cut on the bias

A touching story

An ethicist acts stupid, and Colby Cosh is there to call him on it.

If you need a summary, it involves an Orthodox Jew, a feminist and competing philosophies. The ethicist makes the wrong choice when asked his view. Cosh slaps him around.

I should write for TV Guide.

Thanks, Page, I really needed to see that

So much for the pumpkin pie I was thinking of baking tonight.

Or pumpkin anything.

Maybe forever.

[That girl is so twisted. I like that in a person.]

This is classic

Just when you get tired of the Russians, they do something that makes you proud:

According to the Moskovski Komsomol newspaper, Russian security forces have decided to bury the terrorists from last's week's hostage siege wrapped in pig's skin. The aim is to deter potential Islamic terrorists from future attacks.

Shahidi (Jihad martyrs) believe by their nefarious acts that they ascend immediately to heaven. Using their beliefs against them, wrapping their corpses in 'unclean' pigskin prevents them from entering heaven for eternity.

I love it. I propose that we make it known everywhere that any jihadist who dies within our borders will be cremated (which I understand from zionblogger is also a no-no), their dust made into a paste with pig lard - by women - and the resulting goo bundled in rancid pig skins before being dumped overboard into the ocean somewhere unmarked.

I would personally donate a portion of my salary to help pay for that treatment.

[Link path tracks from Israpundit to Misha to Spoons.]

I am a sick woman

Dr. Weevil, in the course of smacking around a particularly smelly bit of bloggish slime, used the phrase "fellatio and other non-Euclidean sexual acts". As you can imagine, the comments and further conversation were rather...interesting, centering on the first of those two listed. A number of people had their little stories to tell, and it even devolved into a lesson on etymology (educational, those blogs). In the richness of potential in that cluster of subject matter, what did I do?

I read up on non-Euclidean geometry.

Yep. I got all tangled up in thinking about angles and why this would be Euclidean and that would be non-Euclidean... you get the picture. Or not. The main point is, I hate math.

I am a very sick woman.

(But I do understand now. And no, I won't explain.)

Patton piety

Remember Kentucky governor Paul Patton, who was caught with his pants down when his former lover took the affair public? Well, he's now saying that he isn't going to pay the cost of the security details that followed him on his trysts because it's not fair to future governors:

Gov. Paul Patton said he does not believe he should pay for the costs of his executive security detail when he secretly met with his former mistress, Tina Conner.

Patton said paying such costs would require future governors to reimburse the state for every private, personal trip.

"And then it would be very difficult for the state police to provide security for teh governor," Patton said during an impromptu news conference Wednesday. "So I don't want to start any precedent that would improperly limit the activities of the governor in the future."

Um, thanks, Paul. Certainly we wouldn't want to set a precedent that a governor who plays around on his wife should in any way suffer consequences for that behavior. Why, future governors might want to cut illegal deals, cavort with party operatives on state time and generally cut a swath through the darker side of life, and we wouldn't want them to feel constrained by the knowledge that if they're caught they're going to be personally responsible financially for the commonwealth having to pay for their protection during their bad behavior, now, do we? And of course in the future, personal trips like, say, going on a family vacation in the state and taking security would likely be confused with secret trysts with your lover in a (not so cheap) hotel.

I do agree, though, that not taking responsibility for your actions and not being willing to pay the just consequences is business as usual for politicians like you and your philosophical mentor, Bill Clinton.

Googlisms

Well, since all the kids are doing it, I should too. I thought about it when the original thing came along - people were googling their names, and had to clean up the list themselves. This gizmo does the hard work for you:

susanna cornett is talking about when she asks susanna cornett is taking a week off susanna cornett is a former journalist susanna cornett is "keeping an eye on the spins and weirdness of media susanna cornett is no sissy susanna cornett is right susanna cornett is quite sensible on this subject susanna cornett is taking a vacation susanna cornett is breathing fire about the georgia crematorium operator crying racist susanna cornett is my muse this has been true since she was kind enough to give me this link susanna cornett is running updates on the sniper case at cut on the bias susanna cornett is back susanna cornett is a one susanna cornett is making changes in her weblog organization and focus susanna cornett is a low

Well. The difficulty with my name is that it's not particularly common, especially both together. So all of these likely are from actual links to me somewhere, so there's nothing interesting like a girls track team (well, I'd take the boys, preferably college age. mmmm...), or being a military pilot, or even getting viagra. Some of those I like a lot, though - like, susanna cornett is right. Well, yes. And you needed someone to tell you that? Or susanna cornett is quite sensible on this subject. I think that goes without saying on pretty much any subject, but if you want to say it - repeatedly - I won't object. I like being a muse, and I'm certainly no sissy. But I have to question the "susanna cornett is a one". One WHAT?! If we're talking scales here, I'm a one if it's descending in value, but if it's ascending (so 10 is the best), then I'm NOT a one. We'll assume this scale puts one on top.

And what's "a low"? A low what? I'll have to ponder that a bit. To get a little more action, I googled just my first name. The list was way too long to use all of it here, so I just picked out my favorites:

susanna is cute susanna is a heroine susanna is a heroine susanna is a lovely weaving together of threads from the ancestral past to tell a story of the present and future susanna is belligerent susanna is too intelligent to fool herself for long susanna is clearly misunderstood by her peers as well as the authority figures in her life susanna is stuck for the long haul susanna is trying on new hat susanna is crazybrave for having written this book susanna is accosted by two old lechers; they falsely accuse her publicly of seduction; daniel proves susanna's innocence susanna is just a mixed up young woman who simply is succumbing to the pressure of sorting out susanna is contained within this page susanna is trying on a hat before the mirror susanna is not there susanna is in there susanna is indeed having a tryst with the count and goes to cry on his newfound mother's shoulder susanna is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder by her psychiatrist (maybe that had something to do with susanna being not there but in there, at the same time, you think?)

And the very best:

susanna is more depressed and unmotivated than truly mentally ill

Startling how accurate this nonsense can be.

Not at the NY TIMES??

Apparently a NY Times photographer posed a photograph of a young boy with a gun that later ran in the paper to illustrate a story on the al Qaeda terrorist cell in Lackawanna, NY. While posing photos is accepted, when it's done the newspaper will typically label it as "photo illustration", as opposed to "news photo" - the latter implying that it was a "found moment", plucked by the camera from the unmanipulated flow of life. It was caught because other photographers watched it happen, complaining to their newspapers and, eventually, to the Columbia Journalism Review. The NY Times had this to say:

On October 25, the Times published an Editor’s Note that says [photographer]Keating acknowledged “that the boy’s gesture had not been spontaneous,” and that the paper “regrets this violation of its policy on journalistic integrity.”

Seems to me they could have said "the boy's gesture was posed" or "our photographer lied to our readers deliberately by passing off a photo illustration as a news photo", but maybe that was too direct, and none of their famed sources were willing to substantiate that wording, even as deep background. Of course the photographer was incensed:

Keating, for his part, says the accusations are “totally false,” but declined to elaborate or address the Editor’s Note. Times editors, when asked about Keating’s denial, said only that “The Editor’s Note speaks for the paper.”

Sounds like Keating is channeling Bellesiles. One wonders just how prevalent this behavior is there, what the "climate" of honesty is at the Times. This was fascinating too:

The incident gets at an ongoing debate in photojournalism. Kenny Irby, who teaches photo ethics at the Poynter Institute, says that there has been a broadening of what is considered legitimate in photojournalism. The key, he says, is the photographer’s intent, which should be made clear to the reader. “What is the purpose of the photo?” he asks. If it is to illustrate, he says, then there is more creative license. If the purpose is to report, he says, then the photo must accurately and honestly represent the experience as it was revealed to the photographer. The Times apparently concluded that in this case that standard wasn’t met.

I don't know what he's referring to as "broadening" in what is legit. When I was working for a newspaper, doing both photo illustrations and news photos, as well as designing pages (thus responsible for determining how to characterize the photos), it was clearcut: If the photo was a "found moment", then it was news. If the photographer was involved at all in making it happen, then it was a photo illustration. The wiggle room there, as far as I knew, was limited to saying "do that again" to someone flinging a frisbee, as long as (s)he was already playing frisbee. It was fudging a little to ask someone who had been playing frisbee to get up and play again, so I could photograph it. If I went over and got someone not even in the space I wanted to photograph, told them how to present themselves for the camera, then snapped the photo - it was an illustration.

I don't get what's so hard about that. Maybe the fact that a professor teaching photo ethics does seem to have a little difficulty with it, and a photographer on the street has a lot of trouble with it, speaks to why the public continues to be more and more cynical about the media.

Especially the New York Times.

[Link via Romenesko]

Starting a conspiracy theory

Is it possible that the Democrats had Wellstone assassinated because it looked like he might lose, and they couldn't have another New Jersey?

[No, of course I don't believe it. But it really has more validity, if your mind is going to go on that kind of path, than the accusation that Bush had him assassinated. Furthermore, if they did, then the perfect thing to do would be to follow it up with an emotional political rally at the funeral, where all the Big Guns showed up in tearful defiance of The Republican Machine, and noxious little conspiracy theorists chatting up a "Bush assassinated him!" agenda online, led by Chief Noxious Ted Rall. Then any genuine efforts to learn the truth on the part of anyone would be shouted down by the "justifiably outraged" Democrats as Republican heartless politicizing of a tragedy....]

[Why is this suddenly sounding plausible to me?]

[maybe those weren't portabello mushrooms i had for lunch??]

UPDATE: Hmmm. Apparently I'm psychic. I hadn't read this when I wrote my own theory, but it sounds eerily similar.

Thanks, Kevin, for the link.

Go get'em!

This was just too good to append as an update to either of my two earlier posts on the same subjects. Cold Fury Mike has turned up the heat to boiling hot, burning down the house around the Democrats' funeral-political rally combo and Ted Rall's noxious accusations of assassination against the Bushies.

I bet he doesn't wear pearls!

I really really do try

Well, I'm at it again. Notice below where I trounce Pad for his anti-police/military comments? Well, because it's courteous to do so, I sent him an email heads-up that he'd been trounced. He sent one back saying, essentially, "Fair enough." So then I sent him another email saying, I hated to do it but, you know, sometimes a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. And he responded, logically, why the guilt? (Undertone: get over yourself, girl!)

That's actually a very good question: Why the guilt? Here is my response to him:

Well, I have this genetic defect called a "nice" gene. It's a flaw, I know, but I really do struggle with stomping people even when they richly deserve it. I have to disconnect my "nice" gene, which is hard. For example, when I talk about a former friend of mine who harassed me and my family for literally five years, I still have to say, somewhere in there, that "she has a lot of good qualities". If you read my writing consistently, you'll notice (if you care to) that somewhere in most critical pieces, I'll have a "she has a lot of good qualities" type of statement, like, "there are a lot of good journalists" in a post trouncing the media.

So. You have a lot of good qualities :).
s.

This "nice" gene thing is a curse, I tell you, a curse! It's a big source of amusement to friends, most especially my friend Melody who has placed a moratorium on my ever saying again, "(s)he has some really good qualities, though!". Sigh. I talked to another blogger yesterday who is my rant-idol, and he encouraged me to get in touch with my inner, um, witch. So I did, and life is good, look for more of the same in the future. But if you're the object of it, don't be surprised if you receive an email from me saying, "I'm sure you have some other really good qualities..."

UPDATE: Yes, another one of those updates before it's even posted the first time. Pad has assured me in email that my "nice" gene was switched off completely in the below rant. There's still hope.

And he does have some good qualities...

It actually is kinda lame of me. Seriously. I want to have it both ways - spray the world with my Uzi and come out with everyone saying, but other than her tendency to strafe the room she's a ray of sunshine! Clearly this is a personal flaw. I really need to buy that handgun and practice scowling in the mirror, snarling, "Get out of my face, scum!"; you know, toughen up a little.

But what will I do with my little pearl necklace?

UPDATE: Pad asks a reasonable question. The answer, Pad, is "no". You obviously don't get the whole southern woman thing. But I promise in the future not to be so angst ridden when I rant. I'll just whip out the brass knuckles, do what has to be done and go toss back a cold one (Pepsi, in my case) when I'm done, taking care to shake the blood off my hands first.

Ted Rall is a lame-brained idiot

The latest idiocy from Ted Rall isn't a cartoon, although it's cartoonish in its mean-spirited, hallucinatory ranting. He apparently actually thinks that there is a possibility the Republicans had Paul Wellstone assassinated:

Talk of foul play began hours after Senator Paul Wellstone's plane went down over northeastern Minnesota on Oct. 25, killing him, his wife and his daughter, along with three staffers and two pilots. "Please tell me I'm wrong to be thinking what I'm thinking," a self-described "liberal Democrat" from St. Paul e-mailed me that evening. "I want to be wrong, but I wouldn't put it past the Republicans--THESE Republicans--to sabotage Wellstone's plane." Internet discussion groups and e-mail in-boxes quickly echoed her sentiment.

People expressed similar fears after Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan ... died in plane crashes--the latter weeks before facing an election challenge from future Bush Attorney General John Ashcroft ... but the whispers of assassination following the Wellstone tragedy are more widespread and gaining mainstream currency far beyond the usual conspiracy nuts.

Ted, you need to lay off those mushrooms, although I realize they enhance what few brain cells you can usually muster. They just make your idiocy flare up into neon hysteria. If you want to do some real investigations, check into all those people who died around the Clinton administration. That'd keep you busy a while.

[Link via The World Wide Rant]

UPDATE: Well, I was late to the party, but at least I'm in august company. Both Andrew Sullivan and Rand Simberg have thoroughly destroyed these idiot conspiracy theorists. Why is Ted Rall still employed?

[Links via Instapundit]

UPDATE: Steve Quick, who knows about planes and has flown ones like the one Wellstone was in, says it is unlikely the crash was weather-related. He says it was probably "CFIT - controlled flight into terrain". From his post, sounds somewhat similar to what happened to JFK Jr. But what do I know. (That's right, thank you - nothing.)

What he said

I was on the page with James Lileks right after Paul Wellstone's death - lay off the crowing and dancing on the grave for at least a couple days. Show a little respect - he's dead. We can discuss how his influence was harmful a little later. Well, many of us did lay off, which apparently served only to give the Democrats more room to dance on the grave themselves. Sleezy. And Stephen Green says everything I think about it, only better than I could.

I have no problem with turning a memorial service or funeral into a party if it's a celebration of the person's life, and everyone is there for that purpose. While I want people to miss me when I'm gone, I want to be remembered with humor, with music and with people reconnecting with what family and friends mean. This business of making it a political rally just reeks of the rankest cynicism and emotional exploitation. I'll shut up now. Stephen really does do it better.

UPDATE: Well, here's more on the Wellstone "memorial":

The event that began as a poignant farewell to the late Senator Paul Wellstone Tuesday evening culminated in a furious series of partisan speeches.

Wellstone's family and friends exhorted supporters to help his ballot replacement to victory next week.

The first eulogies were tender remembrances for the seven people killed along with Wellstone in a northern Minnesota plane crash Friday as were the initial remarks for Wellstone.

The late senator had been locked in a difficult re-election battle with Republican Norm Coleman.

Iowa Senator Tom Harkin called Wellstone "the soul of the Senate."

But by the end of his remarks, Harkin had shed his jacket and was imploring the crowd of about 15,000 to work on Wellstone's behalf.

Wellstone's friend and former student Rick Kahn whipped up the crowd before Harkin took the stage by adopting the late senator's fiery speaking style.

He chopped the air with his hands, as Wellstone often did, and exhorted the crowd to keep Wellstone's dream alive.

Kahn's comments, which came more than an hour into the planned two-hour tribute shocked media outlets across the state which were carrying the event live. Viewers and listeners were outraged. By 10:15 p.m., KARE TV's operator had logged more than 100 calls. It is unknown how many call went to the station's overflow voicemail system...

The remembrances turned political when the first of four speakers to talk about Wellstone, campaign treasurer Rick Kahn, took the podium.

"We are going to win this election for Paul Wellstone."

Several times throughout his speech, Kahn begged the Democratic crowd to vote on November fifth to keep Wellstone's legacy alive.

Kahn even called on Republican senators in attendance to stand up in the election's final days and to urge others to keep Wellstone's dreams going forward.

Kahn told the crowd: "We can redeem the promise of his life if you win this election for Paul Wellstone."

Kahn's speech has raised anger in Democrats and Republicans alike.

One Republican official said Kahn's speech will benefit the GOP. He said call were flooding in to party headquarters, with many callers offering to donate money.

The Sons Speak
The Wellstone's two surviving sons also spoke. David Wellstone said his parents "changed untold lives forever."

...Mark ended his speech by leading the crowd in a chant — we will win, we will win — in a style that was hauntingly like his father's.

Harkin Continues
After brief, mostly sentimental, speeches by Wellstone's two sons — Iowa Senator Tom Harkin continued the politicking with a fiery speech.

Nice. If you want, there's links to the actual speeches as well.

I'm a hobbit

In my morning cruise through Brent's The Ville, I noticed he had found a site which generates prison names (which Dodd says in Brent's comments that he blogged about 18 months ago, so this is not cutting edge here). Anyway, when I put in my name, the response was something anatomically impossible. Well, improbable, anyway, and impossible without major surgery. So I tracked down one a little more my style. I am:

Ruby Cotton of Overhill

Works for me. I actually have some ruby cotton in my quilt stash. Cool.

It's 40 degrees F outside...

It snowed last night, not much north of here.

I saw a car on my drive in to work that had about half an inch of sleet on its trunk.

Now, why is it I don't have socks on?

Teen shot in Jersey City high school

One teen shot another teen - he says accidentally - at Lincoln High School in Jersey City yesterday. Could have been an accident, but what's he doing with a gun at school? That's a tough section of town, although there's a lot of good people in the neighborhood, and some really gorgeous old homes. I've worked in that section on a special project for over two years, driving by Lincoln all the time. The high schools here have open lunches, which is to say they don't have a cafeteria, but rather disgorge all the students at lunchtime to go get their own somewhere. It's a policing nightmare, to have hundreds of high school kids congregrating in a pretty narrow space in front of the school (they constantly block the street) every single day. Drug problems are huge there - I worked with the cops to get a prostitute nest in an abandoned house cleared out, just right around the corner; the floor of their room was covered with crack vials and melted wax. A few blocks from there, a man was killed in a drive-by shooting a couple of years ago. It's not the worst part of the city, but it's bad enough. So it's not surprising the kid had a gun in school, or that he shot someone. Even by accident.

Carnival of the Vanities

The latest edition of Carnival of the Vanities is up for your reading pleasure. Bigwig, a fine blogger in his own right, has outdone himself this week by giving a taste of each linked post so you can at least know as much as if you read the back of a book at the bookstore before buying.

Take a moment to thank and admire Bigwig - he took a good idea, he developed it, and now he's consistently following through and doing it extremely well. Thanks, Bigwig - sometime when I'm not scattered like pickup sticks in the hands of a three-year-old, I'll remember to suggest one of my posts.

Did I hear that right?

Just after I turned on the radio this morning, before both my eyes were completely open or my brain fully engaged (don't even go there), I think I heard this on the radio:

Some councilmember in the NYC area is wanting to pass legislation requiring that people who purchase kegs must register with their name and address before being allowed to take it home. Or wherever.

I'll keep an eye out for this. I looked for it in the NY Post, the Daily News and the NY Times; all I found was this article on the prevalence of teenage drinking in the suburbs. It doesn't mention the registration idea, but does mention that locals are getting together to try to alleviate the problem.

Of course no one makes a huge point of the fact that if the parents were actually raising their kids instead of working 80 hour weeks or weren't more concerned about themselves instead of their kids, maybe this wouldn't be such a problem. I can't pretend to offer a solution, because I don't drink and I'm really not around it all that much. I wouldn't be bothered if it wasn't around anymore (if it wasn't around just because nobody wanted it). I am bothered by the continued encroachment on individual rights - an encroachment that is increasingly sending the message that individuals cannot and should not take responsibility to live their lives in a reasonable, at least marginally disciplined way, but rather should submit to a nanny state.

People, there's lots of folks who do drink responsibly. Why don't a few of you get out there and smack around these lamers instead of letting another piece of individual freedom get sucked beneath the waves of paternalism? Get some ideas that work - like, maybe, arresting a parent who's underage kid winds up wasted and passed out on somebody's front lawn.

Military and police - arrogant and brutal?

I’ve seen comments from Pad a few times, here and there, and he seemed a nice enough guy, so tonight I meandered on over to his blog to check it out. The sports stuff was marginally interesting, the anti-gun stuff nothing particularly new, so I was going to just meander away and leave him alone to his naiveté and misunderstandings. Then I got to this:

…most people go into law enforcement and military life for the power trip. And the chiefs are the biggest swinging dicks of all.

What’s the problem, Pad - are you jealous because yours won’t swing?

I get pretty tired of the gratuitous slams at cops and the military; the part about cops was especially annoying because just below that post, Pad had this to say:

…the cops walk a beat that I would never walk myself. I trust them to do this work for me so that I may be about my own business. I am willing to pay a goodly amount of tax for that, and they are willing not to have to do their own retirement plan funding, or their own butchering, or their own millinery. It's a fair trade…

Not surprisingly, he’s more than content to use their services, admitting he would never do their job, while raining contempt on their heads. I’ve been around a lot of cops for more than 20 years, and yes, there’s quite a few who are jerks, lazy slobs, idiots or just plain criminals, but that’s not true of most of them. The average cop shovels a lot of shit so you can go to work every day, find your car still there when you leave, have a reasonable expectation that your wife and children won’t be butchered on the kitchen floor when you get home, and generally create an environment where society can have the stability it needs to function well – and in the United States, we function very well.

The context of Pad’s comment was the release of the prisoners from Gitmo, or, rather:

…the incompetence and arrogant brutality of the American military forces doing the capturing [of those in Gitmo]

Whoa, Mr. Swingless, would that be the military that’s on some power trip over in another country, away from their families, some of them dying, a lot of them sick of dust and heat and military food, willing to do it, volunteering for that duty so that you, Pad, have the freedom and security to bring your fiancee cinnamon rolls for her 30th birthday? They’re swingin’ wide, there, Pad, aren’t they?

Did you stop for, oh, maybe one entsy fraction of a millisecond to ponder whether they may have had a reason to take the old men? It seems a bit odd to me too, but then I have more faith in the military than to think they’re hauling off grandpas just because they enjoy inflicting humiliation. I’m thinking maybe there were some old men who preached death and destruction in their places of ‘worship’, some old men who incited younger ones to kill. Do we leave them in place because they’re, well, old, so they can become the geriatric equivalent of drug runners using kids as mules because the law leaves them alone? And isn’t it possible, that in the prosecution of a war, a few innocent people get caught up in the net?

It’s people like you, Pad, who would stay the hand that saves because sometimes saving most requires losing some. If we can’t all win, then we should naturally all lose. But somehow that losing doesn’t include you, Ellen and the cinnamon rolls. You’re happy to give up your hard-earned tax dollars to pay those lug brained military and police neanderthals slavering over their firearms, yearning to wreak havoc, just so long as they don’t intrude on your pristine love-everyone philosophy. I heard someone else like you today on the radio, and I nearly came through the dashboard at him. The talk show host got him to admit that Saddam getting nukes would be a bad thing because he would either use them for blackmail or discharge them, but the guy couldn’t stop there. The host said, if Saddam has them, won’t he use them? And the guy said, you can say that about any country.

You can say that about any country. Obviously he was indicating that nukes in the hands of the US are as likely to be used for evil as those in the hands of Saddam. And you’re saying our military, because they’re macho peabrains, are going to harm people for the joy of it. I say, both of you should place yourself somewhere that the US does not offer you any protections, and see how long the cinnamon rolls last.

You prefaced your cop and military comment with this:

It's like I used to say, then stopped saying for about a month, then started saying again when it was safe to do so…

Pad, it’s still not safe, not in my world. Try again when you can make reasoned and valid criticisms without spraying noxious hatefulness over the people who make your lifestyle possible.

UPDATE: Dodd hits the high points of gun ownership, although not in response to Pad's comments. But it does the job, nonetheless. And I must say this is one of the hottest things I've seen in a while. Do I get to play with that too when I visit Kentucky, Dodd?

UPDATE: Pad responds. And Pad - didn't you know, tomorrow never comes?

A moment of beauty

The Timekeeper, proprietor of Horologium blog, has been complaining about the weather in Germany, where he's currently stationed with the US military. However, when he sends me photos like this I can't work up much distress for him:

He took this the last week of September, just north of the Austrian border, at
Schloss Neuschwanstein. Nothing I can say other than, it almost hurts to look at it. Great job, TT. And thanks for letting me post it.

UPDATE: How does the resolution on this photo look to you all? It's huge, I cut it down to post originally and then it was still too big, made it smaller again and now on my computer it has some weirdness going across the horizon. Is that just my computer, or is the resolution screwy for you too? It's a poster-worthy photo, I hate to have it look yucky here. But then if no one can load it because it's huge, that's a problem too...

The trials and tribulations of a webmaster. Sigh.

Dick Morris is a creepy jerk

I watched some of Hannity & Colmes last night, and had to change the channel after about five minutes of an interview with political mouth Dick Morris. He is such total slime and reliance on him by the conservatives is bizarre to me. But last night he outdid himself in the slime department, not because of his political views, but because of how he was discussing the Minnesota Senate race. As we all know, Walter Mondale is being hauled out of mothballs to run for Wellstone's seat. And Morris kept saying "they're exhuming dead bodies over there!" and "it's like necrophilia!". Disgusting enough, but with the reason for Mondale's candidacy being the death of Wellstone, it was just beyond awful. I couldn't watch it after the third or fourth such reference. Even Hannity remonstrated with him about the language, and Morris just plowed on.

I don't get why anyone puts up with him.

At least they're honest

How's these apples:

We wish we felt better about the race for Lexington mayor, we really do...

What we are seeing is a slugfest between two people whom we pointedly did not endorse in the May primary -- in fact, they were our bottom two choices in a field of four -- for reasons that have not changed since then...

So, we take the highly unusual step of not extending the Herald-Leader endorsement to either candidate.

We do this to say that Lexington deserves better candidates and better campaigns.

Well, Lexington deserves a better newspaper, but they're not getting that either. Actually, I've worked for both of the two candidates running, and they do both have some serious weaknesses as candidates. But so did the other two who fell out in the primary, one of whom - a very liberal candidate - the H-L endorsed and was crushed to see fail. The races for council and mayor in Lexington are supposedly non-partisan (wink-wink-nudge-nudge), so the H-L slams the more conservative candidate - Scott Crosbie - for who gives him money:

He accepted an unprecedented amount of Republican Party money in a non-partisan race, paying for a lot of negative ads and misleading polls.

It really dings them that a candidate the Democrats want to support is not running so the Democratic machine can't dump its own money in; it means the H-L doesn't have a clear choice for endorsement. Teresa Isaac is one of the more personable women I've met, always very warm and friendly, but much of the H-L's criticisms about her are valid. And quite frankly, a number of the criticisms of Crosbie are as well. So what's my problem? I just find the sniffing condescension of the newspaper to be laughable, given their consistent and intense political agenda and game-playing. You can bet that they've already discussed with "community leaders" a game plan for the next election in four years, to make sure a candidate more palatable to them "has a shot" (i.e. wins).

So do they make any recommendation at all? Sure:

...since there is no write-in candidate, one of these two will be our next mayor. So, the issue facing voters is which one will do the least damage in the areas of greatest importance to the future of the community.

Naturally they choose Isaac, who is liberal enough to qualify as a leftist. I like Teresa, but she's wayyyy over the liberal line. It's clear that, to the H-L, a leftist is least-harm when faced with a candidate who openly prays and makes a deal of Christian values (whether or not "faked" as they imply). Which makes their own closing line quite curious:

We urge you to vote your conscience for the betterment of Lexington and pray that whoever wins turns out to be a better leader than our worst fears.

Do let's pray - that Lexington eventually gets a newspaper worth a dime. Or 50 cents, at current market rate.

Who'd a thought it

Three prisoners have been released from Gitmo and shipped back to the Middle East. And they're saying the imprisonment was not a nightmarish scene of humiliation, exposure to the elements and cruel captors. No, it was imprisonment with questioning and overall good treatment. How disappointing!

Well, at least to those who want the treatment to be awful, so they have some justification to stomp on the US with both feet. We'll see how this is spun in the next few days.

UPDATE: What a difference a perspective makes. Here are the leads from CNN – hardly a conservative shill of the White House – and from the NY Times on the Gitmo detainee release:

CNN:

Three Afghans released after months of captivity at a U.S. military base in Cuba said Tuesday they were chained up during frequent interrogations but were treated well overall by their American captors.

Now, the NY Times:

Three members of the first group of prisoners to be freed from indefinite, secret detention at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba complained tonight that prisoners are locked for days at a time in sweltering 8-by-8-foot cells and are denied contact with their families.

Curious, isn’t it?

The NY Times story pounds a familiar drum, with the interviews with the released prisoners as merely a context:

In an interview tonight, the three Afghans said they were not tortured or abused by their American interrogators, but that the prospect of being trapped in endless isolation wore away at them.

They weren’t abused, but they were bored stiff! Oh the humanity! And then, on top of that:

Jan Muhammad, one of the Afghan prisoners, said that he was completely cut off from the outside world for 11 months and did not receive a letter from his family until three days before his release.

Shocking, that someone suspected of being involved in a conspiracy would not be allowed to send or receive mail. Why, the next thing you know, they’ll be denying guns to prison inmates.

Halfway down, we learn this:

The men's accounts could not be corroborated tonight.

I’m not quite sure what corroboration they’re looking for, but since it’s a boilerplate piece it really doesn’t need more than a consultation over the water fountain.

Mr. Muhammad and the other men criticized the methods the United States has used to determine who will be sent to Guantánamo Bay, accusing American officials of relying too much on faulty information provided by Afghan warlords. Over the last year, some warlords have been accused of providing faulty information, leading to American bombing raids that killed dozens of Afghan civilians.

You know what? It’s a war. Duh. I have confidence that our people did the best they could to, um, “corroborate” their information – certainly better than, say, prominent newspapers stateside. Oh, and here’s a little tidbit four paragraphs down from Mr. Muhammad’s criticism (wonder what his exact words were? Probably, “I don’t know why they got me!”, followed by this next information):

He concedes that he fought with the Taliban around Kunduz, but said he had no choice — Taliban soldiers conscripted him.

Interesting. Apparently he was detained because he fought for the Taliban. Sounds like a specious reason to me. He then says the warlord referenced above falsely identified him as a leader in the Taliban, but we’re given no reason why a warlord would randomly pick out people to sic the US soldiers on. The implication is that the US was blindly following the edicts of the aforementioned warlord and, one assumes, other warlords as well. No evidence, just implication. Water fountain dry?

In both Afghanistan and Pakistan, the issue of the detainees is fueling accusations of American heavy-handedness. President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan is being pressured to speed the release of dozens of prisoners whom Afghans say have been wrongly arrested.

All I want to know here is, accusations from whom? Can’t corroborate, don’t ask so many questions, move along. We’re just a newspaper, we’re not the freakin’ government, we don’t have a responsibility to be accurate or even to attribute accusations which in themselves can be harmful. Go away.

Near the end of page one of this long rambling anti-US screed, we get this:

Mr. Muhammad, if his story is to be believed, was a victim of circumstances.

Why this sudden fit of self-righteous questioning of Mr. Muhammad? You certainly rely on him a bit much earlier in the article to raise this now. One former detainee did have something of praise to say, but he has to be painted as a blithering senile old idiot before he’s allowed to be quoted:

One of them, Faiz Muhammad, said he was 105. Babbling at times like a child, the partially deaf, shriveled old man was unable to answer simple questions. He struggled to complete sentences and strained to hear words that were shouted at him. His faded mind kept failing him…

He was asked if he was angry at the American soldiers who arrested him. "I don't mind," he said, his face brightening. "They took my old clothes and gave me new clothes."

And on the second page, near the end, there’s this:

He said photographs showing blindfolded and chained prisoners depicted the screening process prisoners went through when they first arrived. Mr. Muhammad did not complain about the food or medical care, and he praised his American guards for respecting his religion. "When we were standing for praying they were walking very slowly to not disturb us," he said.

Sounds like he didn’t find it quite the ordeal the NY Times did, although you wouldn't really know it from the first part of the article. Interesting. I propose a new slogan for the NY Times, instead of “all the news that’s fit to print”. It would be this:

Perception is reality. Just ask us.

Ooohhhhh....!!! good one

John Cole at Balloon Juice has a pithy point to make about recent Democratic choices.

What state does Jesse Jackson have residency in? Oh, wait, that doesn't matter either, does it, Hillary?

UPDATE: Scrappleface reports that at least one old white man can't get a gig anywhere.

Hypok...hiphok...hypochris...idiocy

Sorry, was having a flashback to my old days as a journalist - you know, one of those people who can't even spell hypocrisy (unless applying it to a conservative), much less admit they're riddled with it. It appears that Patricia Cornwell, the mystery writer, donated $25,000 to a reward fund set up to help find a murderer in Louisiana. Problem is, she was interviewing the family of the murder victim for an ABC show at the time she decided to donate. ABC, of course, got its knickers all in a wad and puffed up like an adder. (yes, I know it's a mixed metaphor, but work with me here - can't you just see some pompous, poisonous adder nearly puffed out of his wadded up knickers, which are stamped all over with the ABC logo?)

Stephen Gordon of Pundit Tree, who called my attention to Howard Kurtz's column today where the story appears, does a nice job of pointing out the idiocy of ABC's position. I just have to add my little tweak - what kind of hypocrisy is it to flagrantly use the deaths of people in Louisiana as a money-making scheme by doing some huge show on it, winning the willingness of the families to cooperate by no doubt pointing out how much the coverage may help solve the case, rope in famous mystery writer Cornwell, rake in no doubt hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising sold at a higher rate because everyone likes to watch crime shows... and then get all high and mighty about a many-multi-millionaire dropping $25,000 in a reward fund?

Well, if you're not sure, let me help you - it's rank hypocrisy.

On a different plane

Dodd at Ipse Dixit found this article about a WW II plane rescued from under a glacier and restored. Its post-restoration maiden flight was Saturday.

And the best part? It now lives in Middlesboro, Kentucky, just a hop, skip and jump from where I grew up. I've watched my high school basketball team whomp on the Middlesboro Yellowjackets [yellowjackets?! please! that's almost as bad as (pick any of those snotty Louisville teams)] many times. At any rate, for anyone who cares, here's a photo of the plane at the Middlesboro Airport (such as it is); you can see the terrain of my childhood, except we didn't have valleys that big. Still don't. But I'm not there anymore.

I bet you can rent guns in Kentucky.

Now, why is it I live in NJ?

I've mentioned before that I'm in the market for a handgun - solely for sport shooting purposes, of course. I finally decided, on the advice of virtually everyone, that I should go to local shooting ranges and try out various handguns to see what feels best to me. So today I called a local shooting range, thinking I'd go out this Saturday and puncture some paper.

They won't rent me a gun.

That's right, in NJ, the range guy told me, they won't let me rent a gun. Anywhere. No range. Not even if I stay right in their shooting range and I'm having an official lesson from a certified teacher. It's an insurance liability thing, he said, and (he thought) state law too. Is he loony? Is the whole state loony? Is this the case in other states and no one saw fit to mention it? Of that list, I vote for (2).

So here's the logic: we don't want you to learn how to use the gun before you buy it; we don't want you to know what kind of gun is best for you. No, we're idiots.

Why was it I'm living here?

I may as well shut down my blog

In the newest issue of City Journal, Harry Stein tells a detailed and chilling account of how the media bias machine works - an account he knows intimately because he was the object of it. Everything's there - the truth of what was said, the mechanisms of distortion, the spread of disinformation, the undercurrent of motives and, finally, the disconnection from reality involved in defending that worldview which many professional journalists call "objectivity", in truth nothing of the kind.

This article should be required reading in every journalism class in the nation. It's so good, I don't know that I'll ever have anything useful to add to it. I may just leave up a permanent link to it, take my toys and go home.

[Many thanks to Media Minded for the link.]

UPDATE: Well, I might not have anything useful to add, but Mike at Cold Fury sure does, with his trademark scorched-earth approach. Don't miss it.

UPDATE: And it just keeps on coming. Robert Prather has skewered the reporter, the media in general and just PC stupidity in this excellent piece. Go, Robert!

They just can't resist

Editor and Publisher has chosen the top entries in their photography contest for this year; it's a worthy collection, although as always those types of decisions are subjective. For the most part the photographs and descriptions are straightforward presentations, but someone - I don't know if it was the photographer or someone associated with the contest - saw fit to append this to a photograph (scroll down, there's no direct link) of a woman who's child had been killed in a drive-by shooting:

The sniper killings in Virginia and Maryland have received all the attention lately, but thousands of other Americans have suffered death by bullet this year. Here, a Los Angeles-area mother reacts to the slaying of her daughter, a victim of a drive-by shooting.

Emphasis mine. "Death by bullet"? What, they're just pinging out of nowhere and striking people down? I don't think so. Why couldn't they at least say, "thousands of other Americans have been shot by disgusting criminal slime"? Can't quite seem to grasp that action requires an actor, can they? Neat how they dump every "death by bullet" together too, without parsing out what is accident, what is self-defense, and what is criminal action.

No bias there. Nope. Nothing to see. Move along.

Laying Everyman to rest

The Last Page takes time to mourn the victims of Muhammad and Malvo, and says she's afraid that justice will not be served to those who deserve no less than what they meted out.

No dancing, please

James Lileks says everything that needs to be said about the death of Sen. Paul Wellstone, and the reactions to it on the right.

When is a terrorist a terrorist?

I’ve not commented much on the sniper since John Muhammad and John Lee Malvo were arrested last week, beyond saying I obviously missed some major points in my efforts to describe the killer. I do, however, think I did pretty well given the information that I had. While it would be interesting to go point by point through it (interesting to me, anyway – I’d probably dump it in one of those “continued” boxes so only those who really cared would have to deal with it), I don’t think we know enough of the truth about the killers yet to make a comparison useful.

Something I’ve found interesting, however, is the rush to judgment about Muhammad’s possible connections to terrorist organizations or terrorism in general. Some of the very people who were quite snarky about anyone with the audacity and arrogance to profile the sniper before he was caught, are now ranting on about how he’s an Islamic terrorist, of course he is! And anything new we learn about him becomes morphed into that view of him, even if it means that the term “terrorist” is stretched all out of shape like a cheap turtleneck after ten washings. All we’re lacking to confirm their labeling is, well, compelling evidence. And we may find it, should certainly aggressively investigate the possibility. But it’s no less audacious of them to make the claim so definitively now, in the face of what we know, than they thought the profilers were being in the past few weeks.

I think the media is, as some have claimed, trying desperately to disconnect Muhammad from any views that he is part of mainstream Islam, using his birth name or constantly identifying him as connected to some bastardized version of Islam, like the Nation of Islam. But that is not prima facie evidence that, conversely, Muhammad must be a member of mainstream Islam, or even organized Islamic terrorism, nor is it evidence that his motivation had much if anything to do with Islam. I think (if I may be so bold as to step off into the abyss of speculation again) that the religious influence on his crimes was about the same as the religious influence on the crimes of any white supremicist group that claims Christian connections – which is to say, a rather hallucinatory and ill-informed one, where what he saw in his religion was what he wanted to see, to support what he wanted to do anyway. And I say “he” instead of “them”, because I think that’s one point where my profile stuck – if it was two, I said, one will be very submissive and under the control of the other. So the motivations for the crime, I think, center in Muhammad, even though I also think it very possible that Malvo was an active and willing participant – certainly enough so that Malvo desires the same punishment as Muhammad.

If we’re going to go down this terrorism road, where in this new world order any harming of others by someone who has an ideology tangled in his or her psyche becomes “terrorism”, then we need to be clearer about definitions. Perhaps we could divide the umbrella term “terrorism” into “organized terrorism”, “guerrilla terrorism” and “terrorist sympathizer”. The genesis of, and thus the response to, each type is distinct. And if we make definitions clear, I may even jump on the bandwagon and join in the “Muhammad is a terrorist” song.

UPDATE: A coda to what I say above, partially in response to comments: Any series of killings causes terror. In his day, Ted Bundy was a terrorist, by that definition. So was David Berkowitz. The spread of this terror was because no one could discern a pattern in the victims that would allow those who did not "match" the pattern to relax and go about their business. And it appears that Muhammad and Malvo meant it to be that way, that (as I said previously) the point of the deaths was not the process, but the response. I'm not denying that the shootings created widespread fear; I would have been very apprehensive myself, if I lived there.

But when we use the word "terrorism", we are evoking a range of meaning that, historically, did not include this type of creating fear. If we want to use it, fine, but make it clear precisely what part of the existing meanings this new use encompasses. My concern is that the same narrowing of vision will occur by trying to force this situation into preconceptions of terrorism, that occurred when police thought they were looking for white men in a white van - resulting in missed opportunities to stop what was happening before ten people died.

Millions thousands attend anti-war protests

Brent at The Ville puts the anti-war protestors in perspective; Michelle at A Small Victory has a precision takedown of Susan Sarandon.

It's always been enough

This article in the NY Times, about whether John Allen Muhammed was a terrorist vs one who caused terror, carries this headline:

When Just One Gun Is Enough

In a sense, it's right. And the article itself doesn't emphasize the gun, just the fact that a lone person without formal ties to terrorism groups can create a lot of terror. But seeing that kind of statement in the NY Times always makes me nervous, because it seems a way to emphasize that as long as anyone has a gun in this country, we're all at risk of this type of thing.

Well, yes, we are. And always have been. The question is: At what point does the cure become worse than the disease? And, if you - like the CDC - consider guns a pathogen, what makes you focus on this above other pathogens that are objectively worse? Or does it, again, come back to a utilitarian evaluation of cure vs disease?

Rachel Lucas points out in her recent fine takedown of Michael Moore that a number of other "risks" in society are greater than the "risk" associated with guns - cars, for instance, kill many more daily. And that's important to know. But in the final analysis it comes down to principle, as do most things in the political sphere: it's not about how many guns are out there, but whether the future of our country's freedoms are endangered when our citizens are disarmed. The Founding Fathers said "yes" by amending the Constitution to protect the right of citizens to be armed.

One gun will always be enough, just as one dram of poison, one packet of anthrax, one person with bare hands roaming the country with intent to kill will be enough to create terror. It's about context, not tools. Ours is not a utopian world - but the more important point is, it cannot be. And efforts to make it so through taking guns away from law-abiding citizens will move it inexorably down the scale toward hell on earth.

Another one who deserves to die

An 18 year old man in Oklahoma has killed two people and injured seven others in a shooting spree after neighbors complained to him about his reckless driving. He killed two of the ones complaining, injuring another, before heading down the road stopping various places to shoot people. He was finally caught when he wrecked his truck (some justice there) near a police roadblock.

He apparently stole the gun from his grandfather's house.

First in my heart

A few weeks ago I visited with Fred First of Fragments from Floyd and his wonderful wife Ann, she of the generous welcome to strangers and scrumptious pumpkin bread sent home with a traveler heading out on a long road. Today I received from the Firsts the recipe for the bread (I’m going to make it tomorrow), a photo of the road near their house (posted below), and a CD of Alison Krauss and the Cox Family. Fred and Ann, thank you! You’re sweethearts!

While I was at Fred and Ann’s, he played guitar and we sang on Saturday night; he and I even harmonized with a few songs on the radio, so he knows my love for singing harmony – thus the CD. Of course it’s playing now. It must not have been too horrific for him to encourage me with the CD. I grew up attending a country church where we knew five tunes and ten songs (an exaggeration, but not by much). We always sang a cappella, which is still my favorite; among my most-played CDs and tapes now are those with songs I can harmonize with. At church now (still a cappella) I sing high tenor, mainly because I need to sing within a certain range and it offers the most opportunity for the juxtaposition of notes that sometimes can give me goose bumps. One of my dreams is to sing with a professional band for a while, if only for one performance. I’ve sung in weddings, and a few variety shows, but if I was in a band I wouldn’t want to sing lead. I want to do harmony. My voice isn’t strong enough for a professional career, even if my musical talent were, but a girl can dream. And for hours and hours as a teenager, I did dream, singing with all the musicians on the stereo of my darkened room, imagining the moments when all the voices came together, and mine was one of them.

Another thing that can give me goose bumps is color, especially fall colors. October is my favorite time of the year, and sometimes seeing a landscape awash in melons and golds and deep indian reds just makes my chest hurt with delight. Here is the photograph that Fred sent me:

Pure bliss. That is the kind of place I want to live. My color preferences also tend to show up in my quilting; this wallhanging is one I made using just fabrics I already had – none of the fabrics in the stars are repeated, so you can imagine what my fabric stash looks like. I chose the colors of this site based on the wallhanging, which I intend to post on the sidebar soon:

Because I haven’t a lot of time, I’m impatient and mercurial, and I like to move quickly from project to project, I tend to make small things – especially miniquilts designed by me to create moods more than reflect specific patterns: a fall day, or a snowy winter evening. However, here is the largest quilted piece I’ve finished, shown here hanging on my parents’ carport, where my dad hung it using great honking board nails when I told him to put it on the wall (moral: if you want a delicate piece of textile art hung anywhere, don’t give it to my dad to do). The occasion was my mom’s 60th birthday, thus the cake (which I also made):

So what is the point of this meandering through music and quilting and pumpkin bread and nothing of world moment? There is no point beyond it’s Saturday, it’s my blog, I’m tired of the harsh things of life and want to have a day where they aren’t foremost in my mind or on my blog.

Now I’m going to go finish writing the racy little romantic short story I started last night, and no, you can’t read it, it’s solely for my own delectation, thankyouverymuch. Have a lovely day.

Fall back position

It's that time of year, apparently. Don't forget to turn your clocks back by an hour tonight, if you live in a part of the country where they do that kind of thing. I do, so it means another hour of sleep. Yay! Well, practically speaking it probably means another hour on the phone, but we'll be optimistic.

About accents

I went to a meeting last week which was probably one of the most boring I've been to in a while. It was a technical conference where a program we may participate in was being explained; you know you're in trouble when the lead speaker says, "I'm going to read this to you, and I repeat everything three times because I think three times is enough for anyone to get it." Naturally, I muttered under my breath, "Reading it one time is enough for those not brain dead.". But then that's just me.

So instead of listening to two of the three repeats of everything, I listened to her strong Jersey accent and took notes. She kept saying that this thing or that thing was a "floor" in the statute, and I thought, huh? Is she meaning that it's a baseline? But that didn't make sense. So after jotting down a few other of her words phonetically, it came to me:

She was saying "flaw".

That's right. She was saying "flaw", only it was "Flow-er", sounding exactly like how I would say "floor". I listened more closely the next time, and yes, it was "floor", so that when I left I was still uncertain if maybe, the whole time, she did mean "floor", not flaw. But her other pronunciations matched it. "Law" was "low-er" (say it fast for the full effect), etc.

This is the Jersey talk that is most easily mimicked. Among my favorites is how they say "talk" - it's "toe-awk" - always say it fast. And "mountain" - it's "mao-ann". Now most Jerseyites don't talk this way, and I can't say where the epicenter of it is, although I think it's Newark. But it's very distinctive.

Of course, where I grew up they have their own regional dialect. "Coffee" there is "cahw-fee" (drawl it out), vs "coe-AH-fee" (say it fast) here. Naturally this is not an issue for me, as I don't drink cahwfee or coe-AH-fee, as it tastes like licking the bottom of a burnt-to-a-charcoal saucepan (not, of course, that I've ever actually licked one, but how I imagine it to taste, if ever I was so moved, which I won't be). I'm sadly lacking in the beverage vices, I'm sorry to say - no coffee, no adult beverages, rarely even caffeinated pop (not even once a week). I do on occasion drink hot tea, and sweetened iced tea is nectar of the gods, especially with the orange-spice flavor I always add. Mmmmm.

Maybe I should go make some tea now. At least that's difficult to mispronounce.

Public Notice

This is to make public notice that I am not responsible for my Weather Pixie. She chooses her own clothes, so any displays of bare flesh are beyond my ability to control. In addition, the stupidity of wearing midriff-baring tops when the temps are in the low 50s is also solely her own. The Celsius temperature has proven beyond my skills to change to Fahrenheit.

She is an evil and wilful Pixie, and I have nightmares about her coming after me with a sharpened umbrella. I won't mess with her.

Not that I needed confirmation, but...

Recently a ossuary - a stone burial box from the first century - with the inscription "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" was discovered in the private collection of a Jerusalem antiquities collector. Experts have confirmed that it is an authentic First Century ossuary, and believe it highly likely (and statistically probable) that it was the storage place for the bones of James, the brother of Jesus Christ, for a few brief years in the 60s A.D. If so, then it's proof of the life of Jesus, contemporaneous with the lives of those who followed him - the earliest known proof.

I've seen this discussed in blogland here and there, so it's not news, but I hadn't really tracked it down until my brother sent me links this morning. I love seeing this kind of proof, although (and I know it galls those who like to think I'm at least marginally driven by touchable, proveable premises) I didn't need it. And of course this doesn't prove that Jesus is the son of God, just that he lived and was a prominent figure in that era.

The TV show Archaeology was always one of my favorites, so I know there's much proof out there confirming Biblical statements. It's not perfect proof, but, in my judgment, convincing proof. And (joking aside) proof does matter to me. Faith can't be blind or it's not faith but wish - it is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And this ossuary is pretty compelling evidence.

Straight talk

Only a week late, here is a link to my brother's latest column on religion in his local newspaper, The Jessamine Journal; this time it's on homosexuality.

He has both links to other columns and links to sermons on his church website.

UPDATE: Arthur Silber brings the Light of Reason - by his lights, anyway - to the discussion with this post. I appreciate the dialogue, but I can say with confidence that my brother does not believe in Original Sin (nor do I), which Silber is skewering here. I'd be more than happy to skewer right along with him. One additional comment about faith, though - it is not wishful thinking, it is an expectation derived from an examination of evidence. You may not arrive at the same expectation from an examination of the same evidence, but it is inaccurate to say there is no evidence or fact at its base. Any belief system by definition relies to a degree on faith - otherwise there'd be no reason to call it a "belief system", it would merely be fact.

Smarter Harper's

The Smarter Harper's Index is up.

And man, that Eric is way smarter.

Although one wonders if his name shouldn't be "Alec".

[Smarter Alec - get it?]

(i know, i shoulda stayed in bed another hour. i think i'll go remedy that.)

Scary

Jennifer Capriati in 1997.

Jennifer Capriati in 2002.

All I can say is: Brawny commercial .

[2002 photo via Fred First at Fragments from Floyd]

Hope to see you later...

My computer at home is having difficulties - it keeps freezing up, and I have to turn it off and do a cold reboot. I'm going to poke around at it tonight, trying to avoid things like, for instance, opening the box and vacuuming it with my mini-vac to get all the dust off those delicate parts. Yes, I did that once. If I can't get it to behave, then I'll likely spend a lot of the evening being charming and stern by turns with the Micron people until it gets fixed.

So, you ask, why do I care? You mean, other than the fact that everything that happens in my life is of surmounting importance in yours? It means that if the computer freezes up four times in the middle of a post, then likely you won't be seeing any more until it gets all better. But I am valiant, and will do my best.

At any rate, have a great weekend, and at least I will see you on Monday with, undoubtedly, the most insightful, well-written post of the new millenia.

Sen. Paul Wellstone dies in plane crash

Wellstone, a well-known liberal Democrat, was killed with his wife, daughter and five others while flying to the funeral of a father of a state legislator.

An untimely death is always very sad. My prayers are with the families.

Autopsy photos, open records and journalistic integrity

Lex Alexander, an assistant editor at the Greensboro, NC, News & Record, has written me to disagree with what I said in this post about the photographs taken of racecar driver Dale Earnhardt’s autopsy. Here is Alexander’s email, in its entirety; he quotes the pertinent section of my original post:

I wanted to take issue with one point in this post, the one regarding photos from Dale Earnhardt's autopsy and how the public wasn't upset that the Florida legislature banned access to autopsy photos. You wrote: "I don't know that obtaining the autopsy photos for a celebrity would advance the public's need to know; I'm assuming there was a review by the proper officials regarding whether Earnhardt's death came through any mechanical failure. The public isn't upset because the journalists have no business there - and maybe the journalists should consider what's wrong with them, not what's wrong with the public."

With all due respect, you're wrong.

Obtaining autopsy photos in this particular case could well have advanced the public's need to know because they could have been instrumental in determining not only how Earnhardt died, but also whether NASCAR, which has a long record of downplaying safety concerns, was being forthcoming in its reports on the case. Earnhardt was the fourth racer to die within a year of a basal skull fracture (one of the others was Richard Petty's grandson, Adam). Although equipment has been available (the so-called HANS device) that would greatly increase the driver's likelihood of surviving even the type of crash -- 180 mph head-on into a wall -- that killed Earnhardt, NASCAR has refused to mandate its use.

Racin' aside, it's not hard to see how autopsy photos could become pivotal in homicide cases, especially cases in which someone dies in police custody. The public most definitely has an interest in seeing that those photos remain public records. Of course no one wants to see autopsy photos of their loved ones on the Internet, but IMHO there's a greater danger to society here that comments like yours gloss over.

And here is the bulk of my response to him, which I will expand on below:

(W)hat I want to address is your contention that in the situation with Earnhardt, the photos were a legitimate investigative journalism target. I'm open to that; perhaps I just don't know enough about the situation. I used to work as a newspaper reporter myself, and even used the Open Records Act to get information I needed on occasion. However, I think there does need to be a legitimate public need, not just a desire for knowledge about a famous person's death. My assumption was that there would be an independent investigation of the death by an agency not associated with NASCAR that would address the concerns you stated. If that's not true, then it is cause for concern.

Another of my issues is that the media often shoots itself in the foot by specious requests and self-dramatization, cloaking itself in "the public's right to know" when the point is really "I want the scoop that people want to read". If the media were, generally, more responsible, then the whole industry would have a better reputation. Please understand here that I am not impugning the character and quality of all journalists - I think a strong media is essential to a strong democracy, and many many journalists are all any reader could hope for. But can you deny that the behavior overall of the media itself has contributed substantially to the skepticism of the public? And that this skepticism damages the media's ability to gain sympathy for efforts like trying to get Earnhardt's autopsy photos, even when it's legit?

This issue is very important, and one I do think gets lost sometime in the dialogue – almost because the foundation of it is an “of course!”. That is – of course we need an active, vigorous and independent media. The problem is, few Americans have a very clear idea of what precisely that means, or what legal tools the media need to accomplish their job. The Open Records Act and the Sunshine Law (here’s an index to these laws in all the states) are among the most important, but not just because the media can use them – they are tools all of us can use. The media typically uses them most, but they are doing so in proxy for the rest of us, as Alexander alleges is the case in the Earnhardt autopsy photo request. His point is: A pattern of deaths has pointed to a possibility of a fixable flaw in racecar configuration. NASCAR hasn’t required the fix. The public has a reasonable interest in whether the apparent pattern actually indicates a systematic flaw, and if so they also have an interest in first knowing why NASCAR won’t require the fix, and then in seeing that NASCAR does it anyway. If the media don’t get their hands on the photos, they are impeded in their efforts to make the case, in proxy for the public. Even other agencies who might have investigated could be operating with their own agendas which have blindered them to the pattern and the need for a fix.

If all of that is true, with that context, as I said, I would agree that they should get the photographs. But let me ask this: if the photographs were made available, would they wind up in widespread distribution, far beyond the realm of legitimate need as expressed by Alexander and other journalists? Most likely. So that raises another question: Is the harm caused by that distribution overridden by the public’s need to know? The circuit court judge in the Earnhardt case thought so. And many in the public did too.

I think the problem is that the media is caught on the horns of a dilemma – they have a professional edict to provide citizens with news, information that they need and can use, and, in proxy for the public, to keep an eye on public institutions. At the same time, they have a need to be entertaining, to be first with the biggest, to advance their paper or station or magazine by drawing readership. Too many journalists have skidded into the mud, then stand in their pigsty mess, pushing straggly hair out of their eyes, and swear up and down that they’re clean as new straw in their intentions. It just won’t work.

So what’s the solution? Well, we hear endlessly about how Islam as a religion can’t change its rapidly developing reputation as a religion of violence until those within its ranks show not only with words but with actions that they do not support those who behave in heinous ways. In a similar fashion, the media cannot slow the trend toward public distrust of their integrity and disinterest in their access problems until the responsible and reputable media outlets clearly state their principles and then follow it up with action. It has to be a part of the daily decision-making process, on every single story. Does this meet the smell test? Are we going to be scooped even though we got this first, because we refuse to sink to that level?

And I haven’t even touched on the issue of objectivity, which I think is not only unnecessary but impossible. An adherence to the principles of fairness and accuracy, including not only admitting political bias but also in seeking to have closed records opened, would go a long way to restoring the media’s credibility. Yet we see a trend in the opposite direction. I share the concern of some that the access to government and other documents may be limited beyond what is healthy for our country. But I think they have only themselves to blame.

[I will have more to say on this at a later date. But for now lunch is over and I want to post this today. We’ll get back to it, maybe in response to the plethora of comments I’m sure you’re all going to leave.]

Oh, yeah!

This is just what a sweet and gentle type like me needs on the NJ roads. For about a week a month, I’d probably regress to this. And a few times a year – when I’m down to my very last nerve – I’d take this out for a spin. Then just let me see someone passing in the emergency lane!

Media bias reads

I'm having One Of Those Days at work, but that doesn't mean I can't give you a little something else to read. CPO Sparkey at Sgt. Stryker's place has an excellent piece what he says is the media's wilful repetition of Iraqi propaganda in the name of comprehensive coverage. He has links, he has details, a bit of a scary read.

In addition, reader Martin Knight has written in with a nice little screed about the prevalence of the term "moderate" in the media, used whenever the media want to present someone in a politically favorable light regardless of where their politics would be on any more objective scale. He hasn't any links, but I think they're good thoughts; I'm assuming his information is correct, feel free to object if you disagree. Here's his email, in its entirety:

Dear Susanna,

Am I the only one who has noticed the incredibly disingenuous (not to mention Conservative-sabotaging) use of the word "moderate" in the Press over the past few years? Granted, this has long been a pet peeve of mine but surely someone else must have noticed this, right?

Every election season since 1996 (when I started taking note) I've noticed that almost every Democrat running in a competitive race gets called "moderate" (synonymous with "Centrist") in the press, particularly in the national papers. But when I look at their voting records, it's very much to the Left of anything resembling the Center. Let's look at one of the latest media "moderate Democrat" darlings (a prototypical example); John Edwards, who is (1) Anti-School Choice (2) Pro-Gun Control (3) Pro-Abortion (4) Pro-Racial Preferences (5) Pro-EnvironMENTAL Non-Science, etc. On practically every question, including Tax Cuts, John Edwards is way Left, yet he is celebrated by the Press as a "moderate". Joe Lieberman matches up exactly the same as well.

Now let's look at some of the most celebrated "moderate" Republicans of recent times, i.e. James Jeffords (he was called a "moderate" long before he jumped - in fact, he's still called a "moderate"), Lincoln Chafee, Christie Whitman, etc. They're all (1) Anti-School Choice (2) Pro-Gun Control (3) Pro-Abortion (4) Pro-Racial Preferences (5) Pro-EnvironMENTAL Non-Science, etc.

Notice anything wierd?

A few months back, a breathless "reporter" (AP or NYTimes) wrote that Hillary Clinton had proven herself to be a "moderate". Practically all of us on the Right were simply stunned. But considering the way "moderate" is defined by the Press, Hillary actually is a "moderate" and so is (if you think about it) Ted Kennedy. In other words, the only thing a traditional (Left-Wing) Democrat need do to earn the "moderate" label from the Press is to simply refrain from calling for a 300% tax-hike (or to have voted 'Nay' against a tax hike once or twice in your career). And judging from the fact that Zell Miller is called a "Conservative Democrat" ( hardly ever "moderate"), actually sponsoring a tax-cut means you've gone too far to the Right.

For a traditional (Conservative) Republican, you apparently have to abandon your views on abortion, school-choice, racial preferences, the Second Amendment, etc. before you can be a "moderate", John McCain excluded. He did it by attacking and undermining his own Party to applause in the Press. Which is, come to think of it, another way to go. Of course, this only works if you're a Republican who routinely attacks Republicans and take your cue from the New York Times. If you're a Democrat who attacks your party, you'll be overshooting the "moderate" mark, landing yourself in "Conservative Democrat" territory.

Dan Rather once asserted that while the Wall Street Journal's editorial page was on the "Far Right", the New York Times editorial page was "Middle of the Road" i.e. "moderate"... maybe this display of political astigmatism explains why the Press seems a little confused about what defines a "moderate".

That's something to think about - how terms are used regardless of their validity, solely to create a specific tone or to cast a person or situation in a particular light. Sometimes the term is justified, but that is a judgment you need to make independently of the journalist's designation.

Meanwhile, in an article in today's Editor and Publisher website, journalism executives are whining:

Gerald Boyd said the war on terrorism means journalists have to become experts in such topics as bioterrorism, and should ask questions about the countries aligning with the United States in its fight against al-Qaida, and about the need to battle Iraq.

"Everything about our daily role has changed," Boyd said. "We have to understand and explain and put it in context. It means a high responsibility. There's no doubt it's harder to get information. The difference for us is some people are not exorcised over this. They feel it's unpatriotic to raise those issues."

Not to be nitpicky, but I think that would be "exercised", not "exorcised" - unless they do think that people should have Catholic priests tossing out their demons so they can get with the NY Times's terrorism agenda. But the main thing here is Boyd's assumption that they have to be an activist about it - he doesn't say, we have to present both sides of the war debate, but they "should ask questions" about "the need to battle Iraq". Seems a bit one-sided to me - no hint of a need to "ask questions" about "why we aren't already kicking ass in Iraq".

Even on a local level, it is becoming harder to obtain information, said Melanie Sill, executive editor of The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C., who shared a panel with Boyd and several other top newsroom executives.

Following the death of race car driver Dale Earnhardt, the Florida Legislature in 2001 voted to limit access to autopsy photos. Sill said the public is not upset over such efforts. "The loss of our standing with ordinary people is a problem," Sill said.

I don't know that obtaining the autopsy photos for a celebrity would advance the public's need to know; I'm assuming there was a review by the proper officials regarding whether Earnhardt's death came through any mechanical failure. The public isn't upset because the journalists have no business there - and maybe the journalists should consider what's wrong with them, not what's wrong with the public.

Overseas, journalists are increasingly becoming victims of violence. Daniel Pearl, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, was killed earlier this year in Pakistan as he was working on a story.

"You see forces throughout the world who do not want truthtellers in their midst," said Journal Managing Editor Paul Steiger. "They don't want the service we provide."

It's true that "forces throughout the world" aren't too high in having "truthtellers in the midst". But fortunately they don't mind having some US journalists in there (see CPO Sparkey's post for more details) - does that tell you anything?

Also, now that the Maryland/Virginia shooter case seems to be solved - or well on its way - the gloves are coming off between the media and the main prosecutor in the case:

Just hours after police arrested two suspects in the Washington-area sniper case Thursday, a key prosecutor in the investigation accused the press of contributing to the public's fear surrounding the case, hinting that news reports may have actually spurred the sniper to continue his shooting spree.

"The argument can be made that each time [the press] came out with [a theory of] someone they thought was the killer, someone else would be killed so that the killer didn't think he wasn't getting credit," said Douglas Gansler, Montgomery County (Md.) State's Attorney, who spoke Thursday morning at the Associated Press Managing Editors conference.

Gansler blamed print and broadcast news outlets for heightening the panic around the case, and even accused editors of seeking to "sell newspapers" while investigators worried more about public safety...

Editors both on the panel and in the audience of about 300 were quick to respond to Gansler's charges, with most defending newspapers' right and need to report what they can.

"The press is not responsible for the fear that comes from shooting 13 people," said Susan Svihlik, executive editor of the Manassas (Va.) Journal Messenger, who slammed Gansler from the audience. "We did what we were supposed to do."

I'd say there'll be a lot of self-examination in the media about this - expect sidebars and feature articles on, "Did we cover it too intensely?" and "Are we as wonderful as we think?" To save you time, the answers will be "no" and "yes".

And on an amusing note, the SFSU (yes, thatSFSU) News Watch director got her panties all in a wad over a recruitment poster for journalism internships at the Lexington (KY) Herald Leader which shows an intern not only interviewing a Miss Kentucky pageant participant, but saying it was the highlight of his summer. Two women in charge of the program for the H-L responded with their own umbrage, saying he covered many substantive issues and was on the front page a number of times (scroll to "Beyond the bikini beat"). And they add this, which makes me think maybe some folks at the H-L are worth their money (most, IMHO, aren't, much):

Yes, our intern poster includes a quote from a 20-year-old college journalism student, praising the fact that he interviewed a bikini-clad woman or two for a story about the Miss Kentucky pageant. At your urging, we have asked around and determined that the student's quote doesn't represent anything he was taught by the Herald-Leader. He apparently learned to enjoy this sort of thing all by himself. He also had a fully developed sense of humor when he arrived on our doorstep -- a wonderful thing for a journalist to have, don't you agree?

Zing! And on that note, enjoy your day.

They may be caught

It looks like the ones responsible for the shootings in the DC area have been captured. At the least, John Allen Muhammed (aka John Williams) and his stepson Lee Malvo are involved, given the information on evidence that the police have given out so far. Are there more? We'll know soon.

Obviously my analysis was off in some, if not many, respects. When we know a little more I'll go through and point out where I was wrong. For now, I'm just thankful that the shootings may be over.

I'm also very interested in how the shooters were tracked down. Apparently the communications tipped the balance, gave the police more information, and the request for money was the biggest break because of the information the shooters gave in trying to receive the money.

And there may be an al Qaeda link, at least in the mind of Williams (Muhammed). Now that they're caught, the unraveling part will be very interesting.

I just wish they'd been caught in Virginia.

UPDATE: [9:15 a.m.] I'm watching a news conference right now with the police chief in Montgomery, AL. Some media were reporting that a credit card taken in a robbery-homicide there was the one Muhammed and Malvo tried to have the $10 million transferred to. The chief said a credit card was not taken at that robbery, that a note was not left at the scene, and that he had been told by an ATF agent that the gun used for the Alabama robbery was not the one used in the Maryland and Virginia shootings. In fact, it seems the only connection is that a caller to the shooter hotline in Maryland/Virginia said he did both the M/V shootings and one in Birmingham. That connection is still under investigation.

The chief said his department first heard from the M/V task force on Sunday night, so the task force has been working it for several days.

I like this chief. A reporter just said, "The national media reported..." etc., and the chief said, "A lot of things have been reported in the national media, and that doesn't mean it's accurate." Smart man.

And yes, the reason I wished they had been caught in Virginia is because Virginia is aggressive about carrying out the death penalty.

Terminology

I've been taken to task for using "Maryland" in my description of the person killing people in the DC area. The appellation "Beltway" is more geographically accurate, I'm told. And, in addition, Brent at The Ville is haranguing about this guy being called a sniper, which he says dishonors the men and women who serve honorably in the military and law enforcement as snipers.

So, I'm officially changing my designation - with every hope that I won't be using it much more except to say "He's caught" and then "He's fried". Henceforth, here at least, he will be called "the Beltway killer".

Media covering up for the Gores?

Brent at The Ville does a great job of taking apart the media about the differences between their coverage of alcohol (and drug) problems in the Bush family vs the Gore family.

My question is - if you smoke marijuana in a school cafeteria, shouldn't you be charged with stupidity as well as using?

Better than the NY Times

The Minuteman has posted two editorials written as a seventh grade class assignment by his daughter. She had to write one from the perspective of an American newspaper editor in 1776 just after the Declaration of Independence, and one from the perspective of an English editor. I love this girl! If she's this good at 12, what's she going to be in 20 years? Scary. My favorite bits:

The American editor:

The lousy scum bags who call themselves Englishmen received our Declaration of Independence. They claim that their unfair taxes were fair, the liars, and that we are using them. Ha! As if!

The English editor:

The lazy, good-for-nothing colonists claim that we are over reacting about their "civilized" Boston tea party, and that we are putting unfair taxes on them to pay for our war. What war? We fought it for them. Why should we, honest, respectable citizens of England, pay for a war fought for them? They used us. They used us to get our land, food, money, support and protection. Then they turn around and say that we are bad people who mis treat them. They are all criminals, every one of them.

This girl has a future.

Can we afford freedom?

Certainly some people don't seem to think so. Here are a couple of article excerpts, the first from AP:

President Bush is getting the tools he wants to wage an expensive, no-end-in-sight global fight against terror. Winning it, he says, is "a duty to future generations of Americans."

First a hint that it's extravagant foolishness, followed up by a "he says" little quote, indicating a "yeah, right" attitude from the reporter. Or, to be fair, the editor, as sometimes what comes off a reporter's computer bears little resemblance to what winds up in publication.

Now, MSN. The headline set on their front page (which may change throughout the day - it tends to) says this:

The Price of Battling Iraq Can the US afford a war? How a conflict can affect your pocketbook

Clicking there takes you to a list of articles on the Money page; one, by Hampton Pearson, has this headline:

Can the U.S. afford a war against Iraq? The war with Iraq could cost America up to $274 billion, which would inflate the deficit and possibly hinder economic growth.

It's a snarky little thing:

For George W. Bush, this will not be "his father's Gulf War," where America's allies paid 80% of the $61 billion cost for a battle that lasted about six weeks.

I'm not going to take the time to shred it. But it's a disgusting attitude - either it's the right thing to do, in which case we do it regardless, or it's the wrong thing to do, in which we don't do it even if all it costs us is pocket change. It's about the principle, stupid!

And George W. says the right thing, as you can see when the AP opening quote is put in context:

"Any time the United States of America sends our youngsters into harm's way they deserve the best pay, the best training and the best possible equipment. ... It doesn't matter how long it takes to defend freedom, we'll do it. ... We have a duty to future generations of Americans to make this land secure."

Yes, we need to be concerned about the economy. But if our founding fathers counted the cost, would we be here? When do you count the cost of the right thing to do? You don't.

Remember when everyone was hysterical over Enron and the other major corporate scandals? The liberals waxed eloquent about the evils of capitalism, the focus on money, how you should do the right thing even if it means your company makes less. So...? How about now? Is freedom from oppression for a country far away, and more safety for our people at home, worth a little hit in your pocketbook, if it's the right thing?

Argue the morality of the war, but don't talk to me about money.

Connections

Diane E. and Rachel Lucas both are intrigued by the possibility that the French military school student now apparently AWOL in the US is actually the Maryland serial sniper. Jim Henley is pretty annoyed at the media and law enforcement for an elitist approach to releasing information about the sniper; he has excellent updates daily, so he's a good place to start for the latest.

I find the French military student a not very likely option - he wouldn't know the area of the shootings well enough to move about easily, as the sniper apparently does, and he also wouldn't know the American policing mode very well, which, again, the sniper seems to. Besides, if he was French, wouldn't he have surrendered to the police already?

In the mainstream media, Christie Blatchford has an excellent column in the National Post on how the "blame America" crowd will be in full cry on the serial sniper:

...there's a sizeable number of folks -- both in this country and in Canada -- for whom an NRA link to the person or persons who have thus far killed nine and wounded three would be cause for almighty celebration and wondrous proof that Americans have invited such random viciousness by failing to regulate the gun-friendly culture here that has its origins in their Second Amendment right to bear arms...

It is becoming more clear by the day that one way or another, Americans will wear it for this sniper: If he turns out to be a foreign national, the prototype of some new version of a homicide bomber, apologists will trot out the old 9-11 root-causes rationale to explain him, and blame them; if it turns out he is a home-grown assassin, he will be pronounced the inevitable product of a country in which there are an estimated 222 million firearms and they will be blamed for that.

She goes on to skewer Bowling for Columbine, the anti-gun movie made by Michael Moore. Worth your reading.

[Blatchford link via Rob Lyman]

Carnival of the Vain, er, Vanities

Sorry about that, my fingers stuttered. At any rate, this week's Carnival of the Vanities is posted, full of Bloggish Goodies for Your Perusal. A good way to do a summary hop through some of the best of the blogs. I did a scan of the current crop, and I must say it's a fine group. Sans yours truly, but maybe they'll let me play next week. Unless I'm busy in my humvee popping SUVs off the road, instead of blogging (see next post to make sense of that reference).

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Some stupid jerk in a maroon SUV nearly had a little Nissan Sentra right up his tailpipe tonight after he made his own lane and passed me in heavy traffic on my way home. We were on a wide yet one lane exit onto a busy road with a hidden curve just prior to where our exit connected to the road. He came up on my right, talking on his cell phone, and I laid on my horn. For about two minutes. He muscled in front of me (I shouldn't have given way!), but I hung on his back bumper, and (yes, I am one of those BAD DRIVERS that Reader's Digest tells you about) turned on my brights, angling my car so they shined in his driver's side mirror. Yes, this is on a very tight four-lane road going into a traffic circle through a construction area with cars merging behind us, cars merging in from both sides, and a split ahead. Oh, I was mad. Yes, I know, my response was the vehicular equivalent of a kitten mewing angrily at an oblivious bulldog. But I felt better.

And I had fantasies all the way home of him scraping that shiny SUV against a concrete barrier trying to pass someone, or running into a bridge abutment (not head on - I'm not that bad) driving wildly while on the phone. At the very least getting a 65-in-a-35 mph ticket with sufficient points to take his license away for a while.

Okay, full confession: I also wished on him a broken right leg that prevented him from driving so he had to get everywhere on public transportation for the handicapped, driven by a geriatric Jersey curmudgeon with a hearing problem, for at least three months.

Yes, I do have very detailed fantasies. And no, I won't tell you any others.

Naturally I had to turn this into a, "What, Susanna, is really bothering you here?" moment. I hate it when I'm my own Oprah. "Was it really his passing you that made you angry? It didn't delay you. Or, Susanna, was it that he could, that you felt powerless as a consequence, that you had some urge to retake control? Wasn't this reaction more about you than him?"

Yes, darn it, it was, and go stick that reason where the sun don't shine! I hate that.

I'm one of the most polite and courteous people that I know. It's a genetic thing - I was born this disgusting little ray of sunshine, which I have managed to firmly contain for the most part. But I do think the wheels of society turn much more smoothly when courtesy is paramount - we'll all get there faster if everyone stays in their lane, merges neatly, let at least one person in front of you if you're on the main road, let women with babies have your seat on the subway... But that isn't how the world works. It's all me me me!, which unfortunately brings out my snarling side. It'd be pretty funny i