Musings from Brian J. Noggle
Saturday, December 31, 2005
 
Call the Guinness People: AP Finds a New Record
U.S. Toll for Year in Iraq Nears '04 Mark:
    Bombings and shootings killed at least 20 people across Iraq on the final day of the year Saturday, while U.S. troops shivered in the cold during a performance by an "American Idol" singer as part of New Year's Eve celebrations. The U.S. military also reported the death of an American soldier from wounds, bringing its death toll in Iraq for 2005 near last year's record level.
I would say, "Give me a break," but Associated Press is not doing us any favors. Let's recap the timeline:

2003: The United States invades in late March and faces an enemy that largely surrenders. US faces 9 months of combat and occupancy.
2004: The first full year of occupation, and the year which the "record" was set.
2005: The second full year of occupation, and the year in which the record is almost matched.

There you have it; a record of long-standing. Well, we Americans are told that we're always hungering for the bigger and better things all the time, with baseball players chasing home run records every year and whatnot. I guess Associated Press is just trying to feed our interest in meeting or exceeding records every year, even if it has to manufacture those records out of whole cloth.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:44 PM   1 comments
 
Fertile, Not Ill (Part II)
In response to my thesis that bloggers are not a sickly lot, but are a fertile lot, Kelley of Suburban Blight announces.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:19 PM   0 comments
Friday, December 30, 2005
 
A Totally Sucky Movie Game No One Else Will Play
So when I was watching my traditional Christmas movies last week (Die Hard and Lethal Weapon), I noticed that both movies starred two different actors (or an actor and an actress) in small roles:

Actor Lethal Weapon Die Hard
Mary Ellen Trainor Dr. Stephanie Woods Gail Wallens
Al Leong Endo Uli


Tonight, we watched Coming to America, and we got a similar effect, and oddly enough it was Die Hard II:

Actor Coming to America Die Hard 2 Die Hard with a Vengeance
John Amos Cleo McDowell Major Grant
Vondie Curtis-Hall Basketball Game Vendor Miller
Samuel L. Jackson Hold-Up Man Zeus Carver


Okay, Samuel L. Jackson is bonus credit, but isn't it weird how the Die Hard series is the touchstone in this? Six degrees of Kevin Bacon? Insert Die Hard, and you immediately knock off two degrees.

I reckon it's because producers and directors prefer to work with known quantities for their projects (Joel Silver, for example, was behind Lethal Weapon and Die Hard), but it's still amusing and impressive to identify groups of actors who appear in several movies that are not sequels of each other.

Gentle reader, I invite you to do the same. Drop a couple of your own eureka moments in the comments, or post such on your Web site. Or, I guess, you can bother me with the list of the obvious when you see them. I mean, crikey, I know Clint Eastwood used a bunch of cowboy actors from his films in Every Which Way But Loose. Show some originality!


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:46 PM   0 comments
 
Book Reports:
The Empty Trap by John D. MacDonald (1957)
The Executioners by John D. MacDonald (1958)
I bought these books, paperbacks, from Hooked on Books for $2 and $3 respectively. So that's a testament to how expensive books can be at Hooked on Books and also a testament to how much I like John D. MacDonald.

The Empty Trap details a revenge-based story told partially in flashback. A hotel manager finds himself working for a syndicate-connected hotel owner and discovers that he has no way out of the business. Unfortunately, the woman telling him this is the hard-but-soft songbird wife of said owner. The hotel manager figures the only way out is to absquatulate (meaning 1) with some of the mobster's money and the mobster's wife; the mobster thinks the hotel manager and the wife should indeed absquatulate (meaning 2). The goons leave the now-former hotel manager for dead in the Mexican desert, but in leaving him only mostly dead, they set the stage for revenge.

The Executioners reminded me a lot of the movie Cape Fear (or at least the promos I'd seen of the movie), and a quick glance at Amazon.com reveals why. The book was the source for the movie. Ah. As you might already know with that hint, a man and his family suffer the unwanted attention of a released felon against whom the father testified. The police and other locals provide little help, so the family goes on the run and finally has to make a stand.

Both books have plots that have become stock over the last fifty years, but I read them to see how John D. MacDonald did them. He did them well and rapidly; these books weigh in at fewer than 170 pages each and respresent the best of the immediately post-pulp era.


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:46 PM   0 comments
 
Spoken Like a True Quality Assurance Person or Media-Friendly Economist
Researcher: iPod earbuds could damage hearing:
    The ever-popular earbuds used with many iPods and other MP3 players may be more stylish than the bigger and bulkier earmuff-type headphones, but they may also be more damaging to one's hearing, according to a Northwestern professor.

    "No one really knows for sure" the levels at which iPod users listen to music, but "what we do know is that young people like their music loud and seldom worry about any decline in hearing ability," Dean Garstecki, chairman of Northwestern's communication sciences and disorders department, told Reuters.
We don't know, but we know it's bad.

If only we had some metaphor by which we could grasp the danger so we could better clamor for government regulation, such as warning labels or a mandatory cap on the volume these things could produce.
    The earbuds commonly used by iPod listeners are placed directly into the ear and can boost the audio signal by as many as nine decibels -- comparable to the difference in sound intensity between an alarm clock and a lawn mower, Garstecki said.
Reuters and the researcher are partying like it's 1979, though, because we've heard this particular chorus since the introduction of the Walkman, which replaced the practice of carrying a portable tape deck with the speaker pressed against one's ear.

Or we would have heard the particular chorus, if we weren't deaf. Instead, we've had to read it on the Internet.


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:10 PM   0 comments
 
Wow, I Though He Was Dead Already
Mourn a moment with me for the recently departed poet: 'Tiger' creator Blake dead at 87

I was under the impression that WIlliam Blake had died a long time ago, but you know how colleges are these days, imparting the young with bad information. Let's eligooglate the man with his most famous work:
    The Tiger

    Tiger, tiger, burning bright
    In the forests of the night,
    What immortal hand or eye
    Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

    In what distant deeps or skies
    Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
    On what wings dare he aspire?
    What the hand dare seize the fire?

    And what shoulder and what art
    Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
    And, when thy heart began to beat,
    What dread hand and what dread feet?

    What the hammer? what the chain?
    In what furnace was thy brain?
    What the anvil? what dread grasp
    Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

    When the stars threw down their spears,
    And watered heaven with their tears,
    Did He smile His work to see?
    Did He who made the lamb make thee?

    Tiger, tiger, burning bright
    In the forests of the night,
    What immortal hand or eye
    Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
No, I didn't click through the headline on CNN.com. Why do you ask?


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:26 AM   2 comments
 
Introspection
Like Ravenwood and 40% of the people who take the survey, I have discovered:

The Executioner
Robert Morris...-The Executioner-...You are loyal
and brave(to a fault) but you are also a
psychotic killing-machine. Seek professional
help NOW! ;-)

Which Red Dawn Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla



- posted by Brian J. @ 9:16 AM   0 comments
 
Wherein Brian J. Speaks Ex Cathedra About NSA Cookies
As a QA dude who understands cookies, I officially call this a non-story: Despite federal ban, NSA Web site places 'cookies' on visitors' computers to track Web surfing:
    The National Security Agency's Internet site has been placing files on visitors' computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict federal rules banning most of them.
The government apparently bans permanent cookies, but allows session cookies. The NSA explains the brief presence of permanent cookies this way:
    Don Weber, an NSA spokesman, said in a statement Wednesday that the cookie use resulted from a recent software upgrade. Normally, the site uses temporary, permissible cookies that are automatically deleted when users close their Web browsers, he said, but the software in use shipped with persistent cookies already on.

    "After being tipped to the issue, we immediately disabled the cookies," he said.
Completely believeable, especially if the NSA site uses third party components which probably use cookies independently of the official site policy. Granted, a little QA probably would have caught this, but who can afford the time or money for testing and adherence to standards?

So I agree with Jeff Jarvis that anyone trying to make hay out of this is simply happy to continue yipping the letters NSA. Kevin Aylward notes that the DNC Web site uses cookies set to expire in 28 years (the expiration date of the cookie served as "evidence" of the insidious nature of the plot).


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:32 AM   0 comments
 
Waiting for the Christian Riots in Sweden
Anti-Christian Jeans Are a Trend in Sweden:
    Cheap Monday jeans are a hot commodity among young Swedes thanks to their trendy tight fit and low price, even if a few buyers are turned off by the logo: a skull with a cross turned upside down on its forehead.

    Logo designer Bjorn Atldax says he's not just trying for an antiestablishment vibe.

    "It is an active statement against Christianity," Atldax told The Associated Press. "I'm not a Satanist myself, but I have a great dislike for organized religion."
Active statements against religions whose adherents regularly stab those who make active statements against it or whose adherents routinely blow up innocent commuters remain strangely absent.

(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:48 AM   0 comments
Thursday, December 29, 2005
 
What's The Right To Private Property Worth?
In Clayton, it's:
    "We remain convinced that the project to keep Centene's headquarters in Clayton and generate 800 new jobs is in the best interests of the people of Clayton and the entire region," [Clayton Mayor Mike] Schoedel said.
You, citizen, might see successful businesses in attractive locations in downtown Clayton, but that's why you're not a visionary civic leader ready to strip that land from its owner and award it to a more powerful local corporation. So shut up, and suffer your betters' whims.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:21 AM   0 comments
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
 
Handy
Hey, Web developers, here are some handy cheat sheets for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and such: http://www.blogsip.com/node/45

(Link courtesy of Bucci.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:13 PM   0 comments
 
Pope Extends Right to Vote to Fetuses
Pope Benedict says:
    "The loving eyes of God look on the human being, considered full and complete at its beginning," Benedict said in his weekly address to the faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square.
Ergo, who are we to oppress those little complete human beings and deny them all the rights of full and complete human beings, including the right to vote and to hold drivers' licenses?


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:50 PM   2 comments
 
U.S. Trade Deficit Narrows
Well, that's what I take away from this story, with the following quote from Toronto mayor David Miller:
    "The U.S. is exporting its problem of violence to the streets of Toronto," he said.
Well, you export what's in demand, don't you?

(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:48 PM   0 comments
 
New Year's Resolution
Same thing as last year: 1280 x 1024.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:46 PM   1 comments
Monday, December 26, 2005
 
2005: The Year's Reading In Review
As some concede defeat in the Fifty Book Challenge, you, gentle reader, have suffered through no fewer than 96 book reviews this year (and one forthcoming). Here's my list from 2005*: * My personal annual goals list runs from December 25, 2004 through December 25, 2005; hence, the first items on the list have post dates in 2004. Also note that these reflect books I have finished in the time period and that I might have begun the books in college, I count them if I finish them.

- posted by Brian J. @ 3:57 PM   0 comments
 
Book Report: Ruled Britannia by Harry Turtledove (2002)
I bought this book from the discount rack on the Barnes and Noble in New York at the end of September, and I read it in October, but I have yet to post a report on it as we gave it to my mother-in-law as a gift for Christmas. But here it is, gentle reader: my first foray into Turtledove's alternate history, as best I can remember it.

The premise of the book: The Spanish Armada succeeded, and King Philip deposes Queen Elizabeth and locks her in the tower of London. A London-based playwright, William Shakespeare, becomes intangled in a plot to overthrow the Spanish and must compose a play designed to fire up the British at the same time as he's commissioned to write an elegaic play for Philip.

The book's language and research undoubtedly capture a lot of the time period; the English is modern, but the sentence construction tips its hat to the middle English of Shakespeare's day. Unfortunately, the book slips into a bit of repetition that made me impatient for it to get on with the story. Also, as I was not a student of the detailed history of the era, some of the subtleties are lost on me.

Still, it's an interesting question and perhaps one of Turtledove's lesser efforts--after all, the blogosphere raves about his other work. I won't totally pan it since I did give it as a gift (perhaps a passive-aggressive response for Deliver Us From Evil). However, if you're speed-reading in an effort to make the Fifty Book Challenge, this book presents a speed bump.


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:47 PM   0 comments
 
Pretentiousness Tip
Comme-ci, comme-ca does not rhyme with ob-la-di, ob-la-da.

If you say it that way, we'll all know you're a poser.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:37 PM   0 comments
Saturday, December 24, 2005
 
The Ghost of Christmas Postings Past: Top Five Christmas Movies
Originally posted Christmas Eve 2003:
  1. Die Hard
  2. Lethal Weapon
  3. Die Hard 2
  4. Gremlins
  5. Invasion USA

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:01 AM   0 comments
Friday, December 23, 2005
 
Spoken Like a True Trekker
Professor Bainbridge: The Patriot Act: What Would Kirk Do?

Oh, wait, he means some legal eagle named Russell Kirk. Oh, well.


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:06 PM   0 comments
 
Video Game Question
Could someone please send me the cheat code for Civilization IV that makes Leonard Nimoy sing "Proud Mary"?


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:42 AM   0 comments
Thursday, December 22, 2005
 
Googlebomb
NATHAN GEORGENSON e-mail me at stlbrianj@hotmail.com the net time you Google yourself.

Thank you, carry on.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:36 PM   0 comments
 
Book Report: Floodgate by Alistair MacLean (1983)
This book is the third MacLean novel I've read this year (see also Caravan to Vaccares, Partisans); ergo, you can assume that I like the author. Enough to pick up his books at the local library for a quarter when the local library needs to cycle out extra books for more space for Internet connections. I shouldn't complain, as I get something for my buck (cheap thrillers remembered from my youth) while the library gets something (room, pennies on the dollar for books) and other users get something (free Internet connections, although I'm not sure how many people in Casinoport and its satellite communities need free Internet connections).

But I digress. This novel, one of MacLean's later works, suffers from the excessive dialogishness one could ascribe to many of his works. A Dutch policeman must work against a terrorist organization that will bomb The Netherlands' dikes if its demands go unmet.

There you have it. The policeman must infiltrate the group, and that's it. No real plot twists, and perhaps a gaffe that one cannot explain. MacLean might have been radio telephoning it in as he transplanted his tales to the modern (1980s) era, but they still read quick and linear, drawing one along to the inevitable conclusion--and a short conclusion at that. So if you're looking for something similar to Clive Cussler, but clocking in at only 200 pages, I'd recommend any MacLean. But if you've a high school or small community library ca 1986 with numerous volumes of MacLean, perhaps you ought to start with Where Eagles Dare.

On further review of that last sentence, I realize this might be my first exposure to this particular novel (unlike the others I've read this year, which I reocgnized by their covers). In my youthful (1986-1990) reading of MacLean, I probably didn't encounter this novel, as it was so new. Weird reflection upon my library, and my reading: my library and my collection really begins at about 1990, when I went to college. All the Agatha Christie novels I borrowed from my high school library and all of the sundry novels I tore through at the rate of 1 per day in high school. If they're not on the shelves, I have no record of their reading; hence, I must read them again! For all intents and purposes, my literary life began but 16 years ago. I pity you, gentle reader, who suffers through these book reports and only but now know what you're in for.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:35 PM   0 comments
 
Answering a Question With a Question
Instapundit asks: I counter:
    ARE BLOGGERS a fertile lot?
Evidence:
  • The Patriette:
      It will be the first time we've seen each other since I found out that I was pregnant back in September!


  • VodkaPundit:
      One last thing. Assuming I can get online from the hospital, I'll be liveblogging the birth sometime in the next four-to-14 days. That is, assuming Melissa doesn't break all my fingers in the process.


  • My beautiful wife:
      I'm still alive and well. Though not always feeling 100% of late, but that's ok. There's a little Noggle due to arrive on June 30, 2006.


  • Sarah K.
      ok, so we’re on the Disney Magic, having a magical time. we’ve just arrived back in our room after dinner at Palo, the super-fancy restaurant on the ship....
    (give them time, they're just married....)
Sickly, but fertile? Or is the blogosphere just a large Tarot card dataset from which you can derive data to support any conclusion?


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:27 PM   0 comments
 
Eminent Domain By Any Other Name
The helpful city of St. Louis wants to relocate a corporate citizen:
    After a raging fire destroyed the Praxair Inc. plant on Chouteau Avenue in June, St. Louis officials pledged to help the firm find a new location.
Pledge to help, of course, is a synonym for not renewing permits and, through regulatory rigamarole, preventing the corporation from repairing and reopening the facility in its present location. Because of an industrial accident that scared people, but ultimately didn't hurt or kill anyone.

Fortunately, though, the city had some choice property on its hands that it could unload offer to the ungrateful company:
    On Wednesday, the company said thanks, but no thanks. It said the site proposed is contaminated by remnants of the Manhattan Project.

    "Praxair is not interested in building a new facility on a floodplain within a Superfund site where, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has indicated, there may be risks of radiological exposure," Praxair Distribution President Wayne Yakich said in a statement.
So, as a result of this helpful assistance from the city of St. Louis, it will drive a private business from its municipality along with the employment and tax revenue that come from private businesses employing people. As a result, the city of St. Louis will break ground on another entertainment destination with a half life of 18 months to provide, briefly, low-paying service jobs or the city of St. Louis will offer tax breaks, incentives, and other regulatory foolery to draw some other business which has not caught fire recently to the city.

All in a day's work for your city officials, who get a headline two-fer for driving out the evil, stand-alone corporations and bringing in the parasitic crony capitalist corporations.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:41 PM   0 comments
 
St. Louis Post-Dispatch Finds the Jews
Kudos to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and its investigative journalists for finding the Jews in the woodpile:
    One of the hottest musical offerings of this holiday season may be a catchy radio jingle for a New Jersey-based vehicle donation program:

    "1-877-KARS4KIDS. . . K-A-R-S, cars for kids . . . 1-877-KARS4KIDS. . . Donate your car today."

    The advertising spots, which have been airing on KMOX since before Thanksgiving, offer few details on the vehicle donation program. They tell listeners the program is a "recognized charity" and donors will receive a "maximum deduction" from the Internal Revenue Service for their vehicles. The ad also says donors will receive a "free vacation voucher" good for a three-day, two-night stay.

    What is left unsaid, and what also is conspicuously absent from the charity's Web site, is that almost all money raised through the Kars4Kids charity goes to a Lakewood, N. J.-based program set up to pay for private schooling and other educational programs. It aims to bring Jewish schoolchildren and adults closer to their heritage.
Curse those Hebes and their desire to teach Jewish children about Jewish culture!

How very investigatory of the Post-Dispatch to wade through a world full of Muslim charities collecting money to blow up innocents, Irish charities collecting money to fund the IRA, and Chinese Taoist charities collecting American defense secrets to sniff out the Zionists.

(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:16 PM   0 comments
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
 
True Internet History Fact
In 789, a band of raiders from a tribe in what would later become Holland crossed the English Channel and looked for easy prey and pillage. They eventually rounded the south of England and landed in Wales. For the next two years, they sacked and pillaged, and by 791 had completely stripped Wales of its vowels. Returning the their homeland, these proto-Dutch used the stolen vowels to garrishly adorn every name and many words in their native tongue.

It's true: you read it on the Internet.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:02 PM   0 comments
 
Wherein Brian Muses, Loses Daddy Cred
Reflection upon viewing a swirling mass of light and dark on the computer screen:
    A fetus? A nebula in galaxy MRS-252? No, wait, nebulas don't squirm like that, it must be a fetus.
Say aloud to the extremely proud mama-to-be at your own peril.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:44 PM   0 comments
Monday, December 19, 2005
 
Remember the Olden Christmas Tales
Like this one I posted last year:

Die Hard MDCXCII: Die Really, Really, REALLY Hard


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:17 PM   0 comments
 
Holiday Tip
Going down to the international port and trying to hang a shining star upon the highest bow is an excellent way to spend a cheery evening with local DHS officials.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:08 PM   0 comments
Sunday, December 18, 2005
 
Book Report: A Specter Is Haunting Texas by Fritz Leiber (1968)
I bought this book as part of the much-vaunted by-and-sell-on-eBay thing I had going on in the early part of the century. I didn't sell it, and I didn't mark it a quarter in my own family yard sale; instead, I've read it. As you know, I'm on a neo-classic science fiction kick these last couple of weeks (see also my report on Man Plus by Frederik Pohl).

The book has the double-effect thing I enjoy so much. As a piece written in the late 1960s, it captures something of its time and the state of the science fiction of the era; however, its setting is hundreds of years hence. After colonizing the near solar system, the world fell into atomic warfare with which the colonists wanted nothing to do; as a result they evolved for life in free-fall. Meanwhile, the east and west coasts of America endure massive nuclear strikes which leave the fascist Texans safe to emerge as the rules who conquer the Americas and continue the struggle against the Chinese and the Russkies.

Oddly enough, although someone from the twenty-first century could look upon this and see blatant politicization-as a blogger, it's my sacred duty--this book doesn't contain any; the setting is simply the setting. Also, the author doesn't have much to laud about the others in the book, whether the oppressed workers nor the Russian socialists. Instead, it's all part of the setting, and it is what it is.

A thespian from the Sack--a free-fall colony near the moon--comes to Texas (as the whole Western hemisphere, give or take a couple hippie republics, is called) to stake a claim on an old family mine. As he's unused to gravity, he wears an exoskeleton to function, and finds himself playing the role of the foretold leader of the revolution--or at least the figurehead as he plays the leader to earn his passage to his mining claim.

The voice fits the thespian from off the planet well, and the book is rather enjoyable. If you're not too caught up on the latest science fiction, and if you can find a copy, it's worth checking out.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:03 PM   1 comments
 
Carnival Entry
Given my recent posting schedule, I'll be a regular contributor to the new Carnival of Nothing.

Of course, if you're thinking it's a round-up of Sartre or Heidegger commentary, you'd be right, after a fashion.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:20 PM   1 comments
 
Memo from the Academy
It's supposed to be an op-ed about gender feminism run amok, but Lionel Tiger (seriously) proffers the following metaphor which reflects ill on its creator:
    Into this acrimonious climate has whispered a breath of spring air in winter--an extraordinary document that may have surprising impact because of its severe countercultural implications and its almost sweet innocence of purpose. In early November, the New Hampshire Commission on the Status of Men issued its first report (www.nh.gov/csm). The commission was proposed in a 1999 bill by state Rep. David Bickford. The House passed the bill, awarding a budget of $69,561. But months later, the state Senate stripped away funding. The commission was finally established in 2002. According to its report, the Senate's effort to defund it reflects "the inaction of good people who apparently have been led to believe that legislative activity designed to primarily benefit men is somehow not appropriate politically, financially, or otherwise."

    To the contrary, the commission's report frontally accepts that there are intrinsic differences in how men and women cope with health, education, responsibility and violence. It concludes that social policies must not begin by denying differences. If you're running a zoo, know the real nature of your guests. This applies nationally, not only in New Hampshire.
Social policymakers, probably the government and its intelligentsia friends, are running the zoo. That makes you, gentle citizen, an animal for them to cage in Byzantine programs and Gordian knots of regulation.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:02 PM   0 comments
Friday, December 16, 2005
 
Dammit, I Wanted to Be First
Curse the literary in the world who beat me to calling the new Heath Ledger and Jake G. movie Beast With Two Backs Mountain.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:40 PM   0 comments
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
 
Book Report: Mommy Knows Worst by James Lileks (2005)
I bought this book at the local Borders at full price because I enjoyed Interior Desecrations, and I cannot handle a day I don't start with a Bleat. Also, Lileks' is the life I want to live, to the point that I am shaving myself a high forehead to go totally all Single White Female. Perhaps I'm revealing too much and strengthening the case for a restraining order.

But anyway.

If you read it on the Internet, it must be true; ergo, I came into this book with a different set of expectations than a casual readers, and Lileks, like a jeweller with a loupe in, took his little hammer and shattered my crystalline acceptance about my upcoming next twenty years. There's so much upon which I had not already dwelt. Like teething. For crying out loud, that's going to last forever, and like the teeth will burst forth all snaggled from sealed gums....Although history has proven that most have survived this ordeal, I'm not looking forward to it.

So instead of reading this book with a knowing humor, with the shared knowledge of travails past, I have to look at it as a set of future tribulations, knowing that many of the quaint solutions we will apply will one day be the subject of Gnat's sequel to her father's work.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:38 PM   0 comments
Monday, December 12, 2005
 
Who's My Libertarian Candidate Next Time?
My Republican Senator, Jim Talent, thinks the Patriot Act requires fighting meth:
    A conference report by Senate and House negotiators to extend for four years provisions of the USA Patriot Act includes a comprehensive anti-methamphetamine package restricting the sale of products containing ingredients needed to cook the drug and providing new tools to police and prosecutors to combat dealers.

    Sens. Jim Talent, Missouri Republican, and Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, said the Combat Meth Act -- together with anti-meth measures championed in the House -- were included in the Reauthorization Conference Report filed Thursday.
Yea, verily, I shall not vote for Jim Talent in his re-election bid. And if that elevates the latest incarnation of Carnahanism (Russ, no doubt) to the Senate, who is to blame?

No doubt the Missouri Republicans would put me on that cross.

(Link seen on Instapundit. Click there, little brother; that poor Tennessee law professor needs the traffic.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:58 PM   0 comments
 
Old School or Damn Kidz?
Dennis Franz:

Old School: Norman Buntz
Damn Kid: Andy Sipowicz

How you answered the question certainly bespeaks your age, if nothing else.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:19 PM   0 comments
 
N00bs
Check out this guy. Trying to bask in my reflected fame, brah, is no way to read a book, as you'll strain your eyes.

That's right, it's my semi-literate brother starting a blog. He's got one insightful post with post-therapy recovered "memories", but never fear, ladies....he's got a full profile so you can see what a chunk of man he is.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:01 PM   0 comments
Sunday, December 11, 2005
 
Christmas Shopping Tip
Having trouble finding that gift for someone who has everything? Come on, you're insulting the Franklin Mint and the assorted collectible industries. As a matter of fact, they've created something just this very second that they guarantee that person does not already have.

But order now!


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:08 PM   0 comments
Saturday, December 10, 2005
 
Steinberg Bites Pit Bull Controversy
Neil Steinberg has the right perspective on the current municipal fad of banning individual breeds of dogs:
    After a safety study found that most railway accidents involve the last car of the train, railroads started getting rid of the caboose.

    An old joke. But a form of illogic still too often used. Eliminate the thing that seems to cause the problem. Consider the severe, burdensome restrictions -- basically a ban -- proposed in the City Council against pit bulls. Pit bulls often maul people because pit bulls are a popular, powerful dog that people train to be aggressive. Should they be banned, certain Chicagoans won't stop wanting mean dogs -- they will only shift to another breed that is also powerful and can be trained the same way. Lose the caboose, and the next car in line becomes the last car on the train. Rottweilers will be next, then bull terriers. Soon only pugs will be legal.
Steinberg is an optimist, of course; given how the mandatory non-smoking section in restaurants went to all restaurants and then all municipalities once the anti-smoking agitators got to legislating, why would anti-dog biting agitators leave pugs to kill and maim one person every millenia?


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:29 PM   0 comments
 
Book Report: Man Plus by Frederik Pohl (1976)
I bought this book as part of a sack of books for a buck on the last day of a library book fair in some rural southwestern Missouri county earlier this year. It's a Stated First Edition, woo hoo! Unfortunately, it's also a former library book, with all the stamps, scrawlings, and pockets, but a nice acetate cover anyway. Oddly enough, it's a former Granite City library book, which means this book has been to Springfield and back in its limited lifetime.

But I digress. This book describes the progress of the Man Plus program, a program designed to modify a man to survive on the surface of Mars and to get that man to Mars. It's a good old school science fiction piece, set in the near future for the time (the president in the book is the 42nd President, which we all know served in 1993-2001. It features an limited omniscient narrator who uses the third person the identify interested onservers who are not a part of the Man Plus project, but who direct it from behind the scenes. This compelling little mystery kept me turning the pages and offers some foreshadowing that keep the story moving.

Overall, a good book, the kind I ate up in my formative years to make me the lesser geek I am today.

And for those of you keeping score at home, this book marks my 94th read of the year. Unless I start hitting the coloring books, I won't make 100 this year, but my goal was 70, so I did well. Of course, I haven't met any of my other personal goals this year, and I likely won't read this many next year with the impending lifestyle change upcoming, but I'm rather pleased with my bookishness this year.


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:19 PM   0 comments
 
The Age of Innocence
Remember when security cameras were so novel and interesting that you would stop when you spotted one and smile, wave, or act goofy?

Yeah, me, too. That was a long time ago.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:39 PM   0 comments
 
Book Report: Firestarter by Stephen King (1980)
I bought this book a long, long time ago when I was doing the eBay thing. Undoubtedly, I bought it for a buck or less and hoped to turn that into a quick three or four dollars, minus eBay's cut of fifty cents plus twenty percent plus PayPal's quarter plus twenty percent plus whatever shipping cost over what I charged plus the cost of packaging compounded with the cost of gas to the post office and my time in preparing and shipping the item. In retrospect, perhaps my bottom line is better off that I didn't actually sell the book on eBay. Now that I've come to better appreciate Stephen King, my library is certainly better off.

As you probably already know, gentle reader, this book deals with a father and his daughter on the run from a clandestine government organization called the Shop. A participant in a small study while in college, Andy McGee (the father) found that he had special abilities beyond those of normal men. He married another participant, and together they begot the very special titular pyrokinetic daughter Charlene. The clandestine officials kill the mother and pursue the father and daughter so they can study them and perhaps use the child's power on the Russkies. Hell, you know how it works out, sorta; you remember the Drew Barrymore movie, back when it was startling that the little girl from E.T. could be dangerous--back before the little girl who played the little girl from E.T. became actually dangerous.

The book moves along quickly and captures not only early King narrative, but also some of the zeitgeist of the time. Unfortunately, the book's ending also reflects that zeitgeist, without any cathartic retribution or quiet return of the hero to normalcy; no, we get an indication that the child will tell her story to the one periodical that will stick it to the man, a periodical of some influence at the time, perhaps, but not any more. Of course, it wasn't 2005 in 1980, so I couldn't certainly expect Charlie McGee to start a blog, but come on.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:38 PM   0 comments
 
John Kerry Wants Iraqi Secret Police
Some people think John Kerry called American soldiers terrorists, but that's a stretch. He did, however, say that Iraqi troops should be terrorizing the Iraqi people. Here's one of the only transcriptions of the comments from last week's Face the Nation that I could find:
    There is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the -- of -- of -- of -- historical customs, religious customs, whether you like it or not. Iraqis should be doing that.
Let's replace the relative pronound that with its antecedent, and Kerry says:
    Iraqis should be oing into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women, breaking sort of the customs of the -- of -- of -- of -- historical customs, religious customs, whether you like it or not.
Perhaps in Kerry's world, Iraq was better off with Saddam, since under his rule, Iraqis were doing just that.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:18 AM   0 comments
Thursday, December 08, 2005
 
Casinoport, Missouri, Municipal Snow Removal Plan Executive Summary
The sun'll come out tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there'll be sun.

Just thinkin' about tomorrow clears away the cobwebs and the sorrow 'til there's none.

When we're stuck with a day that's gray and snowy, we just stick out our chin and grin and say, "Oh!"

The sun'll come out tomorrow, so ya gotta hang on 'til tomorrow come what may. Tomorrow! Tomorrow! We'll love ya tomorrow. You're always a day away.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:48 PM   0 comments
 
Undue Process
So is this Alito guy confirmed yet, or what?

No? How come criminals have the right to a speedy trial, but nominees to the freaking courts don't have the right to a speedy confirmation vote?

(Professor Bainbridge has more on the latest ginned-up controversy from Alito's past.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:21 PM   0 comments
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
 
Message from Interstate 70 Westbound, 5 pm.
You know what really pushes my buttons in traffic? The single thing that turns me from mild-mannered, but mildly-sadistic-QA-person into a seething hulk of inhuman anger?

A bumper sticker that says Stop Road Rage.

I mean, not only does that particular driver think that he's got an inside track into the psychology of the human condition, but also he thinks that you're a weak-minded soul upon whom his Jedi mind trick of a bumper sticker will have some influence after he's cut you off, zip zip, while on the phone so he could move one car ahead in the jam to the exit and prompting your extreme braking with a methamped trucker on the road for 9:58 and wanting to make Forrestel in the next two minutes before his rig shuts off on your tail, the Mack's lights so bright in your rearview mirror that you're tanning, now burning.

No, the Stop Road Rage bumper sticker works reverse psychology and actually boosts road rage. It's only slightly more annoying than the Prevent Child Abuse license plates profferred by the state of Missouri with the colorful handprints-in-green-paint-on-a-white-wall motif that indicates another damn mess made by the kid that you'll have to clean up that deserves a spanking or too, all the while with Missouri not offering an opposing viewpoint with the inspirational message of Corporal Punishment Builds Good Republicans and a colorful belt logo.

But, ah, we're off the brakes and moving now past the friendly Motorist Assist truck behind the Corolla on the jack. Never mind, life is good.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:33 PM   1 comments
Sunday, December 04, 2005
 
Steinberg, Condensed
For those of you who don't want to read Neil Steinberg's columns, allow me to summarize today's:
  1. Blackberry users are rude, and the law should outlaw rudeness.

    Of course, Some of us live outside the urban media world and its satellites in Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., and California and can't think of a single person who uses Blackberry rudely or otherwise. We can at the issue abstractly and recognize the dangers inherent in the patent process as made concrete through this case and realize that its precedent and example of government intrusion into industry and our lives far exceeds our own pet peeves.

  2. Thrivent for Lutherans is whacky in conception, but cool.

    As I (your host, Brian J.) am married to a card-carrying Lutheran, I hope it's also lucrative.

  3. Illegal immigrants aren't as bad as people who think illegal immigrants are bad.

    To quote the maestro:

      I wrote them back -- every one, until I got tired of it -- asking what other international laws are being broken that they are hot and excited about? Or is it just this one? See, to me, that is where the racism comes in. Nobody in the world writes TOO MANY MANGOS are ENTERING THIS COUNTRY in VIOLATION OF THE FRUIT IMPORT QUOTAS.


    It's not international law. It's United States law, which is more important. Also, we who oppose illegal immigration often think prevention of unchecked border crossing is more important than the legislation slathered on by protectionists who care about limiting the import of Canadian wood or the environmentalists who care to limit the import of shelled pets from Costa Rica. But some of us conservatarians are bothered by the hobgoblins of foolish, consistent prioritization.
If you, gentle reader, will read on, you'll see I've posted thrice this evening; why should I not deserve a column in a daily?

Crikey, how ungrateful can one man be? After all, Steinberg once called the author of MfBJN as a "genuis", or at least might have said something I posted was "genuis" once. Ungrateful, perhaps, but I prefer to consider myself the sole remaining paladin of Bob Greene, whom Steinberg routinely snarks in his columns.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:12 PM   1 comments
 
Teach Your Children Well
Boys hurt on bikes sue Wal-Mart, importer: Marin trial to focus on wheel clasp used on millions of cycles:
    He and eight other boys from around the nation are suing retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which sold the bikes, and a San Rafael company that imported them from China. A trial in the case begins Monday in a Marin County courtroom, and the youths are expected to testify about smashing their faces into pavement after the front wheels came loose. The lawsuit asserts that the so-called quick-release devices on the front wheels malfunctioned when the bikes hit bumps. The clasps, used on millions of bicycles, are designed to hold the front-wheel axle to the frame and allow the wheel to be easily removed for repairs or transport. The boys and their parents also claim that Wal-Mart conspired with Dynacraft BSC Inc. of San Rafael and Carl Warren & Co., which investigated complaints for the importer, to cover up the defects.
Nine kids fell off of their bikes, and it's the fault of the bikes....although millions have been sold and none have been recalled or otherwise cited officially for safety concerns.

When I was a child, we used to take our old Kent bikes down the side of a freeway embankment past some electrical transmission towers at high rates of speed. I'd like to think it was skill, but it was probably also a large amount of luck that kept me from serious injury. But assuming I had come to harm, in the early 1980s and even though we were poor, we wouldn't have sued for recompense. What a pity, as it offered such lucrative targets:
  • The Federal government, for building overpasses where children had access to the steep embankments.

  • Kent, for making bicycles without frictional inertial dampening systems that limited us to sissy speeds.

  • The power company, for not putting bumpers on the legs of its transmission towers.

  • The City of Milwaukee, for not replacing dirt and grass with a comfortable poly-foam of some sort.
The lead plantiff in this case says he cannot absorb information like he used to. Hell, I don't absorb information like I used to, either. But, on the bright side for this young man, he's certainly absorbing the litigious lotto lessons of his environment well enough.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:29 PM   0 comments
 
Donald Trump's Hot Live WebCam
Subservient Donald


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:16 AM   1 comments
Saturday, December 03, 2005
 
Collier Speaks Truth To Power
VodkaPundit2 uses a quote from Nolan Bushnell to explain why 18 million video game players represents a net loss over 20 million gamers over the last 20 years.

To his entry, I'll add this codicil: This will explain the growing popularity of games like Luxor, Zuma, Bejewelled, PopCap games, simple Yahoo! games, Uproar, and other sites moving into the simple games space. Granted, their games won't have the glitz of super graphics nor of Hollywoodization of video games, but in terms of profitability and marketshare, they will eat Take Two Studios' lunch.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:49 AM   0 comments
To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."