OK, I need this guy



Saint Expeditus, AKA Saint Elpidius, patron saint against procrastination...

... OK, OK! I'm off to the studio now. Time to work.

H/T Neat-O-Rama

Finally Took the Plunge

On Saturday, we hit the Apple Store, and picked up a family pack of Leopard, otherwise known as OS 10.5.

Spent Monday afternoon and evening backing up everything I could think of on my iBook G4, and on Tuesday installed the upgrade (I had been running 10.4.2). I figured that my laptop could be the 'sacrificial lamb', as it is the one that has had the most abuse, and I have the old eMac G4 as a fallback, where as my wife only has her iBook.

Things actually went very smoothly. I lost my wallpaper (bummer, it was a customized version of a Michael Whelan illustration that's no longer available on the net... thankfully I have the original version somewhere, so I'll have to play with it in Photoshop) and my printer drivers, which were easy to get back once I figured out what to do. Considering that I am the polar opposite of a techno-geek, this was pretty simple. To give you an idea, I still have yet to figure out how to get one of my outbound email accounts to work, after four years I still can only receive mail through that one account. So that fact that this worked so well, with so little problems is a neat thing to say about Apple and the new OS.


Now to upgrade my wife's laptop. Cross you fingers....

Apparently Watermelons are a vegetable.

... and onions seem to be pretty popular.

Following up on a post at New Wineskins I took a web-based 'Spiritual Type Test'.

I came out as a Mystic.


No surprises there, I suppose.

Dr. Helen kicks off her new advice column at Pajamas Media

She discusses what things all adults should be able to do, starting with the famous list by Robert Heinlein, and continuing with additions of her own.

(from Heinlein) A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Dr. Helen's additions, drive a stick shift, be able to swim a reasonable distance, surf the web and answer an email, understand and be able to use a basic handgun, give a good backrub.

My abilities as compared to these lists are,

Change a diaper. With three biological children (and several infant foster children who have come through our home) this one is a natch! Ability includes changing both cloth and disposables.

Design a building. I've done stage design and do a lot of historical architectural research. I'd want someone to check me against the codes, but I could do a reasonable job for normal sized wood framed homes or farm buildings.

Build a wall. I grew up in the woods of New Hampshire. Fixing and building stone walls came with the territory.

Comfort the dying. Unfortunately, I have experience in this.

Take orders, give orders. Many years as a boyscout and a few in leadership positions. Believe it or not, but working on the tech side of theatre covers this as well. Check.

Cooperate, act alone. Trained in the theatre, including some acting training, so this one is both literally and figuratively true.

Pitch Manure. Again, farm country boyhood. It didn't happen often, but enough to know I didn't want it for a career.

Cook a tasty meal. The wife and kids think so, most of the time.

Drive a stickshift. Have, will, want to buy something with one (preferably large, overpowered, and from the 60s!)

Surf the web and answer email. Uh, Dr. Helen? You posted this on a new media site. The number of people who will read your column in Pajamas Media who can't do these two is a number aproaching zero.

Understand and be able to use a handgun. Haven't done it much, but yeh. Paraphrasing Tom Selleck's character from Quigly Down Under, "I said I didn't like pistols, not that I can't use them." I'd rather have one of these.

Give a good backrub. Hey, my wife didn't marry me for my looks (or money).

Of the rest, hmmm....

Fight efficiently. Not so much, unless we back up to be able to use a handgun.

Plan an invasion. No miltary training. I could take a stab at it, but this would probably best be left under be able to take orders. I'd rather follow somebody who knows what they're doing, and live, than think I'm capable by myself, and die.

Analyze a new problem. That essentially used to be my corporate job, doing stratigic sales research. Now I spend my time thinking up new paintings and new symbolism.

Balance accounts given a little more enthusiasm for bookkeeping... Nah, that's not gonna' happen.

Solve equations, write a sonnet, not since college....

Swim a reasonable distance, yeh, my doctor would like me to be able to do that as well.

Butcher a hog, conn a ship, program a computer, not yet - probably not likely.

Die gallantly, don't know yet.

If you have any additions for the list, drop a comment at Dr. Helen's column.

You scored as Clint Eastwood, Names aren't important as you dish out steaming bowls of piping hot brutality to your enemies. You also enjoy a good spaghetti dinner once in a while.

Clint Eastwood		88%
John Wayne		88%
Lee Van Cleef		75%
Charles Bronson		75%
Lee Marvin		63%

What Kind of a Western Bad-Ass are You?
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Apropos of Nothing...

My brain is weird. Strange memories and associations come, at times unbidden.

Last night, my wife started asking me about reading 19th Century literature (the oldest boy is getting to that level). With the exception of Verne and Twain, there's not much in the way of fiction from the 19th century that I remember from my youthful reading, but it got me to thinking about my high school English classes.…

...Which got me to thinking about a classmate who for a creative writing class wrote an essay, "How to Commit Suicide With Style." The essay ended with the would-be suicide retiring to Barbados with boatloads of fraudulently received insurance money.


This struck me as potentially troubling, in an ironic way, considering that the classmate who wrote the essay went on to become a CPA.


Things that make you, in hindsight, go "hmmmmmm...."

What Kind of Conservative Are You?
created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Reagan Con Reagan Con: You believe that America is the solution and not the problem, a strong defence, and the smiting of all those who stand against freedom. Your motto: "What would Reagan do?"

Now my question, why does the result "Reagan Con" get a shot of Charlton Heston from "The Omega Man?"

Useless comparissons

I'm a year older than Glenn Reynolds! Funny, I thought he would be younger than that...

Here's the math. Yesterday he said that he was 6 during the Summer of Love. In that post he linked to this by Ann Althouse who said that the Summer of Love was 40 years ago. (I personally have no recollection of this stuff.)

That would make Mr. Reynolds 46. I'm 47.


I am only a year older than he? That can't be right! I thought he was just a puppy...


...oh wait, that wouldn't work!

Once again, I am forced to disagree with The Glenn

He accuses "Big Oil" of paying off Sheryl Crow and other big media types to say nonsensical things to discredit the idea of anthropogenic global warming.

For once, he's gravely mistaken. This is just another psy-op run by the nefarious Karl Rove! Why else would the All Powerful Man Behind The Curtain allow himself to be forced into scurrying from his table by two mere entertainers? Everyone knows that the APMBTC controls all of Washington in his iron grip. This dust-up was a deflection. By running from Crow and David, Rove cleverly hid his diabolical connections to this whole affair.

The White House, Congress, the Oil Industry, and now the Entertainment Industry, what is there left in the world that has not bowed before the abominable scheming of the APMBTC?

OK, Sheryl Crow's silliness is being commented on all over

Examples, Ms. Malkin and the Glenn (with many wonderful links from them to others.)

But this does raise and interesting question. As has been pointed out by others, pretty much all wood used by the paper industry is grown for that purpose. Now when you grow a tree, it takes carbon out of the atmosphere, and uses it as a building block for its growth. Then paper manufacturers turn the tree into pulp, and then paper, which means that the carbon is now in the paper.

So here's my question. Since engineers and scientists have been looking for ways to sequester carbon from pollution, and paper is - in part- carbon pulled out of the atmosphere by purpose grown pulp-trees, wouldn't that mean that burying waste paper in landfills is a form of carbon sequestration?

Just a question...


Save the world, stop recycling paper and send it to the dump instead!

NO, NO, NO! that would be Glenn Reynolds!

I'm afraid the condition of the Earth is incurable

A thought about this whole Global-Warming thing. Late last Fall, I went out and bought a 5.5 horsepower snow blower. Living on a corner lot (with a driveway across the street) I had just gotten tired of all the shoveling. And so, three months later, the North Inner Suburbs of Boston finally gets two snowstorms, about two weeks apart with enough accumulation to break this thing out. The second one was an inch and a half. The only reason to actually use the machine was that I also did the walks and driveways of two neighbors. The snow blower has turned out to be an expensive, and so far useless, toy.

Yesterday, with the threat of snow followed by rain and ice, I got the bright idea to go to Home Depot and pick up a 50 lb. bag of driveway-melt. So today? Rain, all rain, washing the remaining snow and ice from the previous storms away.

On the other hand, Al Gore (you have to feel sorry for the guy) shows up in city after city this winter to preach about the coming catastrophe of global warming, only to arrive to major snowstorms and unusual cold, even in DC. It became so predictable that some wags even named it "the Gore Effect."


The Earth isn't being overtaken by global warming, the Earth has an advanced case of "Murphy's Law."


And I'm afraid that is incurable.

Hmmmm... Barbara Ehrlich, Paul Ehrlich...

I wonder if they're related? If they are, maybe we can get a grant to research the effects of heredity on bad science.

the Long Kiss Goodnight vs The Lord of the Rings


One is a fantasy, and one is emblematic of the post 9/11 world.

Which one we as a civilisation choose to be which may define whether we survive or not.


(Edit Note I originally used The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe instead of LOTR, but I think the latter is a more compelling example of the individual's responsibility to face the truth and to fight evil, and now you obviously know my view of the above comparrision.)

(Edit Note 2 After talking to two friends, it is apparent that my choice of 'the Long Kiss Goodnight' was more than a little arcane. The specific reason for using TLKG is the following exchange, between Samuel L Jackson's character, Mitch (supporting to Geena Davis's leading role) and the Director of the CIA, Leland Perkins.

Mitch: "Your telling me that you're gonna fake some terrorist thing just to scare some money out of Congress?"
Leland Perkins: "Well, unfortunately I have no idea how to fake killing 4,000 people - so we're just gonna have to do it for real. Blame it on the Muslims, naturally. Then I get my funding."

The premise behind the central conflict of the movie sounds so much like the wingnut conspiracy theories behind 9-11 that it could almost have been lifted whole-cloth and dumped onto Indymedia.)

MY EYES, MY EYES!



Now I certainly don't agree with the Senator from New York's politics, but this thing is just an insult to her!

What, Pat Buchanan has taken up sculpture? Is this some kind of bad joke? What was the artist thinking? How much of the brown acid was he/she taking?

And furthermore, there is one thing of which I am completely certain concerning Sen. Hillary. She doesn't need a comb-over!

H/T the Anchoress (from whom I purloined the image)

Thought for the day

It is possible for an idiot to go through life and never change his mind. It is highly doubtful that the same can be said for an intelligent man.


(I believe that to be original, but with a life filled with the writings of Oscar Wilde and Samuel Clemmons from youth, it may simply be paraphrasing.)

Apple has introduced a new notebook computer, the MacBook

It now comes in white and spiffy new black (to go with the black iPod I suppose).

However, if I choose the 13 inch white 2.0 Ghz Intel Duo Core and upgrade from the 60GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive to the 80GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA hard drive, it still costs $100.00 less than its black brethren. I can see no other difference from the stats Apple publishes on their store page.

$100.00 so I can get an Apple the color of a Toshiba?



Someone has been taking their silly pills...

We've been on a family trip to Kentucky to see Grandma Yost for her 95th birthday (note, I originally put that at 96th, my bad -- ed.).

May you have many more, Mildred Yost.





To wind down after two days on the road (with three kids in the car) I watched “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.” I didn’t see it in the theatres though I had wanted to, but with family and schedule I had to choose between seeing it by myself, or seeing “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” with my oldest son, Nigel. Nigel won. I think I made out as well, as the Narnia stories are wonderful and the film was very true to the original story. So tonight I watched the DVD of Harry Potter, and my first response was that it was time to re-read the books.

Again.

For the fifth time.



And that got me thinking.

We have become so used to the overflow of riches that we have in the West. I don’t mean money or goods, though we have those.
We have an amazing amount of knowledge and literature at our very fingertips. Sometimes we make fun of the ‘fans’ who devour popular books and endlessly debate minor points or pick out flaws that the author missed. ‘Trekkies’ are laughed at. HP is ‘just for kids.’ Pick a popular subject, and you can easily find those who will ridicule its followers. I can even remember reading a Dilbert strip where Dogbert chastises Dilbert for rereading a novel; after all, he knew how it was going to end.

Abraham Lincoln grew up owning, reading and rereading maybe a dozen books. Longfellow’s library was in movable cases, and there were so few that all of them were grabbed up and safely removed from a house he lived in when that house caught fire. The known library of Leonardo may have been two dozen books, or less.

Historically, people have read and reread the same bits of non-fiction and literature over and over again. People committed whole books to memory not because they were so much smarter than you and I, but because they read the ink off of the pages.

The bards of old memorized the Iliad and the Odyssey not just because they were the best literature, but maybe because they were the only literature available.

I don’t think we should laugh at the people who wear funny costumes, go to ‘Sci-Fi’ conventions and flash a Vulcan peace sign or sport a lightning bolt on their foreheads. They are a lot closer to the spirit of the ancient poets than we are.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Lucy Lawlesses?

We don’t have cable, so the only way I can keep up with Battlestar Galactica is to wait till the season is over and download it from iTunes. (Waiting for the end of the season means I don’t mess up and overlook an episode.) I just watched ‘Final Cut’ guest staring everyone’s favorite warrior princess, when the above title free-associated in my head. That lead to the realization that Edward James Olmos wasn’t very good at “retiring” evil androids in ‘Bladerunner’ either. Then again, if the Battlestar was commanded by Rick Deckard, the season would only last 117 minutes, and that’s the director’s cut.