, standing, and resources of Dr. Pournelle. I'm certain the attempt will be made anyway.

The new rage in London is nude nightclubbing. I've said it before and I'll say it again: nude beaches, "nude night" at museums, nude nightclubbing, nude game shows, and all the rest, only proves that the vase majority of people on this earth really, really need to cover up.

And now it's time to get back to work.

Before I start in on people I would like to kill today, here is an interesting experiment that was done by MIT students. The story behind the experiment is that in 212 BC, Archimedes was able to set fire to enemy ships a bow shot away from shore with a "burning glass." It has been assumed that he used some sort of parabolic mirror. It has also been further assumed that it was impossible for a mirror large enough to be constructed with the correct shape to raise wood to the burning point (approximately 1100 degrees F) in 212 BC. The students went a different direction: using 127 1-foot-square mirror tiles, they were able to set oak on fire from 100 feet away. That isn't much of a "bow shot," but it is proof of the feasibility of the concept. It is also important to realize that there are materials that would likely be part of a sailing ship from 212 BC that would ignite much easier than oak. As well, the temperature of surfaces being exposed to the concentrated sunlight would be unbearable for the crew long before ignition, not to mention that anyone that looked in the direction of the mirrors would be blinded.

Now on to the main point of my post. I have Priority Health insurance. They are idiots. That is not surprising; after all we are talking about a "health" insurance company. I have been disgusted on a number of occasions when they refuse to fill a prescription because they don't feel I need it, or something else (usually over-the-counter) would work just as well. Of course we all know this has nothing to do with the money, they're just concerned for my health. It says so right in their corporate mission statement, so it must be true.

More disturbing, at least to me, is the policy they have that triples the cost of a prescription unless I buy it mail-order from Walgreen. Now I learned in school that this sort of differential pricing was illegal under anti-trust law, but I'm sure that, as usual, there is a loophole for the medical industry to slither through. Until recently, I just paid the extra, preferring to deal with an actual pharmacist, until the co-pay was increased to such an extent that I simply could no longer afford to. So I have been using Walgreen for pills, but not for my insulin. There have been problems, most notably that we are not told when there is trouble with a prescription (not available, or rejected by insurance); it just isn't in the box when it shows up. I usually keep extra on hand just for such times.

Well, this last time I took the plunge. My insulin is finally available in a pen injector (supposed to be easier; more on that in a bit) so I had my doctor write up the prescription the way Walgreen wants it and sent it in. The first sign of trouble was a voice mail at work from Walgreen about my "incomplete information." I wasn't sure just what the problem was as the operator was some ebonics-speaking lip-slapper from some place in the third-world like Detroit. I called and was told that they needed to find out what gauge of needle I needed for the pen injector. I've never used a pen injector in my life, so I told the "pharmacist" what I am currently using. It only took me repeating the same thing four times for him to get it.

That was Thursday. Saturday, I had a voice mail on my cell phone (again, in unintelligible ebonics) about my "incomplete order" and a toll-free number. When I called the number, a hyper-active recorded voice announced that I was being given the opportunity of a lifetime to be part of an exiting new business opportunity. Huh. I thought I was calling a pharmacy, not an Amway distributor. I called the toll-free number I had for Walgreen and sure enough, Priority had rejected one of my prescriptions because they felt an over-the-counter drug would work better. Further, my Avandamet was still unavailable. Earlier this year, the feds stop production of a couple GlaxoSmithKline drugs because of "concerns," but supposedly, everything was all better now. Guess not. Great.

The rest of my order had been shipped Thursday and the post office left us the little note in our mailbox to come pick it up at the post office. The problem was that they were closed for the weekend, and wouldn't be open again until Tuesday. Because of these job things we all have combined with a post office that is only open about 6 hours a day, it was Wednesday before I got the package. With a big sticker on top that said "Refrigerate immediately upon receipt." Damn. The insulin. It was packed in an insulated bag with a couple cold packs, but of course by this time it was piss-warm.

Well, it didn't really matter because by last night, I had been out of insulin for five days and my blood sugar was hovering around 600. So I grabbed the pen injector kit, a cartridge of insulin, and the box of needles.

OK, so maybe I'm dense or something, but I can't for the life of me figure out what is supposed to be easier about a pen injector. The "quick-start" guide folds out to a 2-foot by 3-foot poster. I could have loaded up a needle and stuck it in my ass about 20 times in the same amount of time it took me to go through the "Safety Check." (I also wonder about using a medical device that has to be put through a safety check prior to each use, but I digress.) Some of that is surely due to unfamiliarity, but that certainly isn't all of it. But the worst part was when I tried to thread on a needle. They didn't fit.

Walgreen had sent me the wrong damn needles.

So today I was two hours late for work so I could sit in the parking lot outside my real pharmacist waiting for him to open. Luckily I still had a valid script for my insulin. Sixty dollars later, I had an ordinary vial of insulin and some ordinary needles.

So in one drug order, we have (1) perishables shipped so they arrive on a holiday weekend, (2) some pencil-necked MBA who has never laid eyes on me overriding my doctor's prescription, (3) one med that is not available because of the FDA (or maybe it is; no one seems to really know), (4) and the wrong needles for the insulin cartridges that were shipped in the same package.

I've never had much good to say about the medical industry, especially now that I'm part of it. Thanks to all involved in this little fiasco for confirming my worst opinions.

And I'm done. We have early soccer practice followed by a varsity guys game tonight.

It looks like the anti- anti-fat antibodies are starting to kick in. Back in the early-to-mid 80's it was running. If you ran 5 miles a day you would never die of a heart attack. That was, of course, absurd, and in fact, hard-core runners died from heart disease at rates higher than the general population. They also suffered from serious, life-long injuries to hips, knees, and ankles. Anyone running in a city was doing more damage to their lungs than a pack-a-day smoker. City ER rooms were filled with runners with cuts, abrasions, and head injuries from falls, and more-serious injuries (and not a few deaths) from getting hit by vehicles.

Today it is fat. We are a fat nation. And by extension, lazy, immoral, selfish, stupid, and probably have bad breath to boot. You know you are in the land of the absurd when George Clooney, who causes women around the world to swoon at the mere mention of his name, is technically obese. Not higher-than-average. Not carrying around a few extra pounds. Obese.

[Aside: can someone explain to me what the big deal is with Clooney? To me, he looks like the center from the high school football team that has taken one-to-many shots to the head. The world is full of men that I would consider to be far more attractive, but then, what to I know? Maybe I would have had more dates if I had thought to go with the dazed, mildly retarded look.]

I work with teen-age girls. To a person, they all think they are fat. Not out of shape (which is largely true) or needing to do some sit-ups to get rid of a little belly flab (which is also true of many). Fat. Need-to-go-on-a-diet fat. Need-to-starve-myself-to-the-point-of-passing-out fat. Our teens have enough challenges what with drugs, alcohol, sex, and our crappy schools. Can't we at least let them feel good about how they look?

Anyway. I need to head for home.

The Chinese successfully launched two astronauts and the first module of their space station today. There is no universal law that says the first permanently inhabited off-world post will be speaking English. In fact, the way things look right now, I'd say the odds are against it.

Gene Roddenberry as prophet? I've been seeing more and more of these on-demand manufacturing devices. (Yes, I know that Roddenberry was neither the only or even the first to envision on-demand manufacturing, but his Replicator (tm) has enjoyed deeper penetration into the pop culture.) Right now they are crude, limited, and expensive. Sort of like where computers were in the 1960's. Will Moore's Law apply to these as well?

On the home front, we have a crew at the house today installing the hardwood on the main floor. It will take them most of the week to do everything. I need to get some carpets for in front of the doors. Sand is now the mortal enemy. I need to get walks installed, which will help a lot, but spending $16,000 on the floor will leave us a little short on cash for a while.

Not much else going on. Tonight I need to call through the soccer team and remind everyone that soccer practice is at 3:30 instead of 5 due to the guys' varsity game.

Slow week and I really can't think of anything to write about.

We Interrupt This Program...

I know I said I had to get back to work, but this was too funny to not pass on. I am beginning to think that the whole ID controversy is just a test to see how much humiliation needs to be heaped on a group of people before they go crawl back into their cave.

And now I'm hungry....

I was checking my stats yesterday and noticed that washingtonpost.com was my top referrer site. I found that a bit odd; why would the Washington Post web site be referring readers to my blog? On Thursday, I had linked to a Post article. Ric & Debbie's Place is now listed in the Who's Blogging text box for that article. That's just plain weird. Kind of cool, but still weird, especially when you consider that I got the link from Jerry Pournelle's web site, which receives more hits in an hour than mine does in a month. Yet, no mention of Jerry's site and there I sit in the number two slot.

This will be a typical early-week linkfest, but first, news from the home front. Verizon continues to work on running phone line to my house. I now have, not one, but two of the little green boxes on the side of my road, both placed by seemingly intelligent people that realize that my road needs to be snow plowed. I can't believe it was Verizon employees; they must had hired some big guns from the local group home. During the last call they made to Debbie at work, the customer "service" drone made the astute observation that our number appears to be disconnected. The mind simply boggles. Do these idiots really believe I would continue to pay for non-functioning service while they screw around? It has now been three months since I first reported the problem. And why is the local repair office unaware that I am no longer a Verizon customer?

Anyway, back in the reality-based world:

This has to be one of the more accurate descriptions of YEC "science" I have come across. As I have said before, Wiley Miller has a front-row seat to the on-going silliness of the Dover trial.

And speaking of silliness, Pat Robertson is still doing his best to make everyone who claims to be a Christian look stupid. Two hurricanes make land fall and it's the second coming. Randomness tends to be "clumpy;" that's why human eyes can pick constellations out of the random distribution of stars in the night sky. Hurricanes, earthquakes, even deaths that affect a given family tend to come in bunches with long dry spells in between. Debbie lost her grandfather, two uncles, and her father in three months. Was that God's judgment? Does the decade-plus absence of the death of a close relative since mean that God is blessing her and/or her family? This sort of stupidity is exactly why rational people are leaving evangelical churches in droves. Hey Pat; if you are truly interested in not making a public ass of yourself, take a statistics course at your local community college, then go look at the hurricane statistics over the last one hundred years. And Hal; would you just shut up already?!?! The world didn't end in 1999 like you predicted. We all thought you were an idiot when you said it, and it was confirmed when 1999 came and went and the world was still here. Just shut up!

Vox Day has a new column up that needs to be read by every teen-age girl. I've always argued the issue from a different direction. The insistence made by Christians that no sex can occur outside of marriage is made into a bad farce by their insistence that no one can marry until they have completed at least a 4-year degree and are secure in a career. Is there anyone out there with a higher-than-room-temperature IQ that is having problems figuring out why illegitimacy among church members is higher than the surrounding community? If you don't want your grandchildren to be bastards, then encourage your teenage girls to marry and have a family before worrying about college and career. With average lifespan increasing with no corresponding increase in the window of female fertility, it just makes sense. Ask any 40-something spending themselves into bankruptcy on fertility treatments.

And in a development that will be sure to stun millions, Katrina disaster relief is becoming a vast black hole for federal dollars. Of course it has; we are a nation raised to have our lips permanently attached to the federal tax tit. Anyone surprised by this would be surprised by gravity.

Flint, Michigan, my home town, gets another "humiliating kick in the crotch" (free cookie to the first person to identify the origin of that phrase). This article doesn't mention it other than the carefully-worded phrase "high legacy issues," but what is killing our manufacturing sector are the retirees: they simply refuse to die when they are supposed to. Thirty-and-out made sense when the average shop rat died a couple years after retirement. Now it means paying more people to not work, than you pay to work. There is no way out. We can argue about how we got to this place or who is at fault, but the bottom line is that we are at the bottom of a very deep hole, and yet we keep digging, hoping to find a secret tunnel to the surface.

To wind up on a lighter note, Kiko seems like an interesting concept and something we are sure to see more of. It is a web-based application developed over the summer as part of the Summer Founders Program. It is still in beta, but it is certainly interesting. The most intriguing aspect to me is that the site loads faster than the calendar application from my employer's network, and has better on-screen performance as well. The specific technology is called AJAX. This could prove to be interesting. I'm typing this on a perfectly acceptable web-based word processor. All the files are saved on some server out there on the internet. It is available to me from any internet connected PC in the world with a web browser. Currently, everything I save is displayed on a blog, but it would take a competent programmer about one day to make it into my own personal web-based word processor. Image editing inside my Flickr account. My e-mail is already web-based. Add in a spreadsheet and Quicken, and I won't need anything installed on my local PC other that a browser and related plug-ins. I'm not sure that I'm ready to trust my financial data to the web, but the concept is becoming reality.

OK, I need to get back to work before I get fired.

Just a quick update, then I have to run: soccer practice is tonight.

First, my girls team finally put one in the win column with a 3-0 win on Saturday. We lost the second game 4-0 but still played well. Almost the entire team ended up at my house, although several were unable to spend the night. I dropped off the last person at 4pm on Sunday. From my hiding place in the basement, is sure sounded like everyone had fun; the giggling was non-stop from about 7pm Saturday until 2am Sunday when everyone settled in for a movie.

And that is all I have time for today.

I spent all last evening just reading. It felt good. Nestina was at work, Debbie was at church, and I was home in my comfy chair just reading. I finished up some neglected periodicals, then got a solid start on Richard Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible? So far, so good. I have not read anything by Friedman before, but I like his writing style. It is obvious from the first chapter that he has put a great deal of time and thought not just in researching facts, but integrating them into a comprehensive hypothesis, then thinking through its impact on his faith. I expect this to be an enjoyable read.

Some random links:

Here is what happens when a country stops manufacturing things. Ford cannot sell as many hybrid vehicles as it would like because its Japanese competitors are not making the parts fast enough. I'll leave the implications of that as an exercise for the reader.

The movie industry continues its march into oblivion. Microsoft seems determined to go along for the ride. Given the steep decline in box office receipts, I'm not sure what these people think they have to sell that is so compelling that the entire world is going to junk their TV's, computer systems (including monitors), and DVD players just to be prevented from casual (and constitutionally protected) copying. The commercial pirates won't even see this as a bump in the road. In fact, by eliminating the small-time copiers, this will actually benefit the mass copiers in China and Russia. Personally, the consumer electronics thing is becoming a matter of great indifference to me. I have over a years worth of reading material sitting on my shelf. If the MPAA and the RIAA make listening to music or watching videos inconvenient, I'll just pass. And I find it hard to believe I would be the only one.

Britain continues to lead the West into the dark night of insanity. I can't think of anything to add; the stupidity of their own words are far more damning than anything I can come up with.

I've added a new blog: Operation Eden. Just because the media seems to have forgotten about Katrina and Rita, doesn't mean that it's over. Take a careful look at the images of the church: serious structural damage and the floor inches deep in toxic sludge. Even after the water is gone, there is still a lot to be done before life will be normal.

In the famous words of Porky Pig, "That's all folks!"

Not much to report. Debbie and I both worked late, then grabbed some dinner. We were going to hit Dairy Queen and take a Blizzard up to Nestina at her work, but the bums closed a half-hour early. We still stopped by Movie Gallery to harass Nestina, but she put us to work, so we left. Debbie went right to bed, and I read until midnight or so, then hit the sack as well. Even though we have been having August weather (humid and in the 80's every day), I can tell winter is approaching because hibernation mode is starting to kick in. I need to find a way to be able to wrap up in a blanket and read for 6 months of the year and still get paid for it.

Anyway, the only thing to catch my eye today was an article titled This is the Free-Speech Party? Back in the day, the Republicans were for business interests and Democrats were for the little guy. Leave aside the question of why it is an either/or question for now; that was the Standard Sales Pitch (tm). At some point in the last 30 years, the Democrats have become the Party of the Circus Side-Show Freak. If you are a white, middle-class, dues-paying member of the Democratic party, good luck if you ever find yourself in need of your esteemed senator or representative. But if you are black, female, coked to the gills, raising 14 kids fathered by 17 different men (none of whom you could pick out of police line-up), and on welfare to boot? The entire Democratic party leadership will leap to your defense if anyone dares to question your, um, "lifestyle choices." Not that Uncle George has the moral high ground with his policy of inviting the entire Mexican nation into our borders. Or, at least the criminals, drug smugglers, and retards. Smart, education Mexicans want nothing to do with the US. (shrug) I barely found a reason to waste my time voting in the last presidential election. Now that the Libertarian Party seems to have completed its implosion, I doubt I will bother for the next one.

That's it.

And one more time: would someone please explain how feminism was supposed to de-objectify women? Anyone? Hello? [insert chirping_crickets.mp3] That will show those horrid male oppressors of womyn: flash 'em your tits, then give them a blow job!

(sigh)

(Unlike this post, the linked articles are perfectly work-safe...)

Nothing really jumped out at me today as I cruised the net, other than this gem paraphrased from Jerry Pournelle's site:

One-time cost of a totally secure wall from Texas to California: $2 billion (budget version) to $8 billion (deluxe version).

Annual cost of social services to illegal immigrants: $20 to $25 billion.

I am reminded of the comparison of the to-date cost of the Iraq war vs. the cost of total energy independence. In fact, for what will likely be the grand total cost of our on-going adventure in Iraq (including the cost in human lives) we could launch a crash-program to deploy enough space-based solar to meet our energy needs and those of our friends. We give them free energy at little to no additional cost to ourselves, while we retain control of the Big Red Switch in case anyone gets out of line. If we really need something else to keep the Air Force busy, use them to air-drop Girls Gone Wild DVD's and western clothing on places like Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc. The effect would likely be more devastating in the long term than dropping bombs, and would be far less costly. Of course, that makes sense, like doing whatever is necessary to secure our borders. Which means it will never be done. (shrug) Once I realized that there was nothing I could do to stop the slide of Western Culture into oblivion (it is inevitable; read any history book), it has been fun to sit back and watch the show.

Speaking of watching the show, we watched some of Penn and Teller's Showtime series Bullshit last night. I love P&T, and this series is just roll-on-the-floor funny. In the introduction, they explain the name of the show and the repeated use of profanity in the series. Calling someone a quack or calling, say, reflexology a fraud can get you sued, but calling someone "mother f&^$#r" or calling reflexology "bullshit" is an opinion and is protected, first amendment speech. Sweet. Anyway, we watched about half of them last night. Nestina has to work tonight and tomorrow night, so it will probably be Thursday before we see the rest of them. Recommended.

I also made it to Kalkaska for the varsity soccer game. All but one of my girls team were there to cheer the guys on, screaming wildly every time one of the Kalkaska players touched the ball. Hormones. In spite of that, Kalkaska won 4-1 with a very well-played game. The best part was the crowd. I think soccer will be very popular in spite of the institutional prejudice against it in the local school administration.

And just to veer off onto a bunny trail: One reason for the opposition to soccer is the negative effect it is perceived to have on football. Fans, players, and resources, goes the argument, are drawn away to the soccer team and weaken the "football program". Well, just some random thoughts:

Football program? This is high school, folks. I realize that most people in Kalkaksa think a good football team is more important than having good teachers, or even literate graduates. The funding priorities show that. But there is no football program. Just a football team. Get a grip.

Can football survive in head-to-head competition with soccer? Lets face it; anyone that has been a spectator at both knows which one is more fun to watch. Football and baseball are old-school games with brief bits of action interspersed with endless stretches of nothing. Soccer is of a kind with hockey and basketball; continuous play with short interruptions.

Soccer has always held the upper hand at private schools where money is tight. The reason is simple math: I can outfit an entire soccer team for the cost of one football player. As more high school athletic departments are forced to become completely self-funded, football will find itself fighting an up-hill battle. The gender issue will also play into this. In most schools, football consumes the largest share of the athletic budget. As those budgets tighten up, this will become politically untenable.

Granted, football, for now, holds all the cards in terms of money, visibility, and audience. But we are now at the point where we have a generation of kids leaving high school that have played soccer since preschool. Are we to suppose that they will simply give up the sport they have played since their earliest memories, and start watching football? What sport do you think their kids will be playing at age 5? Soccer right now is about where hockey was in the 1960's; something most people had heard of, but not much else. One advantage soccer has over hockey is, again, the cost issue. Not only can I outfit an entire soccer team for the cost of one hockey player, I can play on any reasonably flat mowed field instead of a very costly ice arena. Another advantage, at least in areas with high levels of immigration, is the international stature of the sport. Parents coming here from overseas simply expect their kids will be playing soccer.

I'm not sure I have a point to all this other than to say that I expect soccer to continue to grow in popularity. I also expect soccer to have the same effect on football that hockey and basketball have had on baseball. Football is too integrated into our culture to simply vanish, but I expect it will find itself with declining mindshare.

And I guess I'll just stop there.

Oops! I forgot a link. This is a warning to all you single guys out there. That's all I'm going to say.

Some news and goings on in a minute, but first a bit of a link-fest before I lose track of these.

DNA may be able to be extracted from a 20 million-year-old spider trapped in resin. Wow. Too bad my high school Biology class was such a complete dud. Maybe I would be working on cool stuff like this instead of writing COBOL code to reformat text files.

Why does sand stick together better when it is wet? Every kid that has ever been on a beach knows that wet sand will hold a shape, but dry sand will not. That may not sound like a very interesting question, but the answer turns out to be just that. Too bad creativity, questioning, and wonder are held in such poor esteem these days.

Why must tragedy always be turned into a farce? And why is it always a lawyer at the heart of it? This is nothing more than using a mother's real pain and grief in the pursuit of money and status.

And from the Yet-Another-Thing-to-Worry-About department, we now have to be on the lookout for six-year-old terrorists wielding butter knives. Really. You may not realize you need to worry about this, but you do. I love the passive-aggressive attitude; that they were letting the kid off with just an in-school suspension when they could have expelled him permanently. It sounds like this boy was blessed with parents that don't take that sort of crap. Good for them. How can any child subjected to this sort of stupidity grow up with anything other than utter contempt for authority? Remember this story the next time you see a teenager disrespecting a teacher, parent, cop, or other authority figure. Our school system has taught them well.

Speaking of terrorism, we also need to be on the lookout for college students writing parodies of other college students. I completely agree with this student when he says, "Some people are not college material. They do not know how to think critically nor are they willing to learn. They are everywhere." It used to be you had to be smart to get into college. Now our government and courts have invented from thin air the Right to College. Smart kids would have gotten the joke and that would have been the end of it. Of course, smart kids wouldn't have gotten their panties in a knot over a completely self-evident statement:

Holding up the Bible: This is not a science book.
Holding up the Origin of Species: This is.
Holding up the Bible again: This is a book about relationships with God.
Holding up the Origin of Species again: This isn't.

I was taught as much in my YEC Christian high school.

Vox Day's latest column give a lot to think about. Any of the quotes in isolation are bad enough. When you consider they are nearly identical, spoken over a period of less than a month, and spoken by the "leaders" of the "free" world, it makes me want to stock up on ammunition. YMMV.

Vox has also published the first chapter of his book, Media Whores, on his blog. The reason this book was never published will be obvious from the opening paragraphs. I'm looking forward to seeing more of it.

In local news, my girls were allowed to play on the main field on Saturday. The out-of-town teams from the GVSA were pushed to the Under-14 (smaller) field. They didn't look very happy. I had some dweeb try to get in my face about where the "other big field" was. I told him there was only one, it was in use, and I had no idea where they were supposed to play. He went off in a huff, and shortly afterwards, I saw them trudging off to the smaller field on the other side of the complex. I guess the lesson here for the GVSA is to deal with people with some sort of personal integrity, which excludes anyone related to the Kaliseum. It will be interesting to see what happens on the 22nd when we have our last home games.

As far as the soccer went, we lost both games. The score was close and the girls played very well, but we just can't get the ball into the net. That will come with experience and some drills we will be doing in practice on Thursday. Tonight we were supposed to have practice, but there is a varsity soccer game at the time we normally have it, so we would have to move it up to right after school. That knocks out about half the team due to other obligations, jobs, and transportation issues. We also have most of the team hurting in some way or another, so I just pulled the plug on practice for tonight.

More proof that Verizon is run by idiots: I mentioned that the day after I canceled our phone service and signed up for cell phones, there were several Verizon vehicles on our road. Sure enough, they reran the phone lines down our road. Except they ran them to the cabin instead of the house. None of which matters, because we are not Verizon customers. Next time you wonder why it costs $35 a month for a Verizon phone, it may be that they spend a lot of money running phones lines to unoccupied structures owned by non-customers. (shrug) They can have me back as a customer any time they want as long as they agree to 1) refund the cost of our second, non-functioning phone line back to when I reported the problem in the beginning of July, 2) run buried cable down the county road at the proper depth, 3) install the proper hardware at the transition to buried service on our property, 4) reimburse me the $28 for the stop-payment order I had to issue to stop them from continuing to hit our bank account, 5) buy out the 2-year service contract on our cell phones. Debbie talked to some Customer Service Specialist (we used to just call them secretaries) that promised 1), but I'll believe it when the money is in my hand. The rest will never happen, which I can gladly live with.

That's about it.

Not much to report other than soccer practice last night and then home for dinner and a movie. The local library is collecting the movies from this summer's Traverse City Film Festival. Nestina grabbed one called Tarnation when she was at the library a while back, and last night was the first night that we were all home at the same time. It was certainly different. I haven't decided if I liked it or not. I may have an opinion later after I've had a chance to process it more. The main story line resonated with me; a normal person completely destroyed by the psychiatric industry, and left to live out the rest of her life with severe mental disability. I've watched this process in people I know and even members of my own family, although not in any way close to the degree seen in this movie. Remember, if your kid is hyper-active, give him some pot to smoke. It's far less damaging than anything a doctor will prescribe, and, unlike prescription drugs, it will work. Better yet, avoid refined sugars, caffeine, and red dye. That cures between 75% to 80% of all ADHD.

Not much else other than a spam map. You can zoom right in and see where the spammers are. We just need to find the guys that beat the Russian spammer to death and offer them free plane tickets, free food, and free lodging to the US.

I've got to go; I'm supposed to meet Debbie and Ruby Tuesdays for dinner.

Well, I didn't get to post anything later on Monday or at all on Tuesday. I'm going to try to make up for lost time today.

In local news, I just received a phone call from the head of the Kalkaska AYSO and my girls will probably get kicked off their field again this Saturday. The reason for this is simple: Paul, the director of the Kaliseum (and, by his actions one would think, the owner, although the Kalkaska taxpayers that are still paying for the place might take issue), has booked some league from out of town on our field every Saturday. I knew this a while back, and just as I figured, no one has the balls to tell me about it up front. The last time, they used the excuse that our original schedule had our home games on September 17 as tentative and they just assumed that meant we weren't playing. I wonder what the bullshit excuse will be this time, eh Mark? Just how far have you shoved your head up Paul's ass, anyway?

Did I mention I'm pissed off?

Paul has a problem with me because I fried is ass for his habitual violation of child labor law, so in typical Chicken-Shit-Paul fashion, he is taking it out on a bunch of high school girls. Way to go, Paul; you da man. Or not. Tonight I will be drafting a nasty letter to all of the parents telling them exactly what their $65 is buying. AYSO money built that field, and Paul is now booking out-of-town teams to play on it when AYSO already has it reserved, because the league pays. Not to AYSO, but to the Kaliseum. AYSO, of course, figures they already paid to use the field by paying to build it. I'm sure the higher-ups in AYSO will be very interested to hear all about this.

I'm about two seconds from being All Done with anything and anyone in Kalkaska.

In other news, nothing is really going on. I sat for two hours last night sorting through junk mail from just the last few days. I'd just burn the lot of it, but about once every three days, something shows up that I actually care about. So I have to go through the (literally) three-foot-high stack piece by piece. There are a lot of other things I could have used that two hours for. I'm not sure what the answer is. I've asked the vendors to not send me their crap because I'm just not interested. They send it anyway. Most of the catalogs are from companies I have never heard of, nor would I ever do business with. Yet the catalogs Just. Keep. Coming. You would think that after sending me a 300-page catalog every few months for the last six years, and never getting a single order, that someone would get a clue. And the newspapers. I have no idea what happened recently but all of a sudden my mailbox is jammed with papers from Elk Rapids, Bellaire, Mancelonna, and on and on and on. I get at least one of these a day. It started with the Bellaire paper. I received my complimentary copy when it started up, and was told I would get two more. They also gave me prices for a subscription if I wanted it to continue. I never gave them a dime, but I am still receiving my weekly "complimentary copy" over nine months after the first issue. In that time, the Bellaire paper has been joined by a nearly identical paper from every wide spot in the road in a fifty-mile radius of our home. Interesting business model to say the least. I suspect my tax dollars are backing this in some way.

I said all that to say this: last night while I was sorting junk mail, I watched a movie (Constantine) that I didn't order, and that Columbia House had delivered because I had lost the reply card in the stacks of junk mail that come to our house. It wasn't bad, but I wouldn't have bought it, given a choice.

I've built up a pile of links over the last few days and I don't have time to do them justice. Remember that just because I link to something doesn't mean that I necessarily agree with it, just that it is asking questions we really need to think about.

Most long-time Republicans have taken to calling the Republican Party the Stupid Party, largely because key members in the hierarchy seemed incapable of firing a pistol without hitting their own foot. The current administration is typical. In spite of controlling the White House, the Congress and the Supreme Court, nothing seems to go their way. Well, it looks like it goes deeper than just the party leadership. It seems the entire conservative movement is cursed with a bad case of the stupids. When any movement starts losing people like Dr. Pournelle, it ain't long for this world.

Fred Reed has a new essay up at his place: Whimpering About Poverty: Maybe You Should Try the Real Thing. Real poverty in America is rare. What we mostly have is lazy people making bad choices compounded by sheer stupidity. Why should I spare one second of pity on someone so stupid that they can't figure out that the way out of the ghetto isn't becoming a pregnant crack-whore at 14? I hear a lot of yammering about the plight of the poor in our inner-cities (never mind that there is a higher rate of poverty in rural Kalkaska), when all I see is self-inflicted blight.

You can always tell when a stupid person knows that what he is doing is stupid. He will invariably claim to be just doing his job. Arrest, confiscation of property, time in jail, lawyers, court appearances, all by the book. All the forms filled out in triplicate with the pink copy filed with all the other pink copies, and the blue copy filed with all the other blue copies, and the white copy filed with all the other white copies. And what dastardly deeds lead to these charges? Well, from what we can tell, this man is a terrorist because:

a) He was wearing a rain coat. In London. In the rain. Go figure. I thought rain gear was legally required before leaving home in England.
b) He checked his voice mail on his cell phone. Imagine. Paying $50 - $100 a month for a high-tech communication tool, and having the audacity to use it. People these days.
c) He arrived early for his train and sat quietly waiting for it. If this were New York, this definitely would stick out among the diversity wearing pants ten sizes too big, wandering around shouting obscenities at no one, and defecating on the floor. But I understand that in a London tube station, it is quite common to see people arrive early and wait quietly for the next train.
d) He works for a company that had recently sent out all the new-hires on some sort of break-the-ice assignment to take pictures of local land marks. OK, so on the dork-o-meter, this ranks up there with drumming circles, but I'm not sure it qualifies as potential terrorism.
c) He speaks with a (European) accent. Just like all those terrorists from 9/11.

My God!!!! Break out the pitch forks and torches!! Yes, I know. This was London, not New York. But for forty years, I've watched the United States follow right along behind England. Sometimes it's only a few months lag, other times it may be four or five years. (Aside: Evangelicals in the US may want to keep this in mind while looking at the fate of mega-churches in England. I'll give you a hint; the plywood industry is doing nicely.)

China is heading back to space. This time, there will be two astronauts, and they will be leaving the first module of a space station on orbit. The Chinese are not just replaying Mercury. They are out to eat our lunch and we are doing everything we can to help them. (shrug) Sometimes, you just get what you deserve (see above rant on "poverty").

Two from the AnalPhilosopher: Women and Careers, and Crying Wolf. The only thing keeping the Stupid Party in power is that the Democrats have become the Cry Baby Party.

And Vox Day takes on every guy's favorite topic: Breasts. That and the new found liberation women seem to feel about displaying them anywhere and everywhere. Tell me again, how exactly was women's lib supposed to be about eliminating the exploitation of women?

And that is all I have time for today.

It's been a few days since I've had a minute to post anything. Sorry about that. It's been pretty crazy around our house (I know, what's new).

First, of course, is that it looks like we got lucky with Rita. "Lucky" is, of course, a relative term. The people who own homes that are nothing but naked slabs probably don't feel too lucky. But the last minute hook probably saved the refining industry and some of the most built-up areas of the coast. The role that the marshlands played in all this also needs to be studied and understood by the pave-it-over-and-build-condos-on-it crowd. And just because Rita wasn't as bad as it could have been or wasn't as bad as Katrina doesn't mean we can just forget about those that were effected.

As previously reported, as of Thursday, we are no longer Verizon customers. Something that Debbie or I did or said must have seriously jerked some chains, because when Debbie left for work this morning, there were three Verizon vehicles out on our road. I hope they got the message that we are no longer a customer. I'd really hate for them to waste a bunch of money burying all new cable to our house for nothing. Really. Honest. I'd feel real bad for maybe two seconds.

In any case, we are set up with cell phones. If you are trying to call us on our old number, you will not get through. We are contacting people as fast as we can with our new numbers. If we haven't gotten to you yet, be patient; we will.

Thursday night was also Tip Night at G's, the local pizza joint. My soccer team waited tables for four hours and made over $340 dollars for the local AYSO organization. Good job, ladies!

Friday, I had scheduled a soccer practice because we were all serving food when we normally practice. Very few could make it, but those of us that did had fun. Several of us sat around after practice and talked. That's the part about youth ministry I miss the most. I wish I had more time to spend with everyone on the team outside of practices and games.

Saturday was, of course, soccer games in Gladwin. Our first game didn't go too well. We just couldn't seem to get it together and lost 4-0. The second game we played much better, but still lost 3-1. The offense is really starting to gel. We might have it together in time for the last game of the season....

Debbie was at a retreat Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. She stopped by the house while Nestina and I were at the soccer game, then headed downstate to her mom's place. I drove down Sunday to meet her there for a benefit dinner. One of her high school classmates has cancer and as you would expect has really racked up the bills. There was a very good turnout and between those paying for the meal, the silent auction, the live auction, and the 50/50 raffles, the family should have gotten a big boost.

We got home last night after 11pm and finally fell into bed around 1am. I'm really hammering down the caffeine today, and it isn't working. There is soccer practice after work, but other than that, I have a night off.

That's all I have time for right now. There is a bunch of stuff I need to link to, but that will have to wait for later.

It's a Category 5!!

It's official: Rita's winds just hit 165 mph. At least the latest predictions have it going around Louisiana. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for small favors. There will still be a lot of rain hitting the Big Easy, so hang on folks. It's going to be an interesting couple of days.

As of about two minutes ago, we have no telephone service. The trick was to not say anything when the automated attendant asked to briefly describe what you want. Then it gives you some example statements. The problem was that I was saying "Cancel Service" instead of "Change Service." So instead of telling me it didn't understand what I wanted, it just put me on hold until I gave up and disconnected. I'm not sure it is possible to be any more stupid than that.

"Sir, why do wish to cancel your phone service?"

"BECAUSE YOU ARE BUNCH OF $*^(%* MORONS WHO ARE BAFFLED BY THE OPERATION OF A LIGHT SWITCH!!!!"

Which. of course, I didn't say because I was raised better than that. In any case, I will be shopping for cell phones tomorrow.

Bye bye Verizon! May you rot in hell.

A Milestone (of sorts)

Our web-stat counter broke 1,000 sometime in the last 24 hours. That's the number of page hits we've had since August 5, 2005 when I signed up with web-stat.com. I would have never expected the number of visitors, and I certainly would have never guessed at the geographic distribution.

Setting aside my normal sarcasm, it is both gratifying and humbling to realize that there are those that take time to come here and read my ravings against the phone company, or detailing what was for dinner last night. As a certified geek (just ask Nestina) I probably shouldn't be in awe of technology, but the ability to touch family, friends, or just random people over the entire globe from a $500 appliance in my living room (OK, so in my case, it's my employers $500 appliance in my cube) ought to impress us just a bit.

Sincere thanks to all for stopping by.

Some items of interest from today's skim of the internet:

Jerry Pournelle has an interesting article on his mail page from a European observer of our response to Katrina. The above link doesn't go directly to that excerpt; you will have to scroll down a bit (to the phrase "And a more serious view follows") Some of the important points from the interview with Emmanual Todd:

What really resonates with my representation of the United States... is the fact that the United States was disabled and ineffectual. The myth of the efficiency and super-dynamism of the American economy is in danger.

The great weakness of this economic system is that it does not rest on a foundation of real domestic industrial capacity.

[T]o manage a natural catastrophe, you don't need sophisticated financial techniques, call options that fall due on such and such a date, tax consultants, or lawyers specialized in funds extortion at a global level, but you do need materiel, engineers, and technicians, as well as a feeling of collective solidarity.

The Americans knew how to dominate the Nazi storm with a mastery they show themselves incapable of today in just a single one of their regions.

This social system no longer rests on the 'Founding Fathers' Calvinist work ethic and taste for saving - but, on the contrary, on a new ideal (I don't dare speak of ethics or morals): the quest for the biggest payoff for the least effort..... The gang of black unemployed who loot a supermarket and the group of oligarchs who try to organize the "heist" of the century of Iraq's hydrocarbon reserves have a common principle of action: predation.

What seems to me more striking is the way this America that incarnates the absolute opposite of the Soviet Union is on the point of producing the same catastrophe by the opposite route.

Many in America (and I am sure we are hardly the only ones to have fallen victim to this particular logic error) assume that the way things are is the way things will always be. America is here today, so it must always exist. I'm pretty sure the average Roman citizen thought much the same right up to the day Rome fell. A more modern example is the Soviet Union, which Mr. Todd points to in the interview. We are not the end of history. We will not usher in the Millenial Kingdom, no matter what nutter Christian Reconstructionists claim. The United States will, at some point, cease to exist in its present form. We seem to be following the path laid out by history, which we, of course, no longer teach in our schools.

While working in the automobile industry, I learned that all domestic car manufacturers (and most manufacturers in any industry) don't really build things any more. They are essentially banks that finance the sale of products produced, in whole or in part, in some other country. GM looses money every time they sell a passenger car. But that's OK; they make it up by providing the financing through GMAC. That wouldn't be so bad except odds are the car you bought landed in the US either fully assembled, or as parts made overseas, then assembled here in the US. I worked for Volkswagen which lost money on every product line, but made up for it playing various financial games with currencies, and buying and selling other brands. From what I know of every major industry, it is much the same: product takes a back seat to financial games. I'm sure I just lack the imagination to see why this is good thing.

A series of closely related blog entries:

Maybe there is hope
Women, fear and embottled genies
The Death of Feminism

I've said it before and I will say it again and I will continue to say it as long as there are those still advocating the failure called feminism: it is a bad deal for families; it is a bad deal for children; it is a bad deal for men; it is a bad deal for women. The only beneficiaries seem to be high school and college guys who now have access to unlimited, commitment-free sex. How being a spitoon for a string of random males' sperm empowers women is beyond me, but then again, I'm just "book smart" and "not intelligent" according to some members of my family.

Many, including yours truly, predicted this day would come: Michael Schiavo is writing a book. Somehow I don't think he will attempt to explain his peculiar way of showing affection: killing his wife by dehydration. Would someone explain to me again how all this wasn't just about the money?

It seems my co-worker's fear is coming to pass. A Catagory 4 storm that could push up to Catagory 5 is working across the Gulf of Mexico. If you look at the predicted storm tracks over the last 48 hours, you will notice they keep shifting to a more northerly path. Sort of like Katrina did. Some models are still showing a hook right into Louisiana. Pray that doesn't happen. Of course, no matter where Rita hits, it won't be pretty.

And that's all I have time for today.

Sending Smoke Signals

For a telephone company, Verizon has a lot to learn about how to make use of a telephone in a business. Today, I sent them a message that even the brain-damaged morons employed there will understand: I signed a stop-payment order on my Verizon bill. We'll see if having their ACH request bounce back to them gets anyone's attention. Most likely not. What I expect is a letter stating that my payment bounced and my service with Verizon is in jeopardy if I don't call their stupid 800 number and sit on hold for hours on end. Which I have been doing for days trying to cancel my non-functioning phone service.

Automatic payments are certainly convenient, but you put all the cards into the vendor's hand when you give them an open-ended authorization to charge whatever they want whenever they want against your bank account. Automatically billing a credit card at least gives you the opportunity to contest a charge; an automatic debit against your checking account leaves you almost no recourse. Even the stop payment option is very limited. For example, I just paid $28 to stop a single payment on a specific day for a specific amount. If Verizon re-sends the debit through ACH the next day, or for a different amount, it will come out of my checking account, and I will have no recourse whatsoever. Other than sitting on hold for hours at a time and begging Verizon to please stop stealing money out of my checking account.

If this doesn't work, I guess I can always resort to destroying every piece of Verizon equipment I can find. The little green boxes on the side of the road are now made of plastic instead of metal, so I assume a little home-made napalm would do quite a number on them.

Anyway, not much else going on.

Just a quick note before I have to go to an eight-hour meeting.

My soccer team lost Saturday. Badly. I lost track of the score. Practice today will be interesting. I knew we were playing a really good team, but I didn't think they were that good. But the other team was very gracious, and my girls held their poise; not an easy thing to do when the other team can essentially score at will.

I love Day by Day. Today's cartoon makes a point that all Christians need to think very hard about. Katrina was not God's finger punishing the infidels in New Orleans. If God wants to impress me, He can destroy Las Vegas with a hurricane, rather than a below-sea-level city in an area that gets hit with multiple hurricanes and tropical storms every year. And I sure wish the ladies at my work would dress like that. Well, some of them, at least.

And I have to go. More later today.

Avast!

It's International Talk Like a Pirate Day!!

Arrrrr!!

Here is a keyboard that will help you blog like a pirate.

All Done Part II

Verizon joins the list of those with whom I am All Done. Six years ago, we paid a big stack of dead Presidents to have phone service run to our house. We paid for buried cable, repeaters, etc. What we got was 3,000 feet of buried service. Worse, it was buried about 3" in the ground right down the center of the county road we live on. So for six years, our phones have stopped working whenever heavy trucks drive down the road, it rains, our road gets graded, or for no apparent reason at all. Back in the first week of July, we started getting static on our voice line. There was a gas well being drilled on the back of the property, so some heavy equipment had driven down the road. The static got worse over the next few days, so I opened a call ticket on the Verizon web site. Their repair guy came out, switched our line one and line two around (so now the static is on our data line), left a note to call Javier Barajas at 989.732.8501 to get it fixed right, and closed out the ticket. This has been our typical experience. The tech knows that the whole installation is a hash, and rather than get bogged down in actually addressing the root problem (improper installation), they just jury rig something, close the call ticket, and run away.

I called Javier. He was working on it. They were trying to figure out how to install the line the way it should have been six years ago. This seemed odd to me; that Verizon is not aware of how to install a length of buried cable. But maybe there is some serious mojo I'm not aware of, like the sacrifice of a virgin. We wait. And wait. I call back a week or so later. The crew is waiting on miss-dig. I asked him what they needed to miss? There wasn't anything under the road other than their own wire. The crew will be there Thursday. Promise.

Silly me, I didn't ask which Thursday. I didn't even ask which year. So I wait. No crew. I call. Thursday. Really this time. They're just waiting on miss-dig. I explain again that there isn't anything to miss. There will never be any flags no matter how many times they call, because the only utility we have run is the phone line. Oh. Well, they will be there Thursday. Honest.

Well, it is now Friday, and no sign of the phone crew. So in about five minutes, we will have no phone service at our house. I'm All Done; pulling the plug on this nonsense. I've been paying $70/month for phones that don't work at all for significant chunks of time, and have never worked properly. So this is it. At some point, I will sign us up for cell phones. Alltel phones seem to work fairly well at our place. I will have to get them from the Kalkaska store and take a pass on my Munson discount. I've been to the Traverse City Alltel store several times to get information on just what the Munson discount is, and I can only assume everyone there must have previously worked for Lark Lawn and Garden, Brown Lumber, or Verizon. I don't think you could hit room temperature if you added all their IQ's together. The Kalkaska store is staffed by people that seem to actually want to sell you a phone and a service contract. Not only is that rare anywhere in America, it is virtually unheard of in Northern Michigan.

So we will be out of touch for a while. Updates here will only be when I can sneak on from work, as we will have no internet access from the house. And give ol' Javier a call and tell him I said he is an ass. I'd do it myself, but I am All Done.

UPDATE:
I just spent 45 minutes on hold waiting for the next available Verizon representative. And of course you can do anything you need to do over the internet except cancel your service. We wouldn't want to make that easy to do. I wonder what MBA genius sporting a diploma with the ink still wet thinks that this is somehow changing my mind that Verizon is run by idiots?

UPDATE II:
And another hour of my life wasted on Verizon while I sit on hold. Monday I will be putting a stop-payment order at the bank. We'll see if they respond to that.

Last night was soccer practice, Kalkaska's varsity soccer game (a 2-2 tie), a ref's meeting, and other soccer administrivia. Bottom line was I didn't get home until after 9pm. Did I mention that this soccer thing seems to be eating me alive?

Anyway, a bunch of links. First, A Stitch in Haste tackles several interrelated topics:

Perhaps They'll Give Her an SUV Instead
Why is Flood Insurance Publicly Provided?
What is 250,000 Squared?
On Chips and Chins

Here at work, we use GroupWise, Novell's scheduling, e-mail, task management, whatever else tool. The old term for it was groupware, but I haven't heard that used in a decade. In any case, the administration of GroupWise is a huge task that has been dumped on various people in our networking group over the years who already had 40-hour-per-week jobs. Well, some bright boys in IS have decided that GroupWise will be taken from the networking group and dumped into the applications group where I work. It certainly makes sense on one level, but after the recent layoffs, it's not like we have an extra full-time employee just sitting around doing nothing. So this has turned into a bit of a pissing match, which does wonders for employee moral. In any case, it seems we are not alone. Scott Adams has spies in Munson's IS department.

The Theory of Gravity is so materialistic, humanistic, and atheistic. And besides, it's just a theory. I'm glad to see that there are brave souls out there following the path blazed by the Intelligent Design crowd. Read all about Intelligent Grappling, and the fight for equal access to the public school science classrooms currently in the grip of atheistic humanists trying to turn all of our children into homosexuals.

I have to run out for some food. More in a minute.

Yesterday, I worked late, went home and ate dinner, read for a bit, then went to bed early. I think the excitement has gone out of my life.

Today will be a bit of a link-fest. We start with two posts from A Stitch in Haste on the evil that lurks in the hearts of men (if you know what that's originally from, you are older than I am). Notice that the first two have nothing to do with a natural disaster. Natural disasters simply loosen the lid enough to let the real person out. That these kind of events are both rare and shocking at least tells us that civilization works in a broad sense. The last is Katrina-related, but certainly not caused by Katrina. The defense from the medical staff is simply bone-chilling: "To my knowledge -- and I'll go to my grave with this -- there was no one there who could have been salvaged." Sorry "Dr." John J. Kokemor, but you have no business practicing medicine. I have no idea of the size of this medical center, and maybe it was true that right at the moment of evacuation there were 34 people "in their death throes." But this kind of callousness is inexcusable. Salvaged indeed.

Two articles that point out better than anything I have seen what people like Fred Reed mean when they talk about two nations living in one set of borders. Read this article, watch the video, look at the slides. Then tell me what that group of people from New Orleans have in common with this person:

Letter from South Louisiana

Dear America,

I suppose we should introduce ourselves: We're South Louisiana.

We have arrived on your doorstep on short notice and we apologize for that, but we never were much for waiting around for invitations. We're not much on formalities like that.

And we might be staying around your town for a while, enrolling in your schools and looking for jobs, so we wanted to tell you a few things about us. We know you didn't ask for this and neither did we, so we're just going to have to make the best of it.

First of all, we thank you. For your money, your water, your food, your prayers, your boats and buses and the men and women of your National Guards, fire departments, hospitals and everyone else who has come to our rescue.

We're a fiercely proud and independent people, and we don't cotton much to outside interference, but we're not ashamed to accept help when we need it. And right now, we need it.

Just don't get carried away. For instance, once we get around to fishing again, don't try to tell us what kind of lures work best in your waters. We're not going to listen. We're stubborn that way.

You probably already know that we talk funny and listen to strange music and eat things you'd probably hire an exterminator to get out of your yard.

We dance even if there's no radio. We drink at funerals. We talk too much and laugh too loud and live too large and, frankly, we're suspicious of others who don't.

But we'll try not to judge you while we're in your town.

Everybody loves their home, we know that. But we love South Louisiana with a ferocity that borders on the pathological. Sometimes we bury our dead in LSU sweatshirts.

Often we don't make sense. You may wonder why, for instance - if we could only carry one small bag of belongings with us on our journey to your state - why in God's name did we bring a pair of shrimp boots?

We can't really explain that. It is what it is.

You've probably heard that many of us stayed behind. As bad as it is, many of us cannot fathom a life outside of our border, out in that place we call Elsewhere.

The only way you could understand that is if you have been there, and so many of you have. So you realize that when you strip away all the craziness and bars and parades and music and architecture and all that hooey, really, the best thing about where we come from is us.

We are what made this place a national treasure. We're good people. And don't be afraid to ask us how to pronounce our names. It happens all the time.

When you meet us now and you look into our eyes, you will see the saddest story ever told. Our hearts are broken into a thousand pieces.

But don't pity us. We're gonna make it. We're resilient. After all, we've been rooting for the Saints for 35 years. That's got to count for something.

OK, maybe something else you should know is that we make jokes at inappropriate times.

But what the hell.

And one more thing: In our part of the country, we're used to having visitors. It's our way of life. So when all this is over and we move back home, we will repay to you the hospitality and generosity of spirit you offer to us in this season of our despair.

That is our promise. That is our faith.

More from Chris Rose here, here, here, and here.

Speaking of evil, the AnalPhilosopher starts off with The Logical Problem of Evil, followed by Can Implies Ought? Both are important and need some thought.

And last, it seems the reputation of bureaucrats is not holding up well under Katrina. Big surprise, that.

And I need to do some work.

To start with a retraction of sorts. It appears the at least parts of the Falls Creek report were exaggerated. There is a rebuttal here, but of course, consider the source; it is written by an emergency response bureaucrat. Probably the safest bet is to follow the advice of Napoleon and never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence. And friction. Never forget the friction. Of course the two most disturbing elements in the original story remain: one confirmed by the rebuttal (the "guests" are in fact detainees that are not allowed to leave for any reason), the other ignored (the government "leased" private property without the consent or knowledge of the property owners). And again we see the PC Police with their insistence that changing the label you attach to something somehow changes the facts. I too "insist" on referring to the refugees as refugees because that is what they are. Look the word up in a dictionary if you don't believe me. They may also be "guests," although, at least where I'm from, one doesn't lock guests in the bedroom and insist they stay against their will. And God forbid that citizens "self deploy" to help others out. That might steal some of the glory that should be accruing to the bureaucrats.

In any case, my original opinion stands. Given that the oldest political joke in the world is "I'm from the government and I am here to help you," why would anyone in their right mind depend on the government for their own safety and the safety of their families? That goes double for disaster planning, where it is provable that the government is not making adequate provision to fulfill it's own promises. Think of it this way: I promise to give you one million US dollars on 12/31/2005. I put it in writing and sign it with witnesses on national TV. You, being a bit of a skeptic, decide to check on me and discover that the only way it would be mathematically possible for me to fulfill my promise would be to win the Super-Lotto, which you have on good authority I don't play. Would you then go $1 Million in debt, expecting to pay it off with the $1 Million I promised to pay you in 14 weeks? Sure, I'm a liar and a scumbag and probably a number of other things (none good), but would you expect to get a great deal of sympathy from people for having placed yourself in a position of dependency on someone that was provably, in advance, not worthy of your trust?

Emergency services are all well and good, and there are certainly large scale things that need to be handled by the National Guard or coordinated by some federal agency, such as recovering New Orleans from the bottom of a lake, re-establishing navigation on the Mississippi, or rebuilding the power grid. But when it comes to the health and well-being of yourself and your family, you have exactly one person you can rely on; yourself. Thus it has always been.

Now for what is really important in this world: soccer. Saturday was my first time out as a coach. The team did very well, although I have my doubts as to how much I actually had to do with it. We lost the first game 3-2 and tied the second 4-4. You would be hard pressed to find three more evenly-matched teams. We had three girls score their first goal ever in a game and one that scored our other three goals on an incredible effort. Almost everyone on the field was playing a position they have had little or no experience in. Due to my slackerlyness (a word which oddly does not spell check), we had three regular practices, plus two optional practices over the Labor Day weekend prior to the game. I was extremely proud of everyone. Great job Lady Blazers!!!

Other than that, not much to report from over the weekend. Soccer has officially taken over my life until the end of October.

Wiley Miller is from Maine, which gives him a front-row seat for the Dover, Pennsylvania court case that will decide if the intelligent design "theory" is science or religion. That may explain two recent cartoons, found here and here. I have nothing to add.

And that seems to be all I have at the moment.

Yesterday evening was our last soccer practice before our first set of games on Saturday. It could have gone better, but I think we will do OK on Saturday. We lost a lot of key players from our offence and our goalie to college and such. Most of the players on the team are young and could form a solid core for the next couple years. We'll see.

Not much else, just went home after practice and collapsed in my chair until I went to bed.

In New Orleans, the Constitution has been suspended, apparently. "I'm from the government and I am here to help you."

FEMA seems to be using a Southern Baptist retreat as a detention center of some sort. The owners of the property have been told it is no longer theirs; it now belongs to the government. "I'm from the government and I am here to help you."

At the Astrodome, volunteers trying to set up a low-power FM station to broadcast information have been shut down. "I'm from the government and I am here to help you."

Jerry Pournelle has a lot of e-mail about the good, the bad, and the ugly of hurricane relief. Many people are doing extraordinary things to help others, while the petty bureaucrats try to botch things up just to prove they are in control. Is anyone surprised by this? In all of human history, has it ever been otherwise? So please explain why we keep giving these people more power and more control over every aspect of our lives?

Some of the pumps are running in New Orleans. Only about 10% of them at this point, but at least water is moving out of the city. The time estimate remains firm at five to six months before anyone gets back. The dollar "estimate" is between $150 billion and half a trillion. I'd guess the latter is closer to the mark.

And that is all I have for today.

More water on Mars. It just keeps getting better. I can't believe both rovers are still running without any major malfunctions. They were only supposed to last six months at best. Eighteen months later, they are both going strong.

Bob Thompson posted a response to Fred Reed's column that I linked to yesterday. Again, I find nothing to argue with. The lid coming off, to use Bob's phrasing, is one of the big reasons I have been planning and working towards getting out of Flint since I was in Jr. High. At my last job (Hurley Medical Center), you could cut the racial tension with a knife. The place was over-run with affirmative action hires that were not capable of doing their jobs. Everyone, including the affirmative action hires, knew who the affirmative action hires were. It was obvious, yet no one was allowed to say anything on pain of immediate termination. At least at work. The whites certainly said plenty to each other after work. I have no idea what the blacks said, because I never talked to them outside of work, and only then when it was unavoidable. Not because I am some racist that doesn't want to be anywhere near blacks, but because the blacks in the IS department requested (demanded?) and were given racially segregated offices. I drew the obvious conclusion from that and restricted contact to e-mail and phone, and only when absolutely unavoidable. In Flint, whites and blacks have very little to do with each other, and both sides seem to prefer it that way. Two nations living in the same borders.

And I will shut up before I say too much. This is, after all, America; where everyone knows what you cannot say and who you cannot say it about.

Today, my web stats look a little more like what I would expect: almost every visitor is from North America. I have no idea what was going on last week with visitors from every continent. Combined with the comment spam I can only assume the script kiddies had a new toy to play with and the comment authentication has shut them down. I've said it before and I will say it again: something painful, bloody, public, and fatal has to happen to spammers unless the world is willing to abandon the internet. These same people have already destroyed Usenet. The majority of internet bandwidth is already being eaten by spam, and even the fastest machines made today cannot run even modestly effective e-mail filters without choking. Certainly the Mafia use computers? Understand that the majority of spam comes from a dozen or so individuals. Their names, home addresses, and business addresses are all known and are in fact published on a number of anti-spam web sites. Several live and act like they are rock stars or some other minor celebrity, giving interviews to the press and driving around in Ferrari's. A couple of them beaten to death (as has already happened to a minor player in Russia) would certainly deter the rest?

Or maybe I'm just in a foul mood.

Fred Reed has a new column up about the looting and violence in New Orleans. Anyone familiar with Fred can pretty much guess his take on things. Not that I disagree. I grew up in Flint. I've seen what Fred describes first hand. Fred is also backed up by a member of the "black culture."

I really don't have much to add to either of those, other than there is a reason I left Flint to live in an area with a higher cost of living and lower wages. It certainly wasn't for a view of the bay.

Jerry Pournelle's son is in the Navy and reports from ground zero. The damage is worse than can be imagined. The "estimate" being tossed around now is $150 billion to rebuild. I'll say it again: estimates are based on previous experience. When was the last time a major modern city was recovered from the bottom of a lake and rebuilt? Before this is over, the total bill will make that $150 billion into chump change. For one thing, don't expect the official rebuilding numbers to include items like higher prices for building materials, gasoline, natural gas, electricity (How much coal passes any given point on the Mississippi River on any given day? Or, more accurately, "passed."), food, etc. for the rest of the country continuing for the next several years. It also won't include the costs born by local governments due to increased crime around refugee centers. It hasn't even been a week and Houston is seeing a spike in crime around the Astrodome. It also won't include locally depressed wages when the refugees decide that living below sea level in an area prone to hurricanes is stupid and decide to stay where they are. It also won't include the hidden, systemic costs of a massive increase in federal debt. Everyone realizes that Uncle Sucker will be paying for most of this, right? What percentage of mortgages are ARM's? What is the ripple effect of increasing the majority of mortgage payments in the country a hundred bucks, on average? That's a lot of discretionary income to have evaporate out of the economy.

A more interesting question is who will move back into New Orleans? I blogged previously about the likely drop in population. I wonder what the drop in per-household income will be? Could it become negative? Will the situation be temporary? Someone with an upper-middle-class income could most likely find comparable work in even a modest-sized city. If the pay ends up being a little less, the offset will be living above sea level.

Another interesting question posed by one of my co-workers: what happens when another hurricane hits New Orleans this season? There are tropical depressions lined up like beads on a string from Florida to the African coast. Even a Catagory 1 hurricane pushing all that water into wood frame structures will save a lot of demolition work later.

And I need to get back to work.