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Tuesday, December 31, 2002
No Tang! So, here I am, ready to make some snarky comment about BeneTang! the new Space Age powdered drink beverage for aging boomers. You know, Tang!, orange-flavored powdered beverage mix, with Benefiber already mixed in. But I can't find a web site, corporate or tribute, just for Tang! How can this be? What Would Mohammed Drive?: The Cartoon Doug Marlette, editorial cartoonist for The Tallahassee Democrat and the creator and writer/artist behind southern-fried comic strip Kudzu, has generated some heat with this cartoon. I got the links from Mark (Flablog) Lane, who has some comments on the matter here. Things I learned that have nothing to do with the current broughaha: Marlette's no longer with The Charlotte Observer, he's got an award-winning book, and Kudzu's been turned into a musical! Plus, there's a web site for The Rev. Will B. Dunn. Monday, December 30, 2002
Weather Report Tonight. Blogging, slow to middling. Tomorrow: Possible blogging. Five day forecast: Chance of occasional blogging. Props to Florida Bloggers Okay, I'm an old fart, but I think these here "shout outs" (heh heh) are "props". Kat, Solonor, Blogatelle/Sekimori, The World Ate My Skull, Somewhere on A1A, Hidden City, Xkot, Spleenville, and Silverfisch. And of course Dragonleg/Shattered Buddha and Mark Lane. And all the rest. Friday, December 27, 2002
Photography and Intention Over at Slate (one good thing to come of there being a Microsoft), Jim Lewis, motivated by seeing the first photograph, ever, has this meditation on what photography entails. Wednesday, December 25, 2002
New, Improved Star Trek If you thought, like I thought, that Star Trek: Nemesis sucked, there are, at least, alternatives. For example, there's Starship Exeter. Link from James Lileks. Yule Log  Stolen from A Small Victory, which has been overrun by forces from Amish Tech Support. Well it's not like any of the local teevee stations here decided to run a fireplace loop this morning. Help Me, Children of Germany. You're My Only Hope Michael Jackson's Christmas message to the children of Germany: Here. What is up with that? The Swayziest "A Patrick Swayze Christmas". Here. What? Not your style? What are you, some kind of Communist? Maybe you'd like this better (from Archer Audio Archives: Stars of Christmas). Doin' It Doggie Style And now, ladies and gentlemen, here again for your holiday listening pleasures. What you've long desired, but hated to request: Jingle Bells, sung by dogs. (Real Audio format.) A Daytona Beach Christmas Song I didn't write this. It's been in a scrapbook of mine -- as a clipping from either the News-Journal or Orlando Sentinel (more likely, I believe, the former) without authorship attribution -- since sometime in the mid 1980s. Mail's been sent to Mr. Mark (Flablog) Lane asking him if he wrote it or knows who did. (Addendum: Here's Mr. Lane's Christmas column for this year.) Nonetheless, for your holiday enjoyment, I present "The Daytona Beach Christmas Song". You know the tune: "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire", etc. Chest hairs roasting under Coppertone Tuesday, December 24, 2002
Monday, December 23, 2002
Clash Tunes Mike Silverman has posted his list of favorite Clash tunes here. Now I'm motivated to do the same, but without annotations. In no particular order...
What's really gotten to me about Strummer's passing is that he was older than me by a few years. At the time of London Calling and Sandanista, when I was playing music, I just figured the members of the Clash were younger than me. But then, I didn't realize I was a punk. Zappa Lives Well, actually, no. As they say at alt.fan.frank-zappa, Frank be jammin' up in hebbin' with, oh, Joe Strummer (see several items below). But after griping about Charles Johnson's "idiotrarian" poll (immediately below), I checked out his LGF site for the first time in a while, and I found this log entry pointing to this piece by Mr. Frank Zappa regarding the music of Mr. Edward Varesse. The larger point here is that besides the important behavior of getting input regarding points of view that are different that one's own, people with whom we don't necessarily agree often are interested in the same things we are. Or interested in things we're not interested in, but in a way that makes the world better, even with their politics. Choosing friends or acquaintences solely by their politics is not well-founded, in my opinion at least. Political agreement is important in political matters, but there's more than politics to this world, even in times when our existence might be threated. For example, there's music, and, as FZ said (Warning, Will Robinson! Cheezy link follows!!) "music is the best". The Idiotarian Concept Must Die Lawrence, Kansas, blogger and good guy Mike Silverman, in his Red Letter Day blog encourages people to go to Little Green Footballs and vote for "Idiotarian of the Year" in this post. Longer-term readers will recall that I'm very much ag'in' the entire "Idiotarian" concept. (You don't recall? You're not a longer-term reader? Go here for the evidence.) Even when applied to accurately identified specious thinking, it's a cheap schoolyard name-calling shot that doesn't exactly lead fence sitters to think well of the one who did the accurate analysis. So while I'm all for folks going and reading Mike's blog -- or Little Green Footballs for that matter -- I think taking a pass on this exercise is probably the wiser course. I know. I know. It's pointless to insist on the distinction between stupidest thing said and most idiotic person. Well, I gotta have a few pointless quests. There might be an argument that I could better pick mine. Go ahead. I'm all ears. "Long Live Your Laundry" I don't understand what it means, but I saw the phrase "Long Live Your Laundry" here at Dragonleg's blog, Shattered Buddha, and I wanted to see it again. So there. Self Defense In this log entry, Jeff Sover at Alphecca takes on gun control and hate-crimes legislation, all in one fell swoop. Meanwhile, back here in Volusia county, the Sheriff's department is questioning whether a woman appropriately fired warning shots when two men were trying to break her door down. Story here from the Daytona Beach News-Journal. Timatollah says: Given that no one died and the alleged perps were kicking her door, the Sheriff and his minions oughta back off and leave her be. People should think twice before kicking at someone's door. R.I.P., Joe Strummer Joe Strummer, of the Clash, has died. Story here from CNN. Like several other bands of that era that I really really loved, particularly Minutemen, I never could stand the Clash's politics -- Sandanista this, Sandanista that, Sandanista out the ass -- but their tunes were great, their energy was entirely appropriate for the moment, and they and their members, particularly Joe Strummer, deserve credit and respect and rememberance for what they created. VaxGen AIDS Vaccine Trial According to this story in The Boston Globe, trials of the VaxGen candidate AIDS vaccine have been completed and the analysis of effectiveness has begun. Results are expected in March or so. Details of VaxGen's candidate vaccine, AIDSVAX, can be found here. Sunday, December 22, 2002
That Second Tolkien Flick We went with some friends to see The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers last night. As spectacle goes, it was fine: pretty pictures, pretty computer-generated graphics, an awesome computer-generated character (Gollum) that makes Jar-Jar Binks look even more pathetic than ever. (Hell, Gollum makes the new, improved Yoda of Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones look pathetic.) As story goes, though, it left a lot to be desired. I am no student or fan of the Tolkien books. I couldn't make it far enough into The Hobbit way back in the hippy days to have any claims of knowledge about them. And so, lacking certain knowledge (and being cheap enough or maybe even smart enough not to rush out to buy or rent the DVD of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings), I found The Two Towers lacking. Substantially lacking. First, there's very little character development. The only characters we learn very much about are the very conflicted Gollum mentioned above, and Frodo Baggins's gardener, Sam. While there's a hint of a love story about the human male lead and an elfen female, it's fragmented. There's little to grab onto. And there's very little to suggest why the ring is so desirable. Yes, it exerts influence on Frodo and starts to drive him nuts, but is there any reason outside some preface material to the first movie -- material I have a hard time remembering -- to explain just what it is about the ring that's so important that everyone wants to have it? None is given, and the result is that there's very little motivation for the characters to act the ways they do. Finally, there's lots of bloodshed -- well, not so much bloodshed, but lots of bone-crunching Foley sound effects -- but huge amounts of it are of the zombie, manufactured army created by magic by the Christopher Lee villain. There's so much, in fact, that it has little emotional impact. These aren't bad guys who except for different choices could be good guys: these are just instantiations of pure-D evil without any alternative for good. There's no reason to feel anything when they get offed. And most of the good guys who die in almost similar numbers are to the story as the actors who played them were to the studio: extras. There are some good themes: The importance of confronting evil, and the importance of loyalty, bravery, and honor. But those themes don't have the support of well-rounded characters that the moviegoer might actually care about. To be honest, even though it had a high action quotient, it was boring. I'll go see the third and concluding movie, but it will be only for the spectacle. Saturday, December 21, 2002
The Ormond Loop A few photos of the Ormond Loop can be found here. They're not great: In fact, they're minimal, quickly worked with, and not thought about much. They don't capture the beauty of The Loop itself. The Loop itself is a mix of low, overhanging trees creating a dark, cool (cooler, today) tunnel, with open marshy spaces. It's vegetation, and vegetation, and vegetation, and some water. It's green and dark and blue and light and life abounding. It's where a gator almost got our dog (read about it here). Jimmy Olson sez: Jeepers, Mr. Lane. Thanks for the photo assignment! Mark Lane Forgets that The History of America is The History of Real Estate Development Here. I'm both sympathetic to his point of view and completely cynical that much can be done to stop the developments in question. In the most recent local elections, the developers' candidate beat the more slow-growth candidate for the county-wide at large seat. That means it's going to be difficult to stop anything, at least for the next few years, because the county commissioners -- or whatever they're called here (I'm just semi-native) -- can use the defeat of Big John (yes, he changed his name so that that's really his name now, and, yes, I voted for Big John) to hide behind every one of these pro-development votes they take. I'm also not just cynical, but trying to avoid the "I just moved here, development must stop now" mentality, which lots of non-natives have. Trying, not always successfully. Also, we moved here a few years ago from Memphis, Tennessee, where you can literally see the development in concentric circles around downtown. Midtown = Roaring Twenties; East Memphis = Post WWII / Sixties; Cordova = Reagan Eighties. And, the local history always reminds us that Memphis and Shelby County began as a real-estate development by Andrew Jackson, John Overton, and [blanking on name] Shelby. Mack and I are headed out here in a few to ride The Loop. Back later, hopefully with photos. Lane's got a beautiful pic up with his post. Curriculum Vitae Josh Marshall is having the occassional pissy moment (here) about the contents of Bill Frist's CV. That's CV as in curriculum vitae, a study of life. Marshall is confusing a good, complete CV, like Frist's (here), with a resume. An honest-to-God CV really ought to be full of nonsense like high-school awards, summer jobs, and the like. Politics aside, my own feeling is that it's a good thing to have someone who's still publishing research papers leading the (currently) majority party in the Senate. Friday, December 20, 2002
Lott to Step Down Drudge, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, et al. are all reporting that Trent Lott is going to step down as Senate Majority Leader. Let the gloating begin. Any predictions on who will gloat the loudest? Who will counsel humility? Saturday, December 14, 2002
Another Lunar Anniversary Thirty years ago, humans last walked on the moon. This page from NASA has more info. Link from The World Ate My Skull. Bring Me the Head of Rick Berman From: Sumner Redstone, Chair, Viacom To: Rick Berman, Star Trek Subject: Star Trek: Nemisis Rick, I know you've worked long and hard to keep the Star Trek franchise alive. Since taking over from Roddenberry, you've overseen ST:TNG, Deep Space 9, Voyager, Enterprise, as well as numerous Star Trek movies.
Friday, December 13, 2002
Why You Should Water Your Christmas Tree I know I kinda made fun (here) of the brief media frenzy regarding turkey-frier safety, but one look at this video (AVI format, QuickTime format) from the National Institute of Standards and Technology shows you why you ought to water your tree daily. An NIST report on scotch pine Christmas tree flamability in .pdf format is here. Ford CFO Allan Gilmour Allan Gilmour was once the CFO of Ford. After being passed over for the CEO slot and then retiring from day-to-day management at the company, Gilmour come out of the closet. Here's a story from The Advocate on the event, and here's an interview he did with Alex Taylor, III, for Forture as republished at the Business 2.0 site (whatever Business 2.0 is). Last May, Bill Ford asked Gilmour to return to the CFO position. Here's a San Jose Mercury News story on that event. Thursday, December 12, 2002
Hot Dog! Following up on my comments here, about cooking hot dogs with 120 VAC power, a little bit of Googling yields the following links:
Solaris Mack and I saw Steven Soderbergh's adaptation of Stanislaw Lem's Solaris last night. I enjoyed it. It left me with one of those 2001: A Space Odyssey what the hell was up with that ending moments, but that was okay in the context of the story. George Clooney seemed fine. The part he was playing fit nicely with his understatement of the character. Natascha McElhone was really interesting as his "visitor". The rest of the cast was good, and the score, by Cliff Martinez was excellent. Soderbergh, as Peter Andrews, was his own cinematographer. It really is an interesting flick to look at. The purported memory sequences have a warm reddish tone, but the space-station sequences have a cold flourescent blue overcast. That coding is part of what makes the ending, er, interesting. I haven't read this particular work by Lem, but I've read enough of his to know that the nature of reality, its representations, and how we come to know/believe them, are among his recurring themes. The ending, in that context, has multiple possible meanings, ranging from a "realistic" interpretation about what might've actually happened to the characters had they happened to have been real and had these things happen to them, to "literary" comments about the nature of characters in books and movies and what happens to the characters, what it means to know a character in a movie, how is that like knowing someone in reality, etc. If you like subtle, thoughtful, sci-fi complete with philosophical musings on the nature of existence, I'd guess you'd like it. If you're looking for space opera, this is not the right movie for you. One small complaint: There is one brief moment when the film breaks into full-blown Star Trek technobabble mode. My own sense is that the story could've developed in almost the same way without resorting to such. Yeah, they had a machine, and yeah, the machine poofed the "visitors" out of existence, but was it really necessary to start yapping about "Higgs bosons", etc. It's not a no-go sticking point, but it might be a point of irritation. Hot Diggity Dog Local columnist, all around nice guy, and Flablog owner Mark Lane points all (here) to a reprint of his recent Sunday column on kitchen appliances from the Daytona Beach News-Journal as it appears (here) in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. (Dig the linkage density!) The Journal-Constitution presentation adds a vote on the most useless kitchen gadget you own, and Lane is lobbying for the Hot Dogger. I have some vague memory -- well, possible memory, possible fantasy -- about constructing a hot-dog cooker with a two prep-school kitchen forks, some lamp cord, a board, and a couple of nails. I'm responsible enough now (aw shucks) to say, "Kids, don't try this at home until after you find out the resistance of a hot dog -- I'd say all of frozen, uncooked, and cooked -- and make sure the contraption won't draw so much current that it'll either blow a fuse or melt the lamp cord." Remember amps = volts over ohms and watts = volts times amps. Personally, we love our Black and Decker Steamer for cooking veggies and for cooking rice. Since it gets used on a nearly daily basis, I dread the day when it finally fails. The newer ones are, somehow, different: more bells, more whistles. I want one-onto-one replacement of my old appliance with my new one. Within the past couple of years, we had to put down a waffle iron / griddle that my folks had had when I was a wee one forty-some-odd years ago, and its replacement, while it does have teflon coating, just doesn't seem to get it right. It makes about 1/2 as many waffles / pancakes at a time as the older one did, and the temperature is uneven between the two sides. And I doubt that it will last forty-plus years. Wednesday, December 11, 2002
Love "...[L]ove is not a feeling but an act -- a series of tiny acts repeated over time until they turn into what, with any luck, turns out to be a lifetime." -- Norah Vincent in the 10 December 2002 Advocate. Harold Ford, Jr. Here's a Time piece on Tennessee congressman Harold Ford, Jr. (Link via Andrew Sullivan.) Ford is a sensible, thoughtful, politician. Not only does he have the constituent-services base totally covered -- okay, there had to be some good things to learn from his father -- he's economically progressive but thoroughly committed to the national interest in matters international and defense. He's somewhat socially conservative, but not, to my knowledge, any kind of homo hater or supporter of restricting abortion access. Unfortunately, Ford gets denigration from lots of sides. The article describes some of the negative ways the Congressional Black Caucus has treated him. And while Ford gets a good collection of press clippings from Washington-based columnists, he still has to deal with Trent-Lott style entrenched racisim among not only white Republicans voters in Tennessee, but also those of the Tennessee Democratic Party. I recently argued with my brother back in Tennessee that Ford would've made a much better nominee to run against Lamar Alexander for U. S. Senate than do-nothing previous-statewide-loser Bob Clement, but my brother (in small-town middle Tennessee) assured me that there were still too many white folk in Tennessee who would never vote for a black man, even if his politics were substantially to the right, not just centrist like Fords. I'm not sure I buy the conclusion of that analysis -- if I had been kingmaker, I'd've still run Ford -- but the very fact that the analysis can be given serious consideration indicates that there are still problems unrelated to policy or even personality -- that is, problems related to race -- to overcome for politicians like Ford. On the downside, he has an uncle, Tennessee state senator John Ford, who is a complete yahoo and total whacko. The Rim of the New World Today's installment in the Washington Post's series on ethic and racial diversity is here. It concerns an immigrant from Mali (west Africa) who has a cleaning job at the Atlanta airport. Yesterday's feature is here and has to do with the pressures on a young Vietnamese woman. Monday, December 09, 2002
The Invaders "A Quinn Martin Production..." But seriously, it doesn't matter whether you're talking Californians moving to Prescott, Arizona; Michiganders moving to Central Florida; or New Yorkers moving to rural Vermont. The story's pretty much the same, isn't it? Speaking of SUVs -- What? I wasn't? Yes, but Jeff Sover was in the link above -- in this blog entry, Mark Lane points all to this Washington Monthly article about the hulking metal boxes and their owners. Southern Justice While there is a certain ironic justice to aspects of the Lott affair related to Republicans having tacitly played the race card for so many years in the South, there's also no denying (to me at least) that there are (1) plenty of southern Republicans cut from the same cloth, (2) still quite a few white southern Democrats (e.g., Robert Byrd of West Virginia) who are no more respectable regarding race issues than Lott and his Nixon-era cadre, and (3) plenty of non-thinking black Democrats all across the nation who cling to a currently untenable model of race relations that can never evolve toward formal colored blindness coupled with what I call the "soft identity-politics" model. The soft identity-politics model recognizes that individuals will often choose to associate and identify with others who share similar, often historical or socially-based attributes, whether those are racial, ethnic, vocational, sexual-orientation derived, etc. But while we recognized such behavior and identification on the part of individuals, we shouldn't cast those identifications in concrete when it comes either to consitutional matters (voting districts), legal matters (hiring quotas), or political matters (block voting). Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Trent Lott Has Got To Go Numerous internet pundits are pointing out the horrendousness of Trent Lott's stupid "It would've been better if Strom had won in '48" (paraphrase) comments at Strom Thrumond's birthday party last week. Some are calling for his resignation as Senate Majority Leader. Many of those are conservatives; some are Republicans. A few examples: Howard Owens, Virginia Postel, Arthur Silber, Glenn Reynolds, Andrew Sullivan, and Daniel Drezner. So, where are the Dems on this one? Excepting, of course, Josh Marshall. Good question. This just in: Jessie Jackson has called for Lott to resign. Details here. It's about time. More Lake Monroe News In other matters related to the Lake Monroe I-4 crossing, The Orlando Sentinel has this story about the building of the new bridge there. Smokestacks Coming Down According to this story in the News-Journal, Florida Power and Light is dismantling two tall smokestacks at its plant on the St. Johns River in Sanford. The oil-fired boilers they're attached to have been replaced by gas burners. The smokestacks have been there, near the I-4 bridge across the St. Johns at Lake Monroe, since I can remember. FPL's information on the changes at the Sanford plant is located here. There's an old municipal power plant (Enterprise, Florida?) on the other side of the bridge that's, to my knowledge, unused. It's a yellow brick building with five or six small stacks; i.e., it looks like a lot of older municipal power plants. I'm surprised it's still standing. Diversity in Atlanta, Part II Here's the second article of four in the WaPo's series on racial/ethnic diversity in the Atlanta suburbs. Today's article focuses on a young woman, native of Mexico but wanting to be an American, and her attempts to balance love, school, work, and a young child. Sunday, December 08, 2002
Stonewood Stonewood Grill is a locally-based (Ormond Beach) chain of upscale but casual restaurants. They really are nice: the food is good, and the service is great. Today's Daytona Beach News-Journal has this feature article in its business section on the small closely-held chain. Diversity in a Suburban Atlanta Dairy Queen Here's a long -- think LA Times long -- piece from the Washington Post on the wide ethnic/racial mix of employees at a suburban Atlanta Dairy Queen. It may not be the world we thought we'd have when the civil rights movement took hold, but it's better than the one we left behind. Phish is Back Long-lasting jam band Phish (band site, fan site) has a new album coming out this Tuesday, will play Madison Square Garden on New Years Eve and then Hampton Collesium, Hampton, Virginia, over the next few nights, and then have a brief but nationwide (in an east-west sense) tour in February. The accompanying increment in Phish-related media activity includes appearances on SNL (14 December, hosted by Al Gore) and Letterman (19 December). There's also this article by Jon Parales in today's New York Times, which has a mutlimedia companion feature. (The New York Times web site requires registration.) Saturday, December 07, 2002
Lockheed Martin According to Independent Gay Forum columnist Steve Miller, Lockheed Martin has finally added sexual orientation to its non-discrimination in hiring policy. He adds that the company is going to offer domestic partner benefits beginning next year. His column entry (here, then scroll down to "Shareholders Rule") points to this article in the Rocky Mountain News. An interesting aspect of this is that the pressure to make the change came from students at Swarthmore College. Swarthmore's press release regarding the matter is here. Addendum: The Human Rights Campaign has this press release on the Lockheed Martin policy change. Minor Updates Made some minor updates to the blog template this a.m. Talk about painful and unintuitive. Blech. I also made a rancorless update of the permanent links to the left. These are people that I read regularly. I anticipate a move to something like Moveable Type over the holiday break, but no promises! Pearl Harbor Vets Several years ago -- I believe it was in 1996 -- I had the opportunity to be in Honolulu on Pearl Harbor Day. Numerous Pearl Harbor vets were there. I talked with them and took some photos. They were, of course, mainly in their 70s and 80s. It seemed as if some of them had already resigned themselves to their no longer being a major feature of the collective national consciouness: That they knew that sometime after the 50th anniversary of the attack that the attack's importance would fade. Some of that is just demographics: There are just fewer of them alive to remind us of what happened. Some of that is the reality of intervening events. Several of the vets had very strong opinions about the politics of the time. They continued to believe the FDR had allowed the attacks to happen, had even ensured that the entire Pacific fleet would be in harbor. The motive was to make sure the US entered WWII. How much of those sentiments were resentment, how much were lingering pro-German attitudes that were against entering the war period, I don't know. Pearl Harbor Day Regardless of the intervening awfulness of 09/11/01, December 7 is still the anniversary of the day in 1941 that the US Naval Base at Pearl Harbor was attacked by surprise by the Japanese. Like the 09/11 anniversary likely will, the Pearl Harbor anniversary remains a good opportunity to reflect on the pointless loss of life, the horrendousness of any kind of sneak attack, and the repulsiveness of smug self-righteousness of either militaristic or religious stripe. My own reflections on such suggest that preparedness for and a willingness, ultimately, to engage both in rapid retaliation and in prolonged struggle, coupled with the will to use force, even extreme force, in locales around the world, are more likely to secure our collective freedom than just about any other strategy. Thursday, December 05, 2002
Cracker Barrel Changes Its Corporate Mind Cracker Barrel has added sexual orientation to their non-discrimination policy. An HRC press release is here. Link from Mike Silverman. No Skins The racist/neo-Nazi skinhead rock show has punted on Daytona as a location. The Daytona Beach News-Journal story is here. Wednesday, December 04, 2002
Hammerskin Update Here's this morning's News-Journal story on the neo-Nazi/skinhead/racist concert planned for the Daytona Beach area. Tuesday, December 03, 2002
Blogger Hates You Apparently, it's not just me. It won't even let me fix my typos in the post below. And it's been refusing to publish most of the day. Mark Lane has Blogger haiku and other poetry of various ups and downs here and here and here. Oh, Great Neo-Nazi racist skins are supposedly coming to Daytona. The Orlando Sentinel had the story first (here), then the home-town paper, The Daytona Beach News-Journal, got the Sentinel storyoff the wire (here Ugh. I hate Nazis. The last time I was near a KKK rally -- Cave City, Kentucky, 1980 or so -- my friend Tricky Nicky wisely convinced me not to go in yelling and screaming at their Nazi-loving racist selves like I wanted to. I think I imagined I would grab the tire iron or something and take on the whole crowd. Luckily, I passed, but still, I hate Nazis. Friday, November 29, 2002
Thursday, November 28, 2002
Happy Thanksgiving Day (USA) Does the fact that it's Thanksgiving Day in the USA mean that it's Columbus Day in Canada? Addendum: Here's a very cool Thanksgiving message from Jeff Soyer of Alphecca. And just below that are his very cool comments on gay marriage. Hmmmm. It seems highly likely that he's a very cool guy. Wednesday, November 27, 2002
Run, Turkey Run Daytona Beach, as many might know, is the Special Events Capital of the World. That means one week it's Bike Week, another it's Black College Reunion, etc. This week, Thanksgiving week every year, is the Turkey Run Car Show held at the Daytona International Speedway. That means lots of old cars (and their owners and owners families), from Model As to sweet early 70s machines, assemble in Daytona Beach from all over the place. It makes for a fun long weekend. Not only is there the car show and swap meet at the speedway, but also there are the Gaslight Parade and Ormond Beach Car Show, both in Ormond Beach. For most of the next few evenings, older cars will cruise Atlantic Avenue (A1A). It's fun to be in the cruise, and it's fun to park and watch. I'll try to do the photo thing, but don't hold your breath. Also, if you're cheap or lazy and don't want to do the full-blown Turkey Run trip, there's usually an informal car show and swap meet in the parking lot of the Bel-Air plaza, on Atlantic, north of the Seabreeze bridge. The NGLTF's Anti-War Stance In recent posts, both Mike Silverman and Arthur Silber (Silber via Instapundit) point out the goofiness of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's anti-war stance. But should anyone be surprised? The NGLTF wasn't born yesterday, and they have a long history of taking fairly doctrinaire leftist positions on matters political. This was fairly predictable, if you ask me. And to expect them to change their ways regarding such positions seems unmotivated by anything they've ever done. It would take a complete internal upheaval, and that would mean that people who think differently than the existing NGLTF leadership would have to join the NGLTF. That ain't gonna be me. I got mail from them last week. It went in the trash unopened. What Makes Memphis So Special? What is it that gives Memphis those special qualities. No, not that special quality. It's only the river. It's only the river. Maybe it's the long tradition of stylized celebrity violence. Think Andy Kaufman vs. Jerry "The King" Lawler. (Jerry "The King" Lawler does have a web page, but it's one of those that starts some kind of Java process that never seems to finish starting, at least on my machine. So, no linkage. This link will Google you some Jerry "The King" Lawler links.) Done thinking about Andy Kaufman and Jerry "The King" Lawler? Good. Now think Tonya Harding. Gator Bait Mr. Mark Lane of Flablog (and columnist for The News-Journal) recently posted this log entry about The Loop, a pleasurable drive along both sides of the local Halifax River. I've never completed the whole trip: In fact, I didn't even know The Loop existed until I read about it on Mark's blog. Anyway, here's my abortive Loop experience. This is a note I wrote several years ago to my brother back in Tennessee. We drove up north towards Flagler County this morning with Ursa [our chocolate lab]. Crossed the Halifax at the "Highbridge" (which is a little low draw bridge. Must be either a family name or a joke). It's kinda marshy and swampy over there, but we stopped at a clearing, and let the dog out. Fried Turkey Safety It sounds like a Zappa tune, no? Hmmm, "Fried Turkey Safety". Wasn't that on Uncle Meat next to "Electric Aunt Jamima". But seriously, I saw the commercial blurb for the teevee news last night featuring an outdoor deep-fat fryer engulfed in flames, so it must be true that there are concerns about the safety of those devices and their use for turkey. And timeliness, because it's Thanksgiving time in the USA. And now that I've read it on the local paper's web site, I know it's gotta be true. The Daytona Beach News-Journal carries this story by Jaime Hernandez about the risks of plunging not-completely-thawed poultry into a mass of hot boiling fat. Turkey fryers can go up in flames when someone tries to fry a partially thawed, wet or frozen turkey in oil that can reach temperatures higher than 400 degrees. The fryers don't have a thermostat, so a thermometer must be used to gauge the temperature.I have to add that if you eat poultry and you've never had deep-fried turkey, you owe it to yourself to give it a try. (Homer sez: "Mmmmm. Fried turkey.") But, please, make sure your turkey is completely thawed before dropping into the boiling lard. Addendum: Here's the link to the Underwriters Laboratory page. Includes photos! Includes linkage to video!! Saturday, November 23, 2002
Shuttle Endeavor Launch We just went down to the beach and watched STS-113, Shuttle Endeavor, take off. Below is some crappy 160x160 video shot with a digital camera primarily designed for still photography. (I'm new with the EMBED tag, so if it doesn't show in your browser, you can click here to bring the .mpg up in its own window.) It was so clear tonight, you could see the shuttle all the way until the horizon. Perhaps the best launch I've seen. Living two blocks from the beach has its advantages. Thursday, November 21, 2002
Not Disney [For Mark Lane.] Yesterday's New York Times had this nice piece on contemporary parts of Florida, particularly Lake County and Mt. Dora, that resemble what Florida was like before the Disney invasion. It's a nice piece. I went to prep school in the 8th and 9th grades near Mt. Dora (Florida Central Academy, not Howey), so I know the area the writer writes of fairly well. Mt. Dora is neat, so I hope she hasn't jinxed it by telling the whole world about it! Tuesday, November 19, 2002
Dharma Punx Here's a story in Salon about a punk-rock Buddhist. Right now, getting schmoozed by kids on the street, Noah Levine seems like some S.F. update of the teen preacher in the 1970 Christian flick "The Cross and the Switchblade." Call it "The Mandala and the Skateboard." With the trappings of materialism (he drives a '64 Impala Super Sport, maroon with tan interior these days -- "my dream car") and adoration, does he worry about his ego getting in the way of his message? "The trick is not taking it personally. It's not Noah inspiring people; it's the dharma inspiring people," he says. Thirteen I watched the Leonids for about fifteen minutes. Saw thirteen meteors in that time, which is pretty good. It was partly cloudy here, so the moon was partially obscured by clouds. It's Prince Mongo's World, and We Just Happen to Live In It [For Shattered Buddha.] Memphis phreak phixture and perennial mayoral candidate Robert "Prince Mongo" Hodges spent part of yesterday in jail for contempt of court. Seems he won't clean up his yard, much to the dismay of his neighbors. Story here, from the Memphis Commercial Appeal ("more commercial than appealing"). Here are a few photos by A. J. Wolfe that accompany the story, used without permission.  Prince Mongo in court.
Anti-Discrimination Ordinance in Orlando The proposed ordinance prohibiting discrimination on basis of sexual orientation in matters of employment, housing, and public accomodation in Orlando passed its first reading last night. The Orlando Sentinel's coverage is here. The measure has a second and final reading in two weeks. Meta-journalism aside: I've never seen a winning vote indicated as 3-4 as it is in the subhead on the Sentinel's home page. James Coburn James Coburn passed away. He was 74 years old. Here's an obituary from the New York Times. Monday, November 18, 2002
An Honest Man For an example of an honorable response to the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" hooey, see quoted e-mail from a former USN officer at Andrew Sullivan's blog. You'll need to scroll down to the heading "Another Victory for Prejudice". Not only is the individual's response honorable, his comments also point out that the problem with people who aren't straight in the military lies as much or more with a cadre of officers and Pentagon civilians, not with the broader ranks of military personnel. I think that's parallel to the case in many institutions and in US culture as a whole: a small group of (sometimes self-appointed, sometimes legitimately determined) leaders thinks that the larger population can't deal with homos. They think it would be wrong to change the institutionalization of "homophobia" (e.g., inability to get married legally, lack of equal protection in housing and employment, inability to adopt legally, etc.) to the institutionalization of equal rights for all, regardless of just about any attribute excepting being a convicted felon, and their argument is frequently that folks just aren't ready for that. (As well as the pathetic, "What about the children?"). My reality is that by and large the people I work with on a day-to-day basis don't give a shit that I'm gay, and they largely think that everyone who hasn't done something heinous to preclude having them deserves the same rights as everyone else. My gut feeling based on some personal knowledge is that that extends to the military, too. My other gut feeling is that this situation would tend even further towards equal rights for all in most all matters if certain politicos -- some Democrats and an even larger fraction of Republicans -- would quit using scarey homosexuals to keep their voting blocs together. It would help, of course, if people interested in gay rights would reduce their involvement in the interest group game as the means of arriving to the status of equal rights and, instead, and hold politicians accountable by working hard to turn out the rascals for not getting done what needs to get done instead of sending a hundred bucks to the HRC or NLGTF or Log Cabin Republicans. The State of LBGTO High School Students Here's an AP story from Tampa that appeared in yesterday's Palm Beach Post. It describes what some gay and lesbian students and some transgendered high-school students get to deal with in trying to get an education. Five years ago, [Tampa P-FLAG president] Boles received a call from a Tampa student who wanted to start a club for gay teens at her school. The girl, who wore a rainbow ribbon on her blouse as she gathered signatures supporting the club's formation, was told by school officials that what she was doing was "wrong and immoral," Boles recalled, preferring not to name the school.The very fact that more schools have gay-straight alliances or any kind of formal or informal organization that gives kids who aren't straight some room to be themselves is a great plus, but, jeez, there's clearly lots of room for growth in building a better situation for these kids. Kids may always be cruel to other kids, but that doesn't mean that school administrators and teachers have to help. Sunday, November 17, 2002
Culture Wars There's only one culture war that needs to be fought right now, and that's the war between radical Islam and the rest of the world. If you can't put down your differences for some short run with fundamentalist Christians concerned about the future for their children or with homosexual people who demand their equal rights right now, then maybe it's not a good time for you to be alive. I know it must seem naive and trite to remind people of this, but, hey, excepting a bunch of yahoo Muslims who have decided to try to impose their views on the rest of the world through the use of mass murder, we are, largely, all in this together. And not just in the US. Worldwide. All the other issues we have different opinions about aren't going away, but they aren't worth a dime right now. The Islamicist yahoos do not care whether you're a Christian who perceives a culture in decline or whether you're a libertine who thinks the larger culture and the state are out to prevent him or her from enjoying casual sex or a big hit on the bong. Get over it. Right now, the most important thing is stopping the ones who want to kill us. If stopping them means killing them, so be it. Doing that is more important than scoring points in some long-running divisions within Western culture. Wednesday, November 13, 2002
New Brett Butler Film!!! According to Drudge ABC got it for a steal. ABC NEWS PAYS $175K FOR BRIT BUTLER FILM...Wow, a new movie from everyone's favorite reformed alcoholic Southern commediene. Wait a minute, that says "Brit Butler", not "Brett Butler". Never mind. Monday, November 11, 2002
Thank a Vet DAYTONA BEACH, FLORIDA. (Back home.) It's Veteran's Day. Thank a vet for having served in the military. Wednesday, November 06, 2002
Gay Republican Update Patrick Howell, the a near closet case gay Republican, who was running for the Florida state legislature, got beat yesterday. His opponent, Sheri McInvale, won, with 13,183 to Howell's 11,050. Libertarian candidate John F. Kennedy (!) received 2091 votes. Democrat McInvale had the endorsement of the dinosaur Republican incumbent who once told gay high school kids they were going to hell if they didn't change. She's for letting gay folks adopt kids. Like they say: Politics makes for strange bedfellows. "Free Tibet!" BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS. I'll be blogging from Boston (if and when I blog) the next few days. After a bumpy and slow seeming flight from O-town to Logan on a Delta Express 737, I had the pleasure of arriving at the hotel here last night just as the Mitt Romney victory rally was breaking up. Happy Republicans flooding the streets, stopping traffic, hooting and hollering. Later, I went to a local watering hole in the South End. A good turnout for a bar on a Tuesday night. Many gay folks upset at the results of the election. It wasn't quite as bad as the mood during the reporting of off-year results in 1994, but it had a similar feel. Returning to the hotel at 2:00 a.m. or so, drunken Republicans were going from party to party in various rooms on various floors. A full elevator arrived at the lobby level. "Free Tibet!" several of the drunken Repulicans cried. We stop before we get to my floor. Drunken Republicans are there, waiting to go up. "Free Tibet!" some of those already on the elevator holler. "Did Mitt have a position on Tibet?" one asked another. "It's near China," someone else said. This morning, comments in a gay chat room tended to the "it's the end of life as we know it" regarding national election results, as well as what happened in Massachusetts. There is a substantial cohort within the gay community that has no sense of the true meaning of majority rule, no sense of the true meaning of loyal opposition, no sense of the true meaning of what participatory democracy is all about. One person described the President and his advisors as "a cabal that is truly evil". Like when Reagan was president, they ascribe the results to a "stupid" populace that has been "fooled and hoodwinked". It just never seems to occur to these folks to do a little self reflection. If they did so, they would find that most of their left-wing positions regarding national security and international relations have almost zero support among the broader populace. I don't really know enough about the Massachusetts governor's race to comment intelligently. In Florida, McBride got beat soundly by Jeb Bush. Do I regret that? Yes. Do I think that it's the end of life as we know it? No. Do I have a civic obligation to support the re-elected governor to the degree I can? Yes, as much as I'd rather not. Not that Jeb's gonna call me for any favors. Tuesday, November 05, 2002
Links is Links Wecome readers from Bitchpundit, who is cool, but seems to have an active imagination, seems to be a sloppy reader, and seems to like to link to this site for reasons unknown to me. One passing comment (in this post) regarding word usage doesn't put someone in the "detractor" camp, and even a casual reader of what I suggested about "internalized homophobia" wouldn't draw the conclusion that I was referring to Bitchpundit. Reading is hard; let's draw bodacious curves and talk tough! Early Turnout Report 7:00 a.m. turnout at Precinct 704 in Volusia County (Daytona Beach Shores) was solid. Every voting station was filled, and there was enough of a line and a sufficient rate of arrivals to keep it filled for a while. Given the closeness of the 2000 election here in Florida, I'm surprised more hasn't been made explicitly about the degree to which every vote counts. My gut feeling is that people may have developed a new respect for the importance of voting, but that's just intuition. Time will tell. The early voters seemed well prepared, arriving equipped with marked sample ballots. The ballot's pretty long: Ten constitutional amendments to consider. I expect Volusia County will be aware of the downside of optical-scanned paper ballots after today (even though I still think the upsides well outweigh the downsides). Saturday, November 02, 2002
Vote Early, Vote Often
Addendum, 5 Nov 2002. (i) Missed Buddy Dyer for AG in the list above. (ii) A correspondent writes that Visconti is whacked. That may be. Soil and Water Conservation District Rep seems like a good slot for someone who's whacked. Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Translate In this log entry, Mike Silverman refers to this story at the Gay Financial News that links to this press release from the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. Here's the entire text of the press release: Despite a shortage of qualified Arabic linguists in the intelligence and defense fields, the Army has fired a significant number of trained language specialists from the military’s Defense Language Institute (DLI) in Monterey, California because they are gay. Ugh number one. This whole "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy is stupid and counterproductive. We need translators for Arabic; we train translators of Arabic; we let go translators of Arabic because they're not heterosexual. Is that any way to run a country? An army? Ugh number two. The whole "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy remains the policy of the US military, and anyone, gay or straight, who enlists ought to understand that. Yes, that simple-minded way of looking at things doesn't take into account young people who discover their sexuality after they enlist. Still, it just strikes me as nuts how some LBG young people enlist, knowing full well what the policy is, then expect not to be thrown out when the fact that they're not straight becomes known somehow. Ugh number three. The military shouldn't jerk people around. I know, I know: pipe dreams, etc. Ugh number two doesn't mean that SLDN doesn't deserve some kudos for taking on a rough job: Just because young people screw up regarding military policy and their own sexual orientation doesn't mean they ought to lose their rights as citizens or not have those rights vigorously protected. Timatollah bottom line: "Don't ask, don't tell" is bad policy and is actually against the national interests and needs to be changed, but don't pretend that ignoring that policy is a demonstration of civil disobedience or personally responsibility. Monday, October 28, 2002
Bad Newspaper Article, Number 2952210 This AP story in the Palm Beach Post set off my bullshit detectors bigtime. The headline and lede refer to "tourists" supposedly complaining about Disney (beware, obnoxious Flash) having -- gasp -- a shooting gallery attraction with -- gasp -- toy guns at Disney World, but the article, at least as it appeared in the Post's online version, only had one tourist complaining. And that person was a Brit. "It just seems a complete contradiction to be selling toy guns at a time when security searches are trying to detect concealed weapons and explosives that may be about to be used by terrorists," said Les Wright, a tourist from Oldham, England.O-kay. My instincts say that more likely some British tourist from Oldham, England, had a friend who was a reporter who wrote the story which got picked up by the AP. I mean, it's not like Disney issued a press release about the subject. Friday, October 25, 2002
Former NFL Defensive Linesman Coming Out This story at ESPN says that Esera Tuaolo, who played for Green Bay, the Panthers, the Vicking, the (one season only) mighty Jags, and the Falcons (with whom he went to the Super Bowl) is gonna come out on HBO's Real Sports show. The blurb at Real Sports says: REAL SPORTS tackles head-on one of the most explosive issues in professional team sports - the notion of having a gay athlete on the squad. Correspondent Bernard Goldberg talks to a former NFL veteran, burdened with keeping his homosexuality closeted during his long career, who has now chosen to reveal his long-kept secret. ESPN link from Drudge. Tuesday, October 22, 2002
"But We're Not" Read this Bleat entry from James Lileks. The big middle section starting with, "Today I became one of those people...". Why, yes, I am against attempts to indoctrinate kiddies in anything but the most basic civic virtures. Don't use kindergarten and pre-school to subvert the dominant paradigm: Give kids the personal and social skills to make their own decisions way on down the road, and the right things are more likely to happen. Things are rarely such that having mindless sheep will ever make for a good citizenry, national or world. Enforcers in Action Again This time it's Republicans for Heterosexual Purity vs. Log Cabin Republicans. Story here, from the Houston Chronicle. Link from Andrew Sullivan. Orlando Terror Victim One of the victims of the bombing of fun spots in Bali was from Orlando. A surfer guy looking for a great wave. Story here, from the Sentinel. Anti-Discrimination Ordinance in Orlando Finally, the mayor of Orlando has gotten off the fence. Even though she said she'll vote "no," Mayor Glenda Hood also said she'll finally let an ordinance extending Orlando's anti-discrimination in housing and employment laws to people who don't happen to be heterosexual come to a vote before the Orlando City Council. (Aside: How does that work? Does O-town have one of those "mayor is coucil president" kind of governments?) Story here, from the Orlando Sentinel. Monday, October 21, 2002
Prediction, Number 150928 When the Jerry Sienfeld movie comes out, some people will complain, "It didn't have that announcer thing in it, like in the trailer." (The trailer's here, at Apple's movie trailers site.) Endorsements-O-Rama Mark Lane keeps up with who's endorsing whom so you don't have to. But what about those Gannett sites, Mr. Lane? And the "No Shit, Sherlock" Award Goes To... Drudge with his headline: "Drugs Found on Kid Rock's Bus". The Palm Beach Post Intelligencer Diplomat Herald Tribune Times has the story here. Link from Shattered Buddha, since Drudge had already updated by the time I got home from work. Sunday, October 20, 2002
Beautiful Loser The new Beck. It's drenched with sadness. After a casual listen, it's like, "where's the weirdness?" "Where are the layers?" A closer listen reveals that the layers, the Pere-Ubu-like weirdness remains. But it's integrated with such mastery into the overall structure of these beautiful sad pop numbers that it rarely becomes the focus. Instead, the feelings, the beautiful sadness, dominate. Why Shattered Buddha Rules Read Shattered Buddha. He makes eclectic look easy. Dave Barry, dobro inventors, tragedy-stricken Mexican immigrants, plus Jerry Springer and Katherine Harris, together again for the first time, with Wal*Mart thrown in to boot. Anti-Anti-Idiotarianism The herding up of those who have expressed opposition to the wars, those who have kowtowed to dictatorial power, those who have apologized for hate, those who have insulted the survivors of the attacks of 9/11/01 and since under the rubric of "Idiotarian" is a popular approach with some folks. It may have some measure of utility in contexts of discussing what should be done, but it is, in my opinion, not the right approach to the life-and-death debates that matter. I'm not against calling stupid things said "stupid things". I'm not against having well-formed and firmly-stated opinions about idiotic comments. But I am skeptical about the degree of correlation presumed, even in a string of consistently stupid things said, between what someone has said and what they're going to say next. There are two aspects to this: The first is, as noted below in the diversity entry, people are often internally conflicted. We have ways of holding nearly-conflicting opinions and feelings at times. The upshoot of that is that just because someone has a really stupid opinion or has made a really inane comment in one area, it doesn't necessarily mean that their comments in some other area are going to be equally stupid or inane. Example: More than one of the "Idiotarian" slingers has questioned Chomsky's linguistic theories. The fact is that it's perfectly consistent with human nature as observed that Chomsky could be Mr. Super Linguist Who Figured Out the Secrets of Language and be wrong wrong wrong about how human societies should be organized, on either the national or international levels. The second aspect is that people aren't necessarily consistent in time. They change their minds -- sometimes discontinuously, sometimes along a continuum -- about particular issues. While how folks see things today might be a fair indicator of how they'll see things tomorrow, it's not really an excellent indicator. Just think of some of the things Hitchens has said and advocated over the years. There's also a dynamic exchange involved where people hopefully read, listen, learn, change, grow. The changes that lead one opinion or another to be expressed don't just happen internally: they happen in a larger context involving other people. Not only people, but power, either formal or informal. I'm not so naive as to not understand that many of the so-called Idiotarians would be big trouble if they ever actually had real governmental power. There is, undeniably to me, an fairly-consistent misindentification of which governments really misuse governmental authority for causes that denigrate humanity. If there is a they, then they seem to be speaking out for the wrong side. But, the fact remains that they're part of our culture. They might even play some useful role in criticizing, however wrongheadedly, proposed policies and actions. To me, it's easy enough to identify stupid things said and done on a case by case basis, without getting totally into an "us and them" mentality. These people who are often wrong and who often say stupid things and who really seem to miss the larger picture about human freedom and who's really denying it shouldn't be totally ignored, blackballed, put into the corner, or wrongly labelled as idiots. Identify their output as stupid, call them every time they say something idiotic, do what you will to refute and dispute dumb or hateful things they say, but don't cross the us-and-them threshold. Each of us very likely has some opinion or attitude that goes against either clear thinking or the opinions of broad groups of society, and each of us is very highly likely to say something really stupid at some point. So can the generalization and stick to the details. Refuting the details is the only refutation of the hateful and stupid ideas promoted at times by some people that matters. It's almost certainly the only refutation that will convince others now (unless you're looking for anti-idiotarian bullies or sheep) or convince others at distant times and places. Saturday, October 19, 2002
The Nature of Diversity The homophobia issue referred to below -- there's a host of issues related to this raised by Arthur Silber here, particularly as it relates to Andrew Sullivan -- has stirred up ideas I never got down about diversity. It just seems that a really substantial fraction of the population has really unimaginative ideas about the true nature of diversity. Real diversity means understanding that people will display just about every attribute imaginable in every possible combination. So, there will be animal-rights-motivated vegetarians who like to wear leather. There will be black gay Republicans. There will be Baptists who like to do the frug. I know that most of us search for consistency in our lives -- who wants to be a big old honking hypocrite? But I think that at some point we come to accomodation with ourselves that everything doesn't line up the same way. Forces of habit don't agree with analytic thought. One set of friends thinks one way about one set of issues; another, a different way -- somehow we keep them all as friends. It's complicated. It's complicated enough. Add to that some much smaller fraction of the population that's vocal about attempting to enforce their own ideas about how all the various aspects of one's life ought to correlate, and you have a bad situation. I think it's likely that the shouters and the enforcers, while a small fraction of the population, by dint of their loudness and intensity, command a disproportionate share of attention. Self-appointed thought police on the left and on the right are abhorent. They're so concerned with being correct -- politically or otherwise -- they miss the larger picture. There's no room for doubt, of self or others, in their framework. They're basically little Hitlers, little fans of Stalin. We should be grateful that, by and large, they have little real power. Why Not Anti-Islamofacist It's telling that Eric Raymond's manifesto is titled "An Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto", as opposed to something like "A Call to Arms to Defend Freedom" or "An Anti-Islamofacist Manifesto". Here's what I posted in comments on Eric's blog: The manifesto should concern what we should do to defeat our enemies, not inside-politics inside-baseball who-shoves-whom-around-the-blogosphere nonsense. I don't have any problem with identifying stupid positions and policies and calling them what they are, but this whole "idiotarian" thing is a ridiculous playground-level waste of time. It's codification of an ad hominem approach to discourse. Homophobia In a post here, InstaPundit, who is, by and large, really together about issues pertaining to personal sexuality and the like, links to this post by Charles Murtaugh. The issue Charles brings up concerns incidence of left-wing homophobia, and whether it's related to Andrew Sullivan's visibility. My own sense of these matters is that expecting left-wing people to be perfectly consistent regarding not exhibiting homophobic behavior is like expecting anybody, gay people included, to be consistent regarding homophobia. Ever hear of internalized homophobia? Yes, it's fair to hold visible institutions like the Montana Democratic Party to high standards concerning seeming or obvious homophobic behavior, but it's not clear to me that expecting consistency in this regard from a large collection of left-wing bloggers, or even non-web pundits, is reasonable. Fair game, yes; reasonable given the vagaries of human behavior, no. After all, just a few posts down from his entry about left-wing homophobia, in this post, Glenn quotes from Bitchpundit, including the following regarding Islamic yahoos trying to hack her. Buncha script kiddies, that's all these butt pirates are. They can't wage real war, so they are sending Hi-Tek Teenage Mutant Ninja Muslims from Bloggerstan, instead.I don't know about you, but "butt pirates" seems to be used pretty consistently to denigrate homosexual activity. Consistency is difficult. So, let's just call things homophobic when they're homophobic and not worry as much about whether it's coming from the left or the right. Friday, October 18, 2002
ISS Flyover Just came inside from watching the Space Station fly over. Wow! That's the fourth time I've seen it: once before here in Daytona Beach and twice in the Oklahoma panhandle. I haven't tried too hard to keep up with it. Luckily, our upstairs neighbor had clued into the fact that it was going over closely tonight, so we all went out for a good look. Smiles Forever Lost Photos of some of the Australians killed in the Bali bombing can be found here, from the Sydney Morning Herald. These were surfers, rugby players, beach bums: kids enjoying their youth in the outdoors, in the sun. Is there any people on Earth more like us Americans than the Australians in terms of loving the active life of a free individual? My heart goes out to all the folks over there down under who have lost someone. That our common enemies would choose such a group to kill and maim should not surprise anyone. Our enemies hate freedom. Our enemies hate fun. Our enemies hate diversity. Our enemies think their book, as interpreted by a self-selected few, can tell them everything about how to live. Apparently, it tells them nothing, for the first rule of how to live is, "Live and let live." But once our enemies take the lives of our friends and our neighbors intentionally, and intend to keep doing so, we are not, cannot be, bound by that rule. Ultimately, they will regret their choice to destroy the lives they have. Air Force One It's not every day that I get to see a 747 take off from DBIA, but the odds are good that if I do get to see one, it's going to be Air Force One. When I was getting ready to leave work yesterday, I heard a jet take off; looked up and saw that it was some military model that already had too much altitude for me to ID it easily. Then, I saw folks lined up along the fence where DBIA butts up against one of our parking lots, and I figured that the President must be fixing to depart. So I hung out by the car for a minute and, sure enough, Air Force One comes lumbering down the runway. I'd seen it just after takeoff the last time GWB was here, sometime last year, I believe. The relative scale of a 747 compared to the usual assortment of Riddle planes and Delta's three-or-four-times-daily MD-80s to Atlanta made Air Force One look positively huge. Its takeoff was graceful and direct; beautiful. I quickly called Mack, and he was able to see the plane headed eastward, crossing the Halifax River toward the beach and then the Atlantic. I'm no Republican. I have fairly high regard for much of GWB's foreign policy and conduct of the various conflicts we find ourselves in, largely not of our own doing. I'm strongly opposed to his economic policies, particularly his income and estate tax policies. But I have great respect for the office of President of the United States, and I guess I'll always get a thrill out of seeing the President's plane take off and fly by. Thursday, October 17, 2002
Better Kausfiles Get this. Mickey Kaus has, like, multiple posts today. And they're not even all about the New York Times. Politics. Welfare. It's there. What about Timatollah? More than one post here, too. -- Ed. Yeah, but I have a day job. See, it's the Kausfiles "Ed." device. Get it? Oh, nevermind. Carter's Prize Folks (including Howard Owens) have been asking: "What did Jimmy Carter really do to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?". Well, he did put into place the plan that eventually led to Pershing IIs being installed in Europe, an act that I still believe positively contributed to the decline of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. That's probably more important in the longer run than having lunch with Castro. Pistol Packin' Transsexuals Here's an article from the Seattle Times that even my brother-in-law (brother-out-law? -- Mack's brother) ought to love. Link via InstaPundit. Wednesday, October 16, 2002
Gay Israeli in Parliament Today's New York Times has this story about the first gay member of the Israeli parliament. What happens to gay Palestinians? Oh, yeah, they get beaten by their families (links via this entry) and the Palestianian cops. "Terrorists Don't Want Liberty. They Want Death." Read Tim Blair in The Australian. The paper's site also features latest news on the Bali bombing. Saturday, October 12, 2002
The Taylor Ad Broughaha Just about everyone and their mother has weighed in on the Taylor ad controversy. Among them are Ted Barlow, Josh Marshall, Glenn Reynolds, and Andrew Sullivan. One man's opinion: The ad is blatently designed to appeal to homophobia among the general-election voters. But, it's also a run-of-the-mill attack ad disguised as information. Like most attack ads, it's intrinsically dishonorable. An honest ad would feature the Democratic Party candidate, Baucus, saying in his own words the problems he had with Taylor's beauty-school operation. I don't know any way to put the attack-ad genie back in the bottle, but this ad, for all its individual problems, is just an example of a larger festering wound on the political process. The hypocrisy of those who attack or who defend this particular ad, but defend or attack ads just as nasty by their own or the other side is pretty obvious and pretty disgusting. Coming Out as Good Citizenship I've put the text of of my NCOD speech online here. I'm sure the argument's been made a zillion times before, but the crux of the matter is that coming out involves
We had a good crowd: the young people from GALBA, some locals from the Daytona Beach Business Guild and their mailing list, and a few faculty friends who I very much appreciate being there. Tuesday, October 08, 2002
NCOD: Self Promotion Speaking of National Coming Out Day, yours truly will be speaking at an Ice Cream Social held by GALBA, ERAU's Gay-Straight Alliance. Friday, 11 October, at 6:30 p.m. in the atrium of the Spruance Building on the Embry-Riddle Campus. If you're in the Daytona Beach vicinity, drop in. Another Tuesday, Another Onion This week's Onion features an appropriately-timed story on coming out. Monday, October 07, 2002
Holland and Knight The Miami Herald today features this L. A. Times length article on Holland and Knight, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill McBride's law firm. The story starts by describing how Holland and Knight didn't take the gay adoption case pro bono, how McBride made the decision not to. The situation involved conflicting positions between some partners in the firm and others, especially some new ones of an Orlando-based firm that had just merged with Tampa-based Holland and Knight. The article is a little all over the place. After the gay-adoption angle, it's just a littany of Holland and Knight situations that don't look good for McBride: pro bono environmental work versus environmental cases in the employ of big business. Except for its length, there's little exceptional in the story, unless you have some image of the head of one of Florida's largest law firms as some kind of innocent or angel. Still, given his new stature as nominee of the Dems for governon, it's not surprising that big Florida media would see it necessary to give McBride at least the illusion of a once over. |
