Month: April 2007

There is just no good way to present this. Just when you think you had seen everything.

So here it is. April 27th, 2007. Thirty-four years ago today at, if I recall correctly, around 10:00 PM, I was born in a small hospital in Charleston, West Virginia. These days, the sleepy community of my birth is now a bustling city with massive suburban sprawl slowly engulfing the surrounding small towns. What used to be a “long way” out of town is now part of town, and where there used to be long stretches of nearly-impassable dirt road to reach my relatives, there are now four-lane highways and paved asphalt.

On my birthday:

• Kansas City Royals pitcher Steve Busby pitches a no-hitter against the Detroit Tigers, 3-0
• An article was published entitled “Space Shuttle: Despite Doubters, Project Will Probably Fly“, by Constance Holden in Science Magazine. Today, we are considering retiring the Space Shuttle in favor of cheaper, safer launch methods.
• Elvis Presley recorded his concert CD, “Shining in Portland”, about a half hour after my birth. He was still relatively slender and healthy at this time; four years later, at the age of forty-two, he died of a massive drug overdose and weighed 350 pounds.
• Reminders were published in California papers that the following Sunday would begin the state-wide trial of a new idea called “Daylight Saving Time”. Two years later, this became a national standard.

But current events for today are:

• Massive fires sweep across drought-stricken southeastern USA, particularly Georgia and Alabama
• Russian helicopter crashes in Chechnya, 17 dead
• Jack Valenti, former head of the MPAA died yesterday.
• Dick Cheney’s visit to Utah on Thursday draws fire from protesters. He spoke at Brigham Young University’s commencement after a meeting with the Regents of the university, who are the Presidency of the LDS church.

So on this Friday, kick back, have a brew (or a soda), and enjoy the last days of spring before summer kicks into full gear. And wish me a happy birthday 🙂

I was bitten by the bug, called genealogy, some 30 years ago. I am fascinated by the history of my ancestors. So far I have found one skeleton in my closet. His name was Hansel G. Horn and there was a $100 reward for his capture due to his escape from the Illinois Penitentiary, Friday Aug. 7, 1840. My 9th great grandfather was Francis Cooke who came over on the Mayflower. I’m sure the rest of my ancestors led exciting lives and the quest is to find records or documents to prove their very existence. And the search goes on.

So here’s my site of the week: http://www.urbandictionary.com/ . (Warning: Some definitions and/or terms contain some foul language.) The focus of the site is define words and phrases as they are commonly used in American vernacular. Here are some particular favorites of mine:

floordrobe: A form of storage for clothing which requires no hangers, drawers, doors or effort. Simply drop on the floor and you have a floordrobe.

Man Crush: When a straight man has a “crush” on another man, not sexual but kind of idolizing him. Many straight men end up having man crushes on Johnny Depp (I don’t blame them).

BiPodding: Sharing a single set of headphones attached to one iPod. One person holds the iPod and takes the left earbud, the other takes the right earbud. Can be performed while moving.

They biPodded down the street; Jane had the left ear-piece, Sarah the right.

Scientists propose hypotheses. If a hypothesis does not fit the facts, scientists change the hypothesis. Apologists know their hypotheses are correct. If a hypothesis does not fit the facts, apologists change the facts.” — Matthew P. Barnson

Those who know me well know that I despise apologetics. I think they are deceptive, disputing any finding contrary to their foregone conclusion. Scientists may argue in favor of their conclusions, but there’s an important distinction: a scientist must be willing to admit he’s wrong. An apologist cannot.

As I broaden my intellectual horizons with age, I’m coming to realize that this kind of foregone-conclusion argumentation is not exclusive to the religious field. In politics, it is “partisanship”. In corporations, it is often “public relations” oriented towards a we-never-admit-fault mentality. And if you are on the other side of an apologist’s argument, even if you are arguing a scientific view, you can be called a “polemicist“, the inverse of an apologist.

It’s a funny sort of conundrum to me: as our knowledge grows, so too does the stable of “facts” we can call upon to support any position. If we ignore — or are ignorant of — just a few, we can justify heinous positions with ease. And yet no one person can hope to be a repository of the whole of humanity’s knowledge.

But wouldn’t it be neat if one could?

Yup.. already setting up the childcare..

Here are the top 10 movies I’m looking forward to most this summer

UPDATE: All the movie titles are clickable and bring you to the movie trailer!! 1) Spider Man 3 2) Transformers 3) Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix 4) Die hard 4 5) Shrek the Third 6) Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End 7) The Bourne Ultimatum 8) Evan Almighty 9) Ocean’s 13 10) The Simpsons Movie

Outside nods for: The Simpsons Movie, I now Pronounce you Chuck and Larry, and Halloween.

I’m sure many of you have already caught it. There is a flu variant — a virus — sweeping the nation right now, with symptoms of a high fever, nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, occasionally with a racking cough. My doctor has treated dozens of cases in just the past week, and I’m hearing reports from newscasters about them having to take a day off or two due to it as well.

It’s profoundly unpleasant to have, and to clean up after.

Anyway, 3 of our kids got it, and so did I. I had the presence of mind to basically live on Pepto-Bismol for three days, so I avoided the most disgusting side-effects, but I still got the hacking cough. So did my son, Zack.

Well, he didn’t get better. In fact, he seemed to get worse after the gastrointestinal side-effects wore off, with a temperature of just over 103 degrees and lethargy, along with night sweats and lack of appetite. Last night, he complained of intense pain in his right side beneath his armpit. We took him to the doctor today, of course. Emergency room care, for anything other than imminent death, has always proven worse for my family than waiting for daylight to see our family practitioner… but that’s another story which involves scary, ancient abortion doctors willing to work Sundays, a miscarriage, and massive hemorrhaging during Choir Practice.

Anyway, he seemed fine to our doctor, and other than not being quite his usual peppy self, OK to us too. He didn’t hear anything unusual in his lungs, and the sensitivity Zack complained about earlier seemed to be mostly gone. Regardless, he suggested we take an X-Ray to be sure…

…and found that Zack’s right lung was heavily consolidated from pneumonia.

Anyway, after hours of tests, forms, talking, buying lunch at Arby’s, more forms, more blood samples, and an IV drip of antibiotic, we finally got back home and I could head off to work. He’ll be heading into the hospital for the next two days, and then will have a follow-up with our doctor on Friday to make sure it’s clearing up, when he will received a prescription for a second type of antibiotic for the next week or so. We’ll also know the results of the tuberculosis test at that point. Although rare in the US, the number of drug-resistant strains of TB are rising, as are the number of infections as a result.

Public-health education played a large part in reducing infection rates from tuberculosis in the 1800s. If a new drug-resistant strain of TB became widespread in the US as it has in some other countries, I wonder how we’d respond?

Think you’ve had a bad time on eBay? Try dealing with this guy’s feedback. Most excellent, nice to see a sense of humor on eBay!

Check out his general replies to feedback as well. I wonder how many sellers bother to read? I laughed hard at them!

Some of you may not be fans, but for those of us muggles who are.. here is the NEW international trailer for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (aka HP 5).

It looks AWESOME!

Click HERE to view the Rebellion!

(note: it may take a moment to load)

The more I think about it, the more certain it is: Alberto Gonzales is playing his role as the fall guy for the Bush administration.

For those of you who have been stuck under a rock, or who don’t pay attention to US politics, Alberto Gonzales is the US Attorney General. Several US Attorneys under his command were improperly fired, and then their replacements put in place without Senate confirmation hearings. Gonzalez’s former aid, Kyle Sampson, was interviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee some time ago, and it appeared that the firings were motivated by purely political — not performance — reasons.

After the Attorney General’s performance this week, there is little doubt left in my mind. He knows he’s the fall guy for the Bush administration. It’s clear that he received marching orders to fire those attorneys, and being a yes-man, he followed them even though he found them distasteful, and possibly illegal. Those marching orders came from Karl Rove, with the full backing of the President of the United States.

The marching orders were designed to exploit a loophole created by the PATRIOT act, which allowed US attorneys to be appointed without Senate confirmation hearings in certain emergency conditions. Gonzalez reassured the Senate on December 15 that they had no plans to install the new attorneys without confirmation, but reversed himself on December 19 when he installed the new attorneys using emergency procedures… exactly as they had been spelled out in a memo now made available to Congress. This memo had been made back in October prior to elections, and seemed aimed deliberately at replacing lawyers who were not representing Republican interests. He repeated that he “didn’t like it” and “didn’t want to do it”… but did it anyway. I doubt he’d have taken that tack if those firing orders had simply been compiled by subordinates. No, it came from his boss, whom he’s protecting with his testimony.

Why is this important? The main reason is because several of those attorneys were involved in prosecuting criminal cases against Republican office-holders. Others, despite instructions coming from Rove to investigate Democratic candidates or their offices in order to create a scandal, did not find sufficient evidence to bring a case. And those attorneys who were on the list who found convenient Democratic scapegoats to lay charges against immediately prior to the November elections — thus creating scandals — managed to keep their jobs despite being on “the list”.

There’s a name for some of this kind of behavior, and it’s called “obstruction of justice”. Being convicted of this charge results in jail time. It’s the reason Martha Stewart was jailed — for preventing investigation into someone else’s trades — even though her particular trades didn’t qualify as insider trading. Imprisoning someone without sufficient evidence is also unethical, and there are documented cases where this has happened when Democratic functionaries were targetted.

While I believe the calls for Gonzales to give up his job were warranted in light of this scandal, he’s not the man to blame for this egregious behavior. He’s just the lackey who went along with it, and was appointed to the position based on his reputation as a yes-man for right-wing interests and his tolerance of abuses of the Bill of Rights. I’m pretty certain that I know, based on those areas where the Attorney General danced to avoid the questions, who’s holding the reins on this scandal. Most people won’t lie and risk their own jobs to protect subordinates.

It’s just sad. This is what a one-party-controlled White House and Congress gave us. I’m glad we restored some balance in the most recent election, but I fear that in 2008, we’re going to end up electing an all-Democratic House, Senate, and White House… resulting in a stage set for abuses all over again, just by the “other guys” this time.