All-Time Cute Award

Cutest. Thing. Of. All. Time. I shit you not.

Here.

courtesy of Escribitionist, a most witty and erudite person.

Insert Severe Eye-Rolling Here

Pakistani Jeweler's photo distributed by US's FBI.

'Cept, the poor guy's never been to the US. He tried to get into Britain using falisified papers, the photo from which may have been used by the person really being sought, under a different name.

Pres. Bush's response?

"Kind of curious to know why he needs a false passport," Bush told reporters during a tour of his Crawford, Texas ranch Thursday. "We like things above board here in America."

"We need to follow up on forged passports and people trying to come into our country illegally," Bush said.

That's lovely, except this fellow was going to Britain, not the US, and courtesy of this whole Revolution thing a bunch of colonies staged around the late 1700's after feeling their rights as subjects of the Crown weren't being recognized, which resulted in their ceasing to be subjects of said Crown, the US is not part of Britain. (Yes, I heard your sigh of relief from here.)

Spiff!

Twilight Zone collections on DVD, in a decent bundle. At last, at last, at last...

Not Good At All

Various species are demonstrably responding to the current 1-degree-so-far (Fahrenheit) temperature change in Earth's climate.

would FOTR, by any other author, smell as sweet?

I think not. See for yourself. I'm exceptionally fond of the George Orwell version.

Kudos to BoLS, for the tip!

Appellete Blog

If you have a fondness for the law in the US, you might like to check out How Appealling, "The Web's first blog devoted to appellate litigation". Very interesting stuff, and a good sense of humour.

Trip Report

I like Philadelphia, and the suburb where I spent most of the past week. I like Janis' family, and I adore S's gun collection, or, I should say, the portion of it I saw. Wow.

I like The City, what I saw of it:

• Various train terminals (I love traveling by train, so this is a plus)


• City Hall (from the outside)


• Reading Terminal Market


• Devon Seafood Grill (Atlantic salmon, yum)


• The Curtis Bldg and the Maxfield Parrish/Tiffany "Dream Garden" mosaic inside it


• The Bishop White House (from the outside)


• The City Tavern (good food, good beer!)


• Independence Hall


• Magna Carta ca 1297, signed by King Edward I. I had no idea parts of the US Constitution were lifted, wording and all, from Magna Carta. Ideas, yes, complete phrases, I didn't know that. That's so darn cool.


• Statues of various dead white guys that'll be going in the under-construction Constitution Hall: Thomas Fitzsimmons, John Adams, Andrew Jackson, Andrew Hamilton. (Oh, here, cool: bios of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the US Constitution)


• The Liberty Bell


• Congress Hall (part of the Independence Hall 'complex', as is much of what I list here, or in its immediate environs)


• Strawbridge's, a department store


• Philadelphia Exchange (from the outside)


• Polish American Center (from the outside)


• The Center for Judaic Studies (from the outside), which prompted commentary primarily due to the name of the larger building it resides in: General Accident. Oh, wait! We were supposed to put the building over here! Oops.


• The Bourse (from the outside)

I bought a few maps. Got the City Tavern cookbook from Janis. Good food from everywhere. It was too cold for everyone I was with (skinny, uninsulated people all of them -- just remember they all get to laugh at me when it's hot) so a lot of the outdoors walking was at a cramp-inducing scurry (20 minutes of excruciating pain is not too high a price for pay, though...at least everything loosens up afterwards). Didn't get to gawk at the buildings as much as I would have liked as a result.

One thing I commented on at the time and will comment on here: having a physical context to provide a sense of immediacy and realness to the study of history makes such a big difference I must make the following observation: You can read books about history. And you can stand where the history happened and see it with your own eyes.

If I had a zillion dollars, I would spend a chunk of it sending junior high and high schoolers to Philadelphia for 2 weeks of hands-on history. Of, course, if I had a zillion dollars, I'd be doing quite a few other things as well.

Being such a young nation, the US really falters where history is concerned, in part, I think, because it is so hard to get that real feel from a textbook. If there are few historical centers associated with the birth of my nation, there is next to nothing associated with anyone else's country, be it birth, growing pain, or demise.

I come from the second-youngest state in this Union. (Oh, spiff, the Alaska State Constitution. Neat.) There's a whole lot of nothing as far as history is concerned where I come from. It was a frontier. The land was purchased in 1867, became a US territory in 1912, and a state in 1959. Pennsylvania was one of the founding colonies, its charter was signed in 1681 -- it predates the US itself. There's thousands of miles, a couple centuries and a wealth of experience between those two sentences. It amazes me we're in the same nation.

(oh, and since someone asked:

Eight stars of gold on a field of blue,
Alaska’s flag, may it mean to you,
The blue of the sea, the evening sky,
The mountain lakes and the flowers nearby,
The gold of the early sourdough’s dreams,
The precious gold of the hills and streams,
The brilliant stars in the northern sky,
The "Bear," the "Dipper," and shining high,
The great North Star with its steady light,
O’er land and sea a beacon bright,
Alaska’s flag to Alaskans dear,
The simple flag of a last frontier.

Now you know the Alaska state song.)

Islam

Reading portions of the Qu'ran...made an initial report in my book reviews blog.

If that link has aged out, try this instead.

In the City of Brotherly Love

Sidra went to Philadelphia with Janis this year for the winter holiday. And, for some reason, she's taken up talking about herself in the third person. Let's hope it's just a fad.

So far, so fun. More. Later.

Shame, shame, shame

I.

I wake up to NPR in the morning, which, as an aside, makes for some funny dreams sometimes. The morning I woke up hearing that Iranian immigrants -- and others from predominantly Muslim nations -- were being detained upon arrival at INS offices to undergo registration of some sorts (followup to the WTC/Pentagon attacks on 9/11/2001) here in southern California, made me wish I was still dreaming. Alas, no.

The official reason for their detainment? Suspected visa violations. Suspected.

Are terrorists going to step forward and register themselves? Name...place of residence....occupation? Terrorist. Would you spell that, please?

Probably not, kids.

France seems to have a much more realistic response: French Council for the Muslim Religion. Maybe it's time for the US to take a page from that book.

II.

deep resentful sigh

Y'know, in every religion or society there are stone cold wackos.

Assuming that everyone else in that group is an enemy because of the actions of certain extremists -- why, that's just stupid. If I did that, I'd have to believe that all Christians are evil.

Would't I?

More people, in my country, have been killed by Christian extremists of one kind or another than died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

• Salem, Massachusetts -- 20 dead for witchcraft
• Estimates of the pre-contact Native American population of the Americas, all completely unscientific, range from 15 to 60 million. The Native population of California alone went from 85,000 to 18,000 between 1852 and 1890. "Well, at least they died Christian". I'm so relieved.
• The trans-Atlantic slave trade -- at least, at least 6 million. Boy, my mind's at ease over the states of their souls, too. Phew.
• The American South -- By 1918, at least 3,224 people were murdered by lynching, possibly many more.
• Over 2000 anti-gay assaults were reported in the United States in the year 2000. That's just in one year. How many of them were by self-identified Christians?

That "thou shalt not kill" thing, that doesn't apply to you. Heavens, no. That love your neighbor as yourself thing -- oh, not you. Jesus didn't mean you.

Oh, but Sidra, these cases aren't just about religion. You could argue that some of the examples of larger scope were only condoned by Christians or their dogma. "Only". So, perhaps I'm stretching a bit to make my point. Or maybe not. How many perpetrators of these crimes considered themselves actively Christian? Even good and godly? God-fearin' Bible-thumpers? Extremists acting in the name of their god? How many of the perpetrators believed it was OK with God to do this? How many cited scripture to their victims? Thought it was acceptable to beat, threaten and intimidate?

Say...that sounds like inflicting terror doesn't it?

And of course, it's not just in my country, kids. Why, no! The Christian Bible touts over a million dead in its pages. Scotland killed in the hundreds, thousands and possibly tens of thousands, as witches. Depending on which argument you believe, Hitler was Christian.

So....we should round up all white male Christians over the age of 16 in America and detain them, one way or another.

'Cause they are obviously a dangerous terrorist threat. To me, to you, to everybody.

biblio:

• CNN:OKC
• Lynching in America
• Crime Library: Witch Trials
• Hall of Remembrance: Current Death Toll
• Hall of Remembrance::FAQ


• Selected Death Tolls for Wars, Massacres and Atrocities Before the 20th Century
• Adolf Hitler - Christian, Atheist, or Neither?
• Beyond the Anti-Gay Statistics

Out-Of-Body Cancer Therapy

My god, this is smart.

"For the first time, cancer has been treated by removing an organ from the body, giving it radiotherapy and then re-implanting it. The out-of-body operation allows doctors to administer high doses of radiation to widespread tumours without affecting other organs."

"By explanting the organ, we could give a high and uniform dose to all the liver, which is impossible to obtain inside the body without serious risk to the patient," says Tazio Pinelli, a physicist who coordinated the work together with liver surgeon Aris Zonta.

read more...

Thanks to Kim, for the tip!

Screeching Halt
Crossfire:

James Carville: "Why is it that the attorney general of the United States [John Ashcroft, who can't even win an election when running against dead people -- sidra] gives an interview to a magazine that hails the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and he says we don't do enough to promote the image of the Confederacy? The current president of the United States goes to South Carolina and refuses to take a stand on the symbol of the Confederate flag flying over the capital. You don't think black people get that?"

That crashing noise was me, going from 150kph to 0 in 3ms.

I'm sorry, they did what? what? What?? Do these people live on the same planet as me?!

It is laughable, laughable, to look someone in the eye and pretend that melanin has anything to do with, well, anything, save their likelihood of getting a sunburn. What is that kind of attitude, if not shiningly, magnificently, STUPID? And you want to promote the image of the socio-political entity that thought this was peachy-keen, not to mention the losing side of a civil war? Say again?

biblio:
Crossfire
TalkLeft::Ashcroft, Southern Partisan and Those Who Opposed Him
Attorney general nominee refuses to condemn white supremacist magazine 2001.
Ashcroft whistles Dixie

LaRouche Says: Confederate-Sympathizer Ashcroft Cannot Be Confirmed as U.S. Attorney General 2000

Cool!

On NPR's All Things Considered, The WASPs: Women Pilots of WWII.

"The half-hour documentary begins in the early 1940s when the Army Air Force faced a dilemma: It needed thousands of newly assembled airplanes delivered to military bases, but most of America's pilots were overseas fighting the war. To solve the problem, the government launched an experimental program to train new pilots - the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs. Drawn from more than 25 hours of interviews and archival tape, the documentary The WASPs presents an oral history of the pioneering program and pilots."

Also on All Things Considered:

"Author Richard Conniff set out to study wealthy people the way Jane Goodall studied chimpanzees. In his findings, he compares his subjects to members of the animal kingdom -- baboons, reptiles and other beasts. Tuesday [12/17/2002] on All Things Considered, Conniff discusses his book The Natural History of the Rich: A Field Guide. "

Both of these (quite different, yes) sound equally thrilling.

Book Reviews

Being a lazy bum, I'm migrating all of my book reviews from my older site to this one and basically just blogging them. Maybe this way I'll keep up doing them easier. I do *like* writing book reviews...it's just...the time.

Read some if you like.

The Thing About Nukes, Is

When you drop them, you're dropping them on yourself. There is nowhere on this planet you can go to escape the effect of a nuclear weapon.

Let that sink in for a minute.

You're dropping them on yourself.

When I was in school, we were introduced to the horrifying yet vaguely elegant concept of Mutually Assured Destruction. They nuke us, we nuke them, everybody dies. The underlying idea expressed, intentionally or not, was that both sides always toss nukes at each other. Both sides.

The thing is, you don't need "The Evil Empire" to nuke the US for the US to feel the effects of a nuclear weapon. All you need is for anyone, anywhere to lob 'the bomb', and everyone, everywhere gets to pay the price.

Contaminated water. Contaminated air. That means contaminated livestock, grain, and soil. Radiation sickness for those close enough -- and cancer for you. Fallout is no respecter of political boundaries.

Doesn't have to be mutual, but it's always assured.

So, let me offer up a dismayed raspberry at defense strategies that involve the phrase "nuke 'em".