Monthly Archives: January 2006

States of Mine

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I’ve seen this meme in a few places the last couple of weeks and it piqued my curiousity about how many states I’ve visited. I don’t think my personal total is of much interest to readers of his blog, but you might want to try the link and create your own states visited map — you might be surprised when you see the graphic representation.

I don’t think of myself as having traveled a lot, but it turns out I’ve been in 32 of the 50 states. Some of the travels were due merely to life its ownself; born in Texas with a father in the Air Force, I lived in Puerto Rico (not included in the map), Arkansas and Missouri before he left the service. After that we lived in Indiana for a time before moving back to Missouri. After college, my career took me to Arizona and then Minnesota were I’ve lived for longer than any other stop along the way (nearly 26 years). That accounts for six states; the other 26 came about through tourism and business travel. (Some of these places are described on the right hand side of this page under the heading Nights on the Road.)

Otherwise, don’t ask me for a lot of information on things to see or places to stay. I saw many states from a pallet in the folded down back section of a Plymouth station wagon when I was a kid and my parents would set out in a different direction every summer for our annual vacation. I know we visited some amazing places, but the main interest for my siblings and I then was whether or not our hotel that night would have a swimming pool. I’ve only attempted one similar multi-state excursion since I’ve been married, and I’ve done it with two pretty well-behaved daughters and a car with cruise-control and air-conditioning. It’s hard to ken the depths of wanderlust and/or masochism that prompted my parents to try this annually with our bunch of yahoos. Thanks, Mom and Dad!

The map also highlights for me one of the travel desires I have yet to fulfill. I would love to take a month some autumn to travel through New England, driving up the Hudson River Valley and traipsing through Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and on into Massachusetts, finishing up in Boston. Some day, some day …

For now, however, travel thoughts are coalescing around Europe and the idea of The Big Family Trip The Kids Will Always Remember in what may conceivably be one of our last summers where we’re all together.

visited 32 states (62%)

I am not a heretic

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“I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their blogger’s a heretic. Well, I am not a heretic.”

Whew! Given the usual format for these QuizFarm exercises, I would have expected the quiz to be entitled “What kind of heretic are you?”

HT: Robbo at The Llama Butchers.

Are you a heretic?
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You scored as Chalcedon compliant. You are Chalcedon compliant. Congratulations, you’re not a heretic. You believe that Jesus is truly God and truly man and like us in every respect, apart from sin. Officially approved in 451.

Chalcedon compliant
100%

Apollanarian
67%

Monophysitism
58%

Nestorianism
50%

Arianism
42%

Modalism
33%

Pelagianism
33%

Socinianism
25%

Adoptionist
25%

Gnosticism
17%

Albigensianism
8%

Monarchianism
8%

Donatism
8%

Docetism
8%

Are you a heretic?
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Robert Naegele III, eat your heart out

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Naegele scion and skateboard park visionary Robert Naegele III apparently, um, skated on his commitment with the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board to build a state-of-the-art skateboard park on the Fort Snelling grounds (as reported here in the Strib). The park won’t be built, and the Minneapolis tax payers are on the hook for paying contractors for work that’s been done on the unfinished project.



I’m just guessing, but perhaps Naegele III thought, “Why mess around with the socialists when I can work with real communists?” Here’s a photo of a skateboard park under construction near Shanghai (HT: Z+ Partners Blog):






Wired’s January 2006 issue contains a brief piece about a “planned metropolis” on the outskirts of Shanghai that features a 130,000-square-foot, $26 million dollar complex for skateboarders. It sounds impressive. The only question it raises is who is actually going to use it? As Transworld Skateboarding Magazine casually observed in one of their recent travel pieces: “There aren’t hundreds of skaters in Shanghai. In fact we probably only came across a handful at most…”



Does The Great Chairman Coleman (here, here and here) or Mao Tse Thune over in the People’s Republic of St. Paul know about this?

Where would I be without them?

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Happy Birthday to:

Peter Mark Roget, born in London (1779). His name is attached to the Thesaurus, but he had a long career as a physician and a scientist before he compiled it. As a younger man, he experimented with laughing gas, figured out how to improve the public water supply, invented the log-log slide rule, and wrote a paper which was the first to describe the persistence of images on the retina, thought to have been the first step toward the development of the movie camera. In Roget’s Thesaurus you can find all sorts of suggestions for words that you want synonyms for. For “talk,” he suggests: “chatter, chat, prate, prattle, patter, babble, gab, gabble, gibble-gabble, jabber, blab, blabber, blather, blether, clatter, run on, rattle on, ramble on, run on like a mill race, talk till one is blue in the face.”

A. A. (Alan Alexander) Milne, born in St. John’s Wood, London (1882). He wrote for the humor magazine Punch, and he was the author of a successful play called Mr. Pim Passes By. But once he published Winnie the Pooh, nobody ever remembered anything else he had written. In a little verse, he lamented: When I wrote them, little thinking/All my years of pen – and – inking/Would be almost lost among/Those four trifles for the young.

HT: The Writer’s Almanac.

Democrats say, “Your Mommy…”

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Not content to wait until children enter public school to begin their political slandering and unsubtle brainwashing, those kindly Democrats have come up with an enchanting children’s book to explain what otherwise seems incomprehensible: why someone would be a Democrat.

At least, I think it’s a children’s book; it might be a field manual for Howard Dean’s ground forces.

(HT: Gordon at Dog Snot Diaries.)

The web-site for the book describes its purpose:

Why Mommy is a Democrat brings to life the core values of the Democratic party in ways that young children will easily understand and thoroughly enjoy. Using plain and non-judgmental language, along with warm and whimsical illustrations, this colorful 28-page paperback depicts the Democratic principles of fairness, tolerance, peace and concern for the well-being of others. It’s a great way for parents to gently communicate their commitment to these principles and explain their support for the party.

Aww, how sweet. But the very next two paragraphs, however, say (boldface emphasis mine):

Why Mommy is a Democrat may look like a traditional children’s book, but it definitely isn’t just for children. With numerous subtle (and not-so-subtle) satirical swipes at the Bush administration and the Republican party (in plain and non-judgmental language, of course), Why Mommy will appeal to Democrats of all ages!

Finally, a portion of the profits (such language!) will be donated to Democratic candidates and party organizations, so your purchase will help make an immediate difference!

Sample pages from the book include statements and illustrations such as:

“Democrats make sure we all share our toys, just like Mommy does.” (Illustration of friendly squirrels playing and sharing while well-dressed people walk by and turn their noses up at someone begging.)

“Democrats make sure we are always safe, just like Mommy does.” (Illustration of Mommy directing children away from an elephant going by).

“Democrats make sure children can go to school, just like Mommy does.” (Illustration of mommy packing backpacks for her children while rich people in the background stand with their daughter in front of a building that says ‘Admission $160,000’).

Since Democrats are so good and kind and want children to know the truth, and because they feel so strongly about their core values, I’m certain that the other pages in the book contain the following statements (you’ll have to think up the illustrations yourself):

  • Democrats think Mommy had the right to kill you before you were born, just like Mommy does.

  • Democrats say name-calling is all right, just like Mommy does.

  • Democrats don’t want you to make decisions for yourself, just like Mommy does.

  • Democrats think it’s more important to make sure the teacher’s union is protected than to make sure you get a good education, just like Mommy does.

  • Democrats think you don’t need a Daddy, just like Mommy does.

  • Democrats make sure that bullies are encouraged, just like Mommy does.

  • Democrats want you to do as they say, not as they do, just like Mommy does.

  • Democrats think people from other places have just as much right to play in your backyard as you do, just like Mommy does.

  • Democrats think you will always need a nanny, no matter how old you are, just like Mommy does.

Of course, Mommy doesn’t really think and do these things. If she did she might be arrested for child abuse.

Yes, Mommy, I know, I’m not being very nice – but they started it!

Update:

David at Our House and Fuzzy Nietsche at Nihilist in Golf Pants are on the story as well. Mommy’s got some ‘splainin to do.

A million little enablers

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I’ve never bought into the whole “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” thing or the tenets of our therapeutic culture where everyone’s a victim (which means, of course, that everyone must also be a victimizer). Yes, I’ve been married for 18 years and live in a house full of women so I do know that males and females think differently but I attribute most of the public conversation around this kind of thinking to have more to do with capitalism than revelation (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Sometimes, however, you’ve got to wonder. I’ve had a few chuckles over the flap surrounding James Frey’s supposed autobiographical bestseller “A Million Little Pieces” that was mid-wifed into the stratosphere by Oprah Winfrey and her book club. By all accounts (I’ve not read it, nor do I have plans to do so), the book is a spell-binding read of personal degradation, exploitation of others and reclamation. The scandal, according to The Smoking Gun, is that Frey’s account appears to have more in common with the scripts of the “daytime dramas” flanking Oprah’s show than real life, though it may have exploited a couple of real-life tragedies in the process to add authenticity and pathos.

My schadenfreude at Oprah’s empire being taken in is perhaps my own weakness, but I really see Frey as nothing more than the latest in the literary line that includes Clifford Irving, Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair. It was interesting that he could cause such a sensation, but an important lesson (I thought) that the seeds of his own exposure were intrinsic in his success. I figured there’d be a splashy comeuppance once Oprah exacted her revenge, but instead (as of today) she’s standing by her man.

That surprised me, but not as much as walking into our office breakroom and hearing two women I consider to be fairly sharp discussing – in heart-rending terms – the latest trials and challenges now facing “James” as a result of all of this. I thought they’d start to rip him apart, but they were supportive of him and closed ranks when I volunteered an unsolicited, incredulous “Oh come on,” type of comment.

Amazing, but thank God (really, it is a touch of the Divine) that there’s something in the female wiring that causes them to want to see, embrace or hope for the good in the scruffiest of characters or else 98% of us guys would never stand a chance. Besides that revelation I also got a glimpse of what it’s like for the ladies to walk into the breakroom and hear us guys talking about this quarterback or that pitcher and how this just might be the season when he puts it all together.

Challenging Word of the Week: fustian

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Fustian
(FUS chun) n., adj.

A strange word, fustian, in the diversity and apparent dissociation of its several meanings. First of all, fustian is the name of a thick twilled cotton fabric, or a blend of cotton and flax or low grade wool with a short nap, usually dyed a dark color, and as an adjective, fustian describes cloth so made. But fustian is now used chiefly in a wholly different sense, miles from cloth or fabric: It means “bombast,” written or spoken, “turgid, inflated language, purple prose,” and finally, “claptrap, rant, hogwash, palaver, prattle, drivel”; and, as an adjective, “pompous, bombastic, nonsensical, worthless.” Fustian is a Middle English word, from Old French fustaigne, derived from Middle Latin fustaneus , referring to cloth made in El-Fustat, a suburb of Cairo. This peculiar dichotomy of meanings suggests that the material from El-Fustat was of pretty poor value. Shall we complicate matters further? Fustian is also the name of a drink made of white wine, egg yolk, lemon, spices and other miscellaneous ingredients – a concoction with possibilities. To fustianize (FUS chun ize) is to write in a bombastic manner, and a writer who descends to that level is a fustianist (FUS chun ist). From the pen of the English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744), in the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, out of his Prologue to Imitations of Horace, flow these words: “Means not, but blunders round about meaning; and he whose fustian’s so bad, it is not poetry, but prose run mad.”

Shakespeare used fustian in Othello (Act II, Scene 3) when Cassio, in despair after Othello cashiers him, cries: “I will rather sue to be despised rather than deceive so good a commander…Drunk!…and squabble, swagger, swear and discourse fustian with one’s own shadow!” In Henry IV, Part 2 (Act II, Scene 4), Doll Tearsheet tells Bardolph: “For God’s sake, thrust him (Pistol) down stairs! I cannot endure such a fustian rascal!” And in Twelfth Night (Act II, Scene 5), after hearing Malvolio’s doggerel, Fabian exclaims, “A fustian riddle!” All these uses refer to bombast, prattle and drivel.

This selection is taken from the book, “1000 Most Challenging Words” by Norman W. Schur, ©1987 by the Ballantine Reference Library, Random House.

I post a weekly “Challenging Words” definition to call more attention to this delightful book and to promote interesting word usage in the blogosphere. I challenge other bloggers to work the current word into a post sometime in the coming week. If you manage to do so, please leave a comment or a link to where I can find it.

Animal, vegetable or liberal

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As they used to say on the X-files, “the truth is out there.” And with a little surfing around the Web you find … coincidence, or synchronicity?

From The Borowtiz Report:

SEN. BIDEN PRODUCING DANGEROUSLY HIGH LEVELS OF CARBON DIOXIDE
Talkative Lawmaker Creating Environmental Threat, Scientists Fear
Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), who has dominated this week’s confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito with his seemingly nonstop talking, is producing dangerously high level of carbon dioxide that could pose a serious environmental threat, leading scientists said today.

While many observers have found Sen. Biden’s interminable orating tedious and wearisome, few suspected that the lawmaker was producing gases that could threaten the ecological balance of the planet.

But at a conference in Oslo, Norway devoted to the environmental challenges posed by Sen. Biden’s endless nattering, scientists today said that the Delaware Democrat was producing levels of carbon dioxide that could prove harmful to many of the earth’s species.

“Carbon dioxide is a necessary part of the photosynthetic process that allows plants to grow,” said the University of Tokyo’s Dr. Hiroshi Kyosuke. “But the massive amounts of carbon dioxide produced by Joe Biden could prove to be too much for even the hardiest vegetation to process.”

Ha-ha, good parody of Biden and global warming news stories. Or maybe it isn’t a parody after seeing this real story from Yahoo News (HT: Psycmeistr’s Ice Palace):

New source of global warming gas found: plants
LONDON (Reuters) – German scientists have discovered a new source of methane, a greenhouse gas that is second only to carbon dioxide in its impact on climate change

The culprits are plants.

They produce about 10 to 30 percent of the annual methane found in the atmosphere, according to researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany.

The scientists measured the amount of methane released by plants in controlled experiments. They found it increases with rising temperatures and exposure to sunlight.

“Significant methane emissions from both intact plants and detached leaves were observed … in the laboratory and in the field,” Dr Frank Keppler and his team said in a report in the journal Nature.

Methane, which is produced by city rubbish dumps, coal mining, flatulent animals, rice cultivation and peat bogs, is one of the most potent greenhouse gases in terms of its ability to trap heat.

Concentrations of the gas in the atmosphere have almost tripled in the last 150 years. About 600 million tonnes worldwide are produced annually.

The scientists said their finding is important for understanding the link between global warming and a rise in greenhouse gases.

The evidence is conclusive; Sen. Joe Biden is a vegetable (further testing will need to be done, but I’m guessing he’s either lima bean or rutabaga.) He must be stopped if the world is to be saved!

One blog, one vote…

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Count me in.

An Appeal from Center-Right Bloggers

We are bloggers with boatloads of opinions, and none of us come close to agreeing with any other one of us all of the time. But we do agree on this: The new leadership in the House of Representatives needs to be thoroughly and transparently free of the taint of the Jack Abramoff scandals, and beyond that, of undue influence of K Street.

We are not naive about lobbying, and we know it can and has in fact advanced crucial issues and has often served to inform rather than simply influence Members.

But we are certain that the public is disgusted with excess and with privilege. We hope the Hastert-Dreier effort leads to sweeping reforms including the end of subsidized travel and other obvious influence operations. Just as importantly, we call for major changes to increase openness, transparency and accountability in Congressional operations and in the appropriations process.

As for the Republican leadership elections, we hope to see more candidates who will support these goals, and we therefore welcome the entry of Congressman John Shadegg to the race for Majority Leader. We hope every Congressman who is committed to ethical and transparent conduct supports a reform agenda and a reform candidate. And we hope all would-be members of the leadership make themselves available to new media to answer questions now and on a regular basis in the future.

Signed,

N.Z. Bear, The Truth Laid Bear
Hugh Hewitt, HughHewitt.com
Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit.com
Kevin Aylward, Wizbang!
La Shawn Barber, La Shawn Barber’s Corner
Lorie Byrd / DJ Drummond , Polipundit
Beth Cleaver, MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
Jeff Goldstein, Protein Wisdom
Stephen Green, Vodkapundit
John Hawkins, Right Wing News
John Hinderaker, Power Line
Jon Henke / McQ / Dale Franks, QandO
James Joyner, Outside The Beltway
Mike Krempasky, Redstate.org
Michelle Malkin, MichelleMalkin.com
Ed Morrissey, Captain’s Quarters
Scott Ott, Scrappleface
The Anchoress, The Anchoress
John Donovan / Bill Tuttle, Castle Argghhh!!!

Bloggers who support this statement can sign on here at Truth Laid Bear.

Where did everybody go?

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When the Judiciary Committee finished slanderingquestioning Justice Alito it convened for an executive session and then returned to hear testimony from other witnesses – many of them fellow judges significantly more liberal than Sam Alito – testify on behalf of their colleague. At least, some of the Committee returned. Diane Feinstein was the only Democrat in attendance once the cameras were pointed toward the witnesses. Given the time her missing cohorts spent regurgitating MoveOn and NARAL accusations (see post below), one might surmise that the Democratic senators were tidying up in the Senate washroom, or visiting the dry-cleaners. Or perhaps trying to figure out how they were going to explain this fiasco to George Soros.

You’d think, however, as John Hinderaker at Powerline pointed out, that they’d take advantage or their last, best opportunity to really find out what kind of judge Alito might be.

This is truly extraordinary. Extraordinary that Judge Alito’s colleagues have turned out to defend him against the Democrats’ smears; extraordinary that the Democrats themselves couldn’t be bothered to stick around to hear what this distinguished group of judges had to say. After all, if the Democrats were actually interested in what kind of judge Sam Alito is, these are precisely the witnesses who could tell them. If the Democrats really thought that Alito’s judicial opinions reflect poorly on him, these are exactly the people who could answer their questions, and, if they are correct, confirm their fears. But the Democrats apparently knew that wasn’t going to happen. The only conclusion one can draw is that the Democrats knew they were smearing a fine man and a fine judge. But the fact that they didn’t even have the decency or respect to stay and listen to Alito’s colleagues is disgusting.

Call me paranoid, but I’m struck by the fact that none of the news services seem to have taken a picture of the Senate panel, denuded of Democrats during the judges’ testimony. When Alito was testifying, there were countless shots of Kennedy, Schumer, Leahy, et al.; now, mysteriously, there are no pictures of the Senators.

On a related note, Sisyphus at Nihilist in Golf Pants has his final verbosity index scorecard, compiled from hearing transcripts published in the Washington Post, showing how many words each Committee member used in “questioning” Justice Alito and comparing it to the number of words the nominee used to respond. Check it out.