"Are You a Registered Republican?"

That's what the nice candidate running for state senate called out to me as I exited the Safeway. He had a little table with a chair and a sign and some literature. I didn't get a good look at him; white guy in a suit. Didn't get the name.

 

"Yes, I am," I called back as I strode across the parking lot, heading straight for my car. Unspoken - because I didn't want to take the time - was "and thus, I have a job and I'm very busy and I don't have time to chat with a political candidate."

 

Valuable lesson for people buttonholing me in public:

 

You only get one shot. Ask the question you need to ask, not a prefatory question. I'll answer your prefatory question, because I'm polite, and then I'll move on. If you want my vote so you can stop the invading Mongol horde, you pretty much need to say "Mister, I want your vote so I can stop the invading Mongol horde!" If I am also worried about the Mongols, maybe I'll stop and listen to you bloviate. But try and save yourself time by wasting mine ("let's prescreen for registered voters, and let's prescreen for Republicans"), and you'll get nothing. I've got stuff to do.

 

Although, admittedly, not so much stuff that I can't take a moment to blog about it. But that's different - it happens at my convenience, not his.

Saturday Puppy Blogging

His widdle paws say "cute"...but his eyes say "I will cut you for putting me in this suit, you son of a *****".

Attack of the Ants

A few days ago my wife made some really outstanding chocolate cookies. Last night I had a few (*cough*) in my office. Apparently some crumbs went "rogue" and fell, unnoticed, behind some boxes scattered on the floor.

Today I grabbed a sandwich for lunch. A green pepper fell out of it and was on the floor; when I noticed it had fallen, I leaned down to pick it up and recoiled - ants! Dozens of 'em, Mr. Rico!

I prepared to engage when I realized - one or two random ants finding my green pepper, I could see. But it had only been there a few minutes. Where had they come from? I cast my gaze farther afield - and there, swarming in their hundreds, were little ant-mountains on top of the cookie fragments. Ewww!

This is why God invented little handy battery-powered vacuum cleaners, however. A few minutes of cleaning (which the floor needed, anyway) and the little ant raiding party was no more. I'll be engaging in tactical ant-squashing over the next few hours, undoubtedly, as ants-come-lately follow the scent trail to where the cookies used to be. Wish me luck as I commit to battle.

We fight the ant infestation we have, not the ant infestation we'd like to have.

UPDATE:

Q. What does my office have in common with the Pink Panther movies?
A. "Dead ant, dead ant, dead ant dead ant dead ant dead ant dead ant...deadantdeadantdeadantant"

UPDATE 2:

A small squad of six highly-trained, stealthy ants crept onto the battlefield. Ignoring the corpses of their fallen brothers-in-arms, they ant-handled one last remaining crumb onto their collective shoulders and started maneuvering it out of the conflict zone. They didn't see the shadow looming. They didn't see the pencil descending like the hand of an angry God. All they saw was the carpet suddenly looming large as they were crushed, as though beneath the awful weight of their own crime.

Don't steal my food.

Johnny Cash Kicks A**

I've been listening to Johnny Cash's last "real" album, American IV. If you haven't heard his version of "Hurt" (a song Trent Raznor of NIN wrote), you need to hear it. It may be the most raw and powerfully emotional song I have ever heard. Cash was the rare performer who never stopped developing, but in his case, it's emotional layers that he added, not technical virtuosity. (Well, maybe he developed more virtuosity too, but my uneducated ear is not going to pick up on it.)

Put it another way: as you know, I'm a cold-hearted cynical bastard, but I hear his lifelong pain distilled into that song and I just want to cry and cry (as the little one says when confronted with a tragedy on the order of not getting applesauce with dinner).

Members of Congress Arrested at Darfur Protest

Five Democratic members of Congress were briefly arrested at a protest in front of the Sudanese Embassy. Six citizen activists, along with Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Houston), Jim McGovern (D-Worcester, Mass.), Jim Moran (D-Virginia) and John Olver (D-Massachusetts), were taken into custody for blocking the entrance to the embassy as part of protests against the ongoing genocide in Darfur.

 

Sudan is governed by a military dictatorship which has been committing an ongoing genocide against non-Arab citizens of the African nation. The sitation in Darfur appears to be deteriorating, with hundreds of thousands of people being driven from their homes by government-allied gangs of brigands. Some aid agencies have reported being forced to leave the country, and the United Nations claims that if the aid network in Sudan collapses, as many as 100,000 people per month could begin dying from starvation, in addition to those being directly killed by the Sudanese state.

Circumcision and Monogamy Most Effective Against HIV Transmission

Very interesting study done in the field in Africa.

Get The Door...It's Dominoes

Pennsylvania man uses car to deliver pizza AND corpses. Now there's somebody who really has to keep his two jobs straight in his mind...

Britney Fat-Bashed at Celeb Site

This video shows Britney Spears practicing dance moves for a new song of hers. The video is unremarkable. It shows a pretty woman who has had a baby doing some dance exercises. Every straight man I've ever known would think "that's a nice looking baby mama there, that is". 

 

What's remarkable (but sadly, not unusual) is the incredible fat-bashing going on in the comment thread attached to the video.

 

"Britney should give up on trying to look sexy and just embrace her new image of 'beached whale'"

 

"Big booty = more balance for spins...staple the stomach, please"

 

"Oh my god how much do you guys think she weighs- seriously.... I'm gonna guess 140.... that's being nice."

 

"Brit's doing a great job of getting as fat and foul as Anna was prior to the latest drug addictions."

 

"It's like watchin a WHALE chase a TicTac! "THERE SHE BLOWS""

 

And so on.

 

I hold no brief for Britney Spears or for celebrity culture in general. But it is sickening to see the contempt that these people have no compunction about pouring out in a public forum. What kind of mentality thinks it appropriate to crap on other human beings like this? Knock it off, knuckleheads; you're forcing me into agreement with moonbats, and I hate being in agreement with moonbats.

Today In History - the Sultana Disaster

On this date in 1865, the steamboat Sultana, transporting formerly-captured Union soldiers being repatriated home after the end of the Civil War, exploded, killing 1700 people in the worst maritime disaster in US history.

 

Although at the time the disaster received only limited press attention (Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated only 12 days previously, and war-hardened Americans were accustomed to seeing gory casualty figures), over time the tragedy has been memorialized all through the Mississippi valley.

 

Perhaps the most compelling element of the Sultana story is the fact that after the explosion, some 500 survivors, most terribly burned, were taken in and nursed by the ordinary citizenry of Memphis - people who had been the enemies of these soldiers just weeks before. One speculates about how much goodwill must have been generated in northern homes when their wounded finally arrived, bearing tales of the kindness and charity of the people of Memphis.

Let The Iraqi People Vote

When should the US get out of Iraq? When the Iraqis ask us to, of course. This proposal by Jonah Goldberg for a referendum on withdrawal is a darn good idea. It undercuts the antiwar movement here and in Europe, it legitimizes the presence of the troops, and it injects a much-needed dose of honesty and realism into the Iraqi political process.

 

The only modification I would make is that the referendum should be annual, from now until such time as the Iraqis vote "yes" on withdrawal. That sets up a timeline and a process, and also creates political viability for the "the Americans should go, but not quite yet" position.

Ronald Bailey on Peak Oil

Good analysis and overview of the peak oil nonsense.

Stop Genocide

Ampersand of Alas! and Creative Destruction lists some suggestions for stopping the ongoing atrocities in Darfur. They are all very nice suggestions and no doubt seem very effective in the parallel world inhabited by the earnest left. They are good people, the earnest left. God keep them.

 

Here's an idea for stopping genocide. Let's take a page from the history of the last racist imperialists to go around practicing genocide: smash their stuff and kill their thug overlords. I don't know what level of force it would take to persuade/demonstrate to the small tyrants of Africa that maybe peaceful co-existence is better for the actuarial tables. I have my suspicions that it would take a pretty high level, but a level we're capable of achieving.

 

"Never again" implies "whatever it takes". A strong word, "never".

 

One wonders if we're as strong as a word.

I Agree With Ginmar (It Burns!)

...It burns!

 

Ginmar expresses shocked approval for something Glenn Beck said. I agree with both of them; the boys in the Duke case - regardless of what the truth of events proves to be - have proven themselve to be beyond the pale by their behavior.

 

You can't go around hiring escort services and then trying on various "Me? But I'm a Boy Scout!" defenses for size. It doesn't fly.

Avoiding The Charge of Rape

With all the "to avoid being raped" guidelines floating around, it seems only fair to turn the tables around.

If you want to avoid false charges of rape, don't hire escorts for your parties. People whose job involves breaking the law are unlikely to have strong convictions against using the legal system against you if you tick them off.

If you want to avoid false charges of rape, avoid situations where you have 40 guys and 2 girls in the house. Juries who see that situation are inclined to give automatic credence to the view that something untoward was going on, or planned to go on.

If you want to avoid false charges of rape, but you insist on having massive all-guy parties where you hire prostitutes, hire women who you have hired before and know to be trustworthy - and then pay them what you promised to pay them.

If you want to avoid false charges of rape, don't prejudice the community and the neighborhood against you by shouting slurs at the people you've hired in the full sight and hearing of people who already are predisposed not to like you.

If you want to avoid false charges of rape, treat the women in your life as if they were actual human beings, instead of as sex dolls for your employment.

Holocaust Remembrance Day

April 25 is Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorated here with a series of photographs and links. (Warning: disturbing images and text.)

 

All too timely a memorial, as the spectre of another Holocaust looms over the Jewish people.

400-odd Page Rough Draft Done

Whew!

Tomorrow, golf and barbeque and family.

Where's My Omni?

OK, so now that Macs will run Windows XP (and the horsemen of the Apocalypse start idly warming up their chargers), I have a question:

 

Where's my Omni-computer?

 

I now have the theoretical capacity to have a computer that sits on my desk that runs all three of the major operating systems: Windows, Unix, and Macintosh.

 

Someone please make it, put the hardware and software (so it all just works - turn it on and flip a toggle switch) together, and sell it to me.

Threatening Passenger Subdued By Others On Flight

The Fox headline was "Airline Passenger Subdued After Bomb Threat".

I assume that "subdued" is a polite way to say "got three kinds of **** kicked out of him".

Via Instapundit.

Reproductive Rights Now - As Long As I'm Comfortable With It

Jill at Feministe is conflicted about a reproductive right. Some of her commenters are less conflicted - "I'm opposed to surrogacy outright".

Apparently, for at least some of the gals, reproductive rights are an absolute only when they approve.

(H/T GNXP.)

Scott Crossfield, RIP

One of the brave men who pioneered the way into space, dead at 84, the way he wanted to go. Godspeed.