The Libertarian Girl calls for a tax on breast implants:

How much of a tax are we talking here?

Well, as the phrase goes, "If you want less of something, tax it; if you want more of something, subsidize it." I guess the boob-happy boyfriends can pick up the tab.

(Yeah, this is almost a month old, but then I'm really more of a leg man anyway, and besides she's continuing to write on the subject.)

Someone trying to post links to online-poker.psextreme.com has been spamming my Web site all morning; I have had to remove approximately two dozen of these annoyances.

If this subdomain is not under your control, perhaps you should see to it that it becomes so; whoever is using it is an irresponsible parasite.

If this subdomain *is* under your control, I trust you to do the right thing and put an end to this sort of activity.

If not, well, there are laws....cgh

(Sent to: exmail@psextreme.com, Dimension Publishing, 1175 Chess Drive Suite EM, Foster City, CA 94404, US, Phone: 650-372-0942)

Oklahoma County Sheriff John Whetsel has turned up the nefarious Spector Pro scumware on three computers in his office.

District 1 Commissioner Jim Roth says that the program was presumably installed by someone with administrative access to the county network or to someone actually using the machine; he does not believe it was acquired by simple Web browsing.

Whetsel is properly appalled:

Spyware detectors are being installed system-wide.

If you thought Howard Dean was some sort of weird 21st-century non-mainstream Democrat, you might have thought too soon: apparently Dr. Dean, anguished yelp aside, is very much in the Democratic tradition.

Last year Bigwig brought forth this bumper sticker, yoking Dean to George McGovern; I can testify that it got a laugh out of Dawn Eden, which more than justifies my purchase thereof.

Now Cutting to the Chase offers yet another traditional Democratic comparison:

Being the sort of person who can appreciate really finely-tuned smugness, I offer you this interchange from Stevenson's 1956 Presidential campaign:

I tell you, Stevenson was born to run the DNC — just fifty years too soon. Dr. Dean just might work out after all. (Then again, speaking as a lifelong Democrat, I'd have to say that a tub of Shedd's Country Crock would probably be an improvement over that McAuliffe guy.)

Meet Ella Hope Holtsberry, born Friday afternoon.

Let there be cheers and celebration.

Brad Henry's tax package, that is.

A few things perplex me about it — who knew there was a constitutional maximum on the Rainy Day Fund? — and "targeted" tax cuts usually mean I don't get squat, but this doesn't seem too awful. This year's $200-million surplus (thanks at least partially to petroleum prices out the wazoo) will be split down the middle, taxpayers to get one half as a rebate, the new EDGE Endowment to be seeded with the other.

Over and beyond this bit of spending, there are actual tax cuts: capital gains on Oklahoma property, eliminated last year for individuals, would be eliminated for corporations as well; the list of heirs qualifying for estate-tax exemption would be extended to include siblings; the personal exemption for retirees would be boosted from $7500 to $10,000; and there will be a sales-tax holiday counterprogrammed against one already scheduled in Texas.

House Republicans, I think, will probably insist on an income-tax rollback as well, but the Governor's proposal is a reasonable start. All else being equal, though, I'd rather have the brackets moved downward than get a one-time check.

JunkYardBlog's Bryan Preston spotted this on a bumper sticker:

The quote is attributed generally to Napoleon Bonaparte; this sticker is sold by Northern Sun, a long-standing vendor of left-wing posters, buttons and tchotchkes. I get their catalog occasionally, probably by dint of having an actual Mother Jones subscription.

I'm at a loss, though, to figure out what Napoleon meant by this. It seems fairly obvious what Northern Sun means by it: Wall Street and evangelical Christians are supposed to be locked into an unholy alliance to smite the poor and downtrodden. This doesn't jibe with my experience, but then I am not especially poor, nor have I been trodden upon on a regular basis. (The question of whether I'm smitten can wait for another time.) It is certainly useful, though, to have all your designated demons on the same side.

The JYB analysis:

Same as the old boss, as Pete Townshend might have said. A cursory glance at some of our mean streets, though, would suggest that if the poor are inclined to murder anyone, it's each other.

Ain't no sunshine for seven days, and now there's this:

What I really want right now is one of Michele's "Kill Phil" greeting cards.

But for now:

Farging weasel.

A nice little car by Fiat, or the number of episodes of Carnival of the Vanities, this week hosted by Ken Sain, who's taking a trip down Abbey Road. Seven days of bloggy goodness awaits.

So is anyone still in Connecticut?

My favorite Walt Whitman passage has always been this bit from Leaves of Grass:

Justin Katz finds multitudes inside Andrew Sullivan:

The passage that caught my eye is a quote from Sullivan's book Love Undetectable:

I don't have a particular problem with "otherness," even (especially?) if it's "essential and exhilarating," but it sounds to me like Sullivan is trying to have it both ways: he wants to be a wild and crazy guy and Ward Cleaver simultaneously. I had enough trouble with that when I was married, and I'm on the straight side of the aisle.

Is domestic bliss incompatible with, say, a Pride Parade? I don't know. I think that it probably isn't — but then there's this piece from Sullivan's Virtually Normal:

Maybe these contradictions can be resolved somewhere down the line. I hope Andrew Sullivan isn't holding his breath.

Oklahomans have something of a reputation for fatalism, perhaps even pessimism. (The Dust Bowl will do that to you.) Still, it's 2005 already, the Dow is over 10,000, but NewsOK.com's market graphic hasn't caught up with the times:

I'm sure there's an explanation for this somewhere.

This morning, I made the bald assertion that the single most important day in blogdom was 12 September 2001, that people were so moved by what they saw in the media that they simply had to say something of their own.

I think there might be some support for this premise, but I doubt anyone has any real numbers to produce. What do you think?

Chickenhead.com presents:

The Absolute Bottom 50 Blogs.

Geez, you'd think I wasn't trying or something.

(Poached from Defamer.)

No, wait, it's the "Justice & Common Sense Act" of 2005.

Well, actually, House Bill 2047 is a tort-reform measure, which would cap damages, limit attorney fees, and require jury unanimity for punitive damages.

Okay, it's not as annoying as the USA Patriot Act, at least in terms of nomenclature, but it does suggest to me that House Speaker Todd Hiett (R-Kellyville) doesn't really think it would pass if it got a name that was actually, you know, relevant.

This is not a good sign for the beginning of the legislative session.

(Via Okiedoke, where it's viewed even less favorably.)

This isn't on Automobile Magazine's Web site yet, and if they have any sense, they won't put it there.

Ezra Dyer and his pal Murph are doing the London-to-Rome circuit in a Lotus Elise. Budgetary limitations being what they are, their route runs from London, Texas to Rome, Georgia.

Somewhere west of Houston, the troopers appear, and Ezra muses:

I believe I speak for many of you when I say "Ewwwww...."

Pack up the babies and grab the old ladies, because this sucker is contagious.

Just what I needed in the dead of winter, right?

Boeing CEO Harry Stonecipher says the airframe giant is nearing a deal to sell its Wichita and Tulsa plants. Workers, said Stonecipher, should get the word in 10 to 20 days; he says there is no indication that there will be layoffs.

Tulsa's Boeing facility was originally owned by Douglas; during World War II, its products included the B-24 Liberator.

Toronto-based Onex Corp. is rumored to be the prospective buyer.

Patrick Goldstein tossed this throwaway into the Los Angeles Times:

Wounded, but undaunted, Rob Schneider strikes back in a full-page Variety ad:

And four paragraphs more. Obviously it is not wise to tweak the Schneidmeister.

(Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo opens 12 August.)

Update, 14 August: Roger Ebert comments:

Remind me not to irritate Roger Ebert.

Good riddance to Enterprise, says TeeVee's Nathan Alderman:

Especially if what's on the drawing-board is something along these lines.

The last, I promise, comment on Andrew Sullivan for at least a month.

This is from ninme:

Come to think of it, $2843.74 would just about pay off my car.

Dawn Eden is victimized by an alleged journalist to whom "fact-checking" is an available-time option, not a requirement, and McGehee, perhaps with Nick Coleman in mind, dubs the practice "Stribbing."

I dunno if this term will become as widespread as fisking, but I figure the least I can do is help it along.

No, I did not register to vote on my 18th birthday. And no, it's not because of any youthful apathy or anything like that; it's just that the offices were not open until the following Monday.

I was away from home the following year, when there was a Presidential election, and duly requested an absentee ballot. It didn't help George McGovern much, to be sure, but I wasn't about to miss out, and anyway, it was motivated more by the urge to replace Nixon than by a heartfelt belief in the McGovern agenda.

In the thirty-two years since then, I've missed, to my knowledge, maybe eight elections, only one of them big enough for a Presidential race. I show up for that tedious school-board stuff, for millages, for bond issues, for whatever. The polling place is within half a mile, which cuts down on the number of available excuses.

And to the surprise of some, I'm still a Democrat today: the bizarre behavior of (some of) the party faithful in recent years notwithstanding, I'm not ready to slam the door on them and start over. Still, I've never once voted a straight-party ticket, and while I understand why the option is there, I have no desire to use it.

I pulled the lever (well, we don't have levers, but you get the idea) for George W. Bush this past year, the first time I'd ever voted for a Republican for President. (It, um, came to me in a dream.) Next time, I'm hoping there are more than two choices, just because.

(Provoked by Dwayne.)

Last year, says the Oklahoma City Metro Association of Realtors, 19,284 homes were sold in the metro area, the highest number anyone can remember, and up about 10 percent from the previous year. The average price was $125,860, up 6.6 percent; the median price (half cost more, half cost less) was $106,383, up 6.8 percent.

Nationwide, sales of new homes set a record high.

I'm not sure how long this will last — sooner or later, rising interest rates will start to show up in mortgage rates — but for now, it's one heck of a ride, and homes in my neighborhood are approaching $75 a square foot, a figure which would have seemed utterly implausible two years ago.

Canada's national identity is verging on a crisis, reports Debbye Stratigacos from Toronto:

Is there nothing to assuage the pain of the anguished residents of the Great White North?

Okay, scratch those. How about "moral superiority"?

Or, as Dr. Laurence J. Peter once explained, "An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance."

Still, except for that hockey business, all this sounds an awful lot like our bluer states.

This chap in Tulsa is willing to change his name if the price is right.

John Cox is hoping some corporation will kick in $75k or more for him to change his first name legally — although he'd rather it wasn't Fannie Mae.

And, well, you have to figure no private individual is likely to fork over that much money to stick him with a name like "Enormous" or "Turgid," either.

Spottings took off the last two weekends so that I would have more time to fuss over, um, women younger than I; despite feeling like the plague warmed over in a low-powered microwave, I figured the least I could do was hit the streets once more.

Monday I wrote about a case before the Urban Design Commission about a builder who wanted to put a 1½-story home on a narrow lot in Midtown and was shot down because he wanted garage access from the front. The Commission told him it was out of character for the neighborhood; the builder contended that the lot was too narrow for a driveway to run all the way front to back. This is not a big lot — only 50 feet wide — and the alley in back, uneven and narrow, is surprisingly difficult to navigate, so I can see his point. (The larger question of why someone would want a 2500-square-foot home on a 7000-square-foot lot I leave for somebody with greater household demands than mine.)

High clouds and 60 degrees today, about ten warmer than spec for this date, so I reckoned there would be a good crowd at the new skate park, and indeed the place was crawling with sk8terbois and/or grrls. I watched just long enough to realize that were I in there and on wheels, I would kill myself in about ten seconds.

West of Capitol Hill and south of the Stockyards is a light-industrial area that's gone into seemingly terminal decline; it looked pretty dire 35 years ago, and it still does today. Still, I'm not prepared to write off any part of the city yet, and on SW 15th near I-44 I wondered if the massive Dell facility is going to make any meaningful difference on the near-southwest side, or if all its staff will come from way across town.

Finally, closer to home, an item of interest to one of those younger women (the one who is actually related to me): a house a few blocks over, it is reported by the Neighborhood Association, is getting the full HGTV treatment. There's no sign up, probably to deter gawking, but the location seems pretty obvious, and if it's on HGTV, it's a cinch my daughter will see it.

Well, what do you know. Firebrand University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, who has made noises about how all those nasty European types should go home and leave the American continent for the true natives like him, has the same amount of Native American ancestry as, say, William Jefferson Clinton: zilch.

I'd side with the pundits who argue that recent inflammatory statements by Churchill are insufficient grounds to sack him: you don't advance the cause of academic freedom by revoking tenure of those who rock the boat. On the other hand, playing fast and loose with the truth is good enough reason to toss anyone out on his tuchas, ethnicity be damned.

(With thanks to John Rosenberg.)

It's kind of hard to argue with most of this:

Until you get down inside the guts of it and turn up this:

(Emphasis added.)

Oh, yes. That pesky judicial-review business. Can't have any of that, can we? Why, there might be some of those activist judges out there.

Under certain extraordinary circumstances, I can see the need to suspend judicial oversight, but a mundane border-reinforcement bill hardly qualifies as extraordinary. Even beyond its backdoor attempt to turn the driver's license (which used to be a State function, remember?) into a de facto national ID card, this measure simply reeks. Yes, I'd like the borders tightened; no, I wouldn't like the government to get into the habit of thinking that the answer to any lingering legal questions is to cut the judiciary out of the loop.

(Via Matt Deatherage.)

Okiedoke this morning gives a lot of space to the rantings of Bob Nichols, who points out, correctly, that depleted-uranium weapons are being produced in Oklahoma.

Had Bob left it at that, he might have gotten away with it. But no:

Of course, to have genocide, one must have a people that is being systematically destroyed. On that basis, there is as much genocide in, say, downtown Cincinnati as there is in Iraq.

But what spooks people is "radioactive," and really, Bob, what part of the word "depleted" don't you understand? DU's own emissions are so meager that it's actually used as a radiation shield; its sheer density makes it even more efficient than lead at blocking gamma rays and other radiational nasties, and its own alpha particles can be blocked by a coat of paint or a piece of wallboard. No one is claiming that DU is actually good for you, but the threat is severely overblown.

Much like Bob's little spiel, in fact.

Way back in the fall of 1997, I saw bright prospects for Lowell "Bud" Paxson's ragtag television network, which launched the following year.

This, apparently, is the year it dies: this past week about fifty executives were pink-slipped, including President Bill Scott, which means generally one more press release before the doors close entirely.

What will happen to the sixty TV stations Pax TV owns is not clear, though NBC Universal, which owns just under a third of the network and which has been providing support for Pax stations through NBC affiliates, is presumably the most likely scavenger, especially since NBC demanded in the fall of '03 that Pax redeem NBC's Class B preferred stock and Pax begged off, pleading poverty.

It's probably a safe bet that most of the Pax stations will get new calls, since they all seem to have the ill-fated "PX" letter combination somewhere.

(Scissored out of a much longer piece by Jeff Jarvis.)

Is it too difficult to come up with a standard 80 x 15 button? For some organizations, yes, says Don Danz, it is too difficult.

What's more, says Don, "I just couldn't sleep at night knowing I had non-standard buttons on my site." I don't sleep especially well myself, but a perfunctory glance at my front page will reveal that non-standard buttons aren't high on my list of insomnia producers. (The only one I made myself, the WordPad logo, is a fright-inducing 130 x 40.) Still, he's in good company; Dave spent a good part of this winter making buttons, or so it seems.

And really, if I ever get around to redoing this front page again — well, there will be some surprises, I'm sure.

Prodded by a regular reader (hi, Jennifer!), I ventured over to Coverville this weekend, and it's a remarkable sort of place: every other day or so there's a new podcast with, they say, "the best and worst of cover songs," with "full legal licensing from ASCAP." (I guess you can ask them about BMI and/or SESAC.)

Most of the podcasts run a little over half an hour, and you know, it would be worth it just to hear Richard Cheese doing Weezer's "Buddy Holly" (in edition 49).

Mary Hodder's Napsterization.org has learned that Ask Jeeves, Inc. is buying the aggregator service Bloglines for a sum as yet undisclosed. Ask Jeeves' own blog already incorporates Bloglines links.

This would seem to be a logical development, following Google's 2003 acquisition of Pyra Labs and Blogger. Still, Step 2, as it has been so often before, remains vague:

1. Buy into blog stuff
   
2. ???
   
3. Profit
   

Not that I have any track record at predicting these things, mind you.

The OKPartisan goes one step beyond Tom Friedman's New York Times op-ed calling for an end to the posted rewards for bin Laden and friends:

I'm inclined to agree. So long as we keep a price on his head, he has a value equal to that price; I definitely like the idea of writing him off as a loss. (Besides, I rather suspect that his recent "appearances" have involved some fairly trivial special-effects techniques, and that were there any daisies in that part of the world, he'd be pushing them up.)

Eleven o'clock, and I'm switching over to the classical station for Adventures in Good Music, and the announcer stalled the playback just long enough to let us know:

Karl Haas has died.

It's one of those things you never think about. I mean, Adventures has run five days a week since 1959, and while I'm no classical-music maven, most of what I know about it I learned from Karl Haas, day by day, piece by piece.

The show began on Detroit's WJR; WCLV in Cleveland picked up distribution in 1970, where it's been ever since. (One of the weirder thrills in my life was hearing the show on WCLV itself during my first visit to Cleveland, four years ago.)

Our local station will continue to air reruns throughout the month; after that, I guess I'm just totally lost.

Thank you, Karl. You'll be very much missed.

Fark had an item this morning about Tucson's Old Spanish Trail, which is apparently neither old nor Spanish. (There's also one in Houston, if I remember correctly; it should have similar credentials.)

Not that we can snicker here in Oklahoma City. In the 1970s a subdivision went in west of Ski Island called "Canyon North," and threading down the middle of it is something called Basswood Canyon Road. Quite apart from the fact that we're not exactly overrun (underrun?) with canyons in that part of town, basswood doesn't grow here: it tends to show up in the Midwest and points east, also places not known for canyons.

Then again, County Line Road does run more or less along the (Canadian/Oklahoma) county line. And I will entertain no complaints about the Rivendell area: that's supposed to be, um, fantastic.

I'm on the Northwest Distressway this afternoon, getting ready to do the turn onto Pennsylvania and then a quick duck down NW 50th, the light goes green, and one car gets through before the yellow pops up again. I hadn't floored it or anything, being as how I was the fourth in line, but I uttered a deep and dark curse against whatever Fates were responsible for this.

And then I saw it: the fire engine, in the oncoming lane, everyone else in the vicinity having been evacuated by that seemingly-random hardware malfunction.

Which answered two questions for me: "What are those traffic-signal override devices really like?" and "You think they have any of those here?"

The fire truck cleared the intersection, the green was restored, and I made my turn.

I'm not thinking these are the answers to everyone's prayers, though. Half a mile down 50th, an ambulance was oncoming, and if it was heading for that same emergency, it was going to be late; on 50th eastbound at Pennsylvania, there is no option but to turn right, unless you're prepared to jump a barrier. Now if those can be moved by remote control, I promise to be duly impressed.

Note: This has made the email rounds several times; I wanted to see how well it works as a blog post.

In case anyone is interested, Saint Theresa is known as the Saint of the Little Ways. Meaning she believed in doing the little things in life well and with great love. She is also the patron Saint of flower growers and florists. She is represented by roses. May everyone be blessed who receives this message.

Theresa's Prayer cannot be deleted. REMEMBER to make a wish before you read the poem. That's all you have to do. There is nothing attached. Just send this to seven people and let me know what happens on the fourth day. Do not break this, please. Prayer is one of the best free gifts we receive.

There is no cost but a lot of reward. Suggestion: copy and paste rather than forward to protect email addresses and access to e-virus. (Did you make a wish?) If you don't make a wish, it won't come true. Last chance to make a wish!

St. Theresa's Prayer:

Now, send this to 7 people within the next 5 minutes and your wish will come true. And remember to send this back...you'll see why.

Can I get 84 visitors this hour? It could happen. It's not what I would wish for, though.

First, the obligatory Mark Twain quote:

I doubt if this was what drove Jennifer Puckett out of her District 2 seat after eight years, but she's history, and an election is being held today to replace her.

The local Republican Party is expressing unusual interest in this nonpartisan race. Then again, maybe it's not so unusual: one of the three other candidates is openly gay, and they hope to whip up some voter antagonism.

Which, in turn, makes my decision for me. I have no compelling urge to see a gay man on the school board, but I don't think it's the end of the world should one end up there, especially since he's just one voice out of eight. I do, however, take a dim view of the GOP's failure to comprehend the meaning of a "nonpartisan" ballot, so the least I can do is vote for the candidate they're targeting, a fellow named Jim Nimmo. Just as a reminder, you know. Nothing against the rest of you guys — I'm sure you're all sterling folks — but I have my rules.

You know, I thought I was pretty scornful in my own way:

But my lame snark can't hold a three-for-a-dollar votive to the wrath of Andrea Harris:

So there.

Fifteen years ago today, Del Shannon took his own life.

In retrospect, those who knew him — including Dawn Eden, who did the last in-depth interview with him — probably saw it coming. And those of us who didn't, but who knew his music, weren't very much surprised: anxiety and paranoia and sheer undiluted fear run through so many of his songs, and even his last chart item, a cover of Phil Phillips' "Sea of Love" (Network 47951, 1982), makes you wonder if maybe he wasn't contemplating a mutual drowning pact.

And then there's his production of Brian Hyland's 1970 remake of Curtis Mayfield's "Gypsy Woman" (Uni 55240). While the Impressions' original is full of castanets and campfires and soft kisses on the wind, Del, through Brian, goes straight for the hopelessness angle: the tempo is stolid and unyielding, the middle-eight is a veritable death march, and Brian, a better singer than most of us polka-dot bikini fans gave him credit for, sounds actually scared on "how she enchanted me".

Historians, of course, will note that Del was the first to cover a Beatles song stateside ("From Me to You," issued on Big Top 3152 in June 1963, charted at #77, thirty-nine points higher than the Fab Four's own version on Vee Jay 522 the next month with full-fledged Beatlemania still half a year away), that he made an early foray into country music (recording a version of Roger Miller's "Fair Swiss Maiden," retitled "The Swiss Maid," which did so-so in the States but became an enormous British hit), and that he gave "I Go to Pieces" to Peter and Gordon (though the Searchers, to whom it was originally pitched, gave it a pass).

But when I think of Del Shannon, I think of my not-quite-eight-year-old self, a kid in the projects who had only just gotten his very first radio (it came with a long cord, one end of which you could stick into your ear, and the other end you couldn't stick anywhere because it was bent), who, after the end of CSC Concert Hall one night, pushed the dial a few kilocycles to the left and heard:

It took me twenty years to unravel that second line, but that didn't matter. (Who knows the actual lyrics to "Louie, Louie," anyway?) That odd chord progression, that wailing voice, and that weird proto-synthesizer thing in the middle were literally my introduction to pop-rock, my ticket out of my parents' little corner of Mitch Miller-land that day in 1961. And if my musical tastes developed at odd angles after that, well, how surprised should you be?

Del Shannon's last LP during his lifetime was called Drop Down and Get Me. In any reasonable world, we'd have had to reach up.

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) comes up with another zinger:

Geez, you think he's looking for a new revenue source or something?

Tell you what, Tommy boy: you get the implants, and we'll watch. At a safe distance.

(Via Choire Sicha, filling in for Wonkette.)

It's the 1000th anniversary of the birth of Macbeth, and Scotsmen of an historical bent have persuaded Edinburgh to try to rehabilitate the onetime Scottish king's reputation, now torn and tattered no thanks to that nasty Englishman Shakespeare.

Well, yes, he did kill Duncan, but it was a semi-honorable defeat on the field of battle, not an assassination in the, um, dead of night, and anyway, this was how the throne of Scotland changed hands in those days.

I haven't seen Raphael Holinshead's Chronicles, which appeared in 1577 and which Shakespeare routinely mined for historical bits, but apparently one of Holinshead's personages, good old Macduff, from his mother's womb untimely ripp'd, was a purely fictional character, and Macbeth was in fact dispatched by Malcolm himself in 1057 after seventeen not-especially-sleepless years on the throne.

(Via Foxhound News: we reporteth, thou decideth The Glittering Eye.)

No winner in the Oklahoma City School Board District 2 race, as nobody got a majority. If there was any concerted effort to get out the social-conservative vote, it fizzled: only 1159 ballots were cast, the usual dismal numbers for a school-board election.

Gail Vines, the front-runner, and Gary Walker, the putative Great Republican Hope, will meet in a runoff in April.

An eighth of the way to a thousand — and who could have foreseen it?

Surely not Bigwig, who invented the Carnival of the Vanities 125 weeks ago. But here it is just the same, hosted by Coyote Blog, your weekly compendium of blogaliciousness in a handy single-page format.

(Bigwig probably would have frowned on a nonce word like "blogaliciousness," too, but everyone's children go somewhere astray at some point.)

My first encounter with Ayn Rand and friends was when I was a high-school kid in South Carolina. The oddest aspect of it, now that I think about it, was that the Randians would make their semi-extensive outreach facilities open to us kids in parochial schools; it's like Henry Ford stocking Chrysler parts, just in case.

Still, enough of it stuck with me to elicit a few laughs at The 25 Most Inappropriate Things An Objectivist Can Say During Sex.

(Via Hit & Run, and probably not safe for work.)

R. Alex Whitlock lists ten mistakes made by bloggers. Let's see how many of them we can find right here at dustbury.com:

  1.  Only link to what we've already read and only say what we've already heard. I wouldn't say I never do this, but I try not to bring up a topic unless I actually have something to say about it. On the other hand, if I tell you to go somewhere now and read, it's probably something of Bill Whittle's, in which case you already have and good for you, or you haven't yet and what's taking you so long?

  2.  False modesty. But I have so much to be modest about!

  3.  Clearing the archives. I think I've deleted half a dozen pages in nine years, none of which were part of the daily bloggage. (I did once have a message board, now defunct, but it got little-enough use that I'd say nothing in it has been missed.)

  4.  Become overly concern[ed] with blogging "rules." There are really only three rules: TrackBacks should not be sent unless there's an actual link involved, Glenn Reynolds doesn't need the linkage, and Oliver Willis hasn't earned the linkage.

  5.  Fail to follow basic punctuation rules. Not an issue. On this. Site.

  6.  Substitute slang for ideas. Not an issue. If I substitute anything for ideas, it's bombast.

  7.  Fail to take advantage of 95% of the blogosphere. Yeah, but which 95 percent?

  8.  Become a one-note charlie. I don't think that's a problem around here. By the way, ballot access in this state blows, and I haven't linked to anything of Susanna's in days.

  9.  Decline to put up an "about the author" link. Not that anyone needs to click on this.

10.  Decline to participate in their own comments section. I haven't run an exact count, but I suspect that of the 7800 comments posted so far, at least a quarter (this would be 1950) were from me, and it could be as much as a third.

Based on these criteria, I believe this site rates "Could Be Suckier."

Hip-hop is a business, in case you hadn't noticed. In the Oklahoma Gazette this week, Preston Jones talks to Terry Monday, program director and host of Friday's "Unsigned Hype" on KVSP-FM, and, says Monday, a lot of the wannabes haven't noticed either:

Not so easy as that, though:

This is no doubt true of other musical genres as well, but rappers, at least in stereotype, have the most, um, conspicuous consumption.

The Oklahoma Department of Commerce has reported that three biomass-processing firms are contemplating facilities in Soonerland.

The companies were not named. One is apparently is targeting slaughterhouse wastes; another is interested in more general livestock waste; a third seeks to recover natural gas from landfill.

Inasmuch as we're not likely to run out of any of this stuff any time soon, I've got to assume that these biomass firms are coming in for a long stay, and, well, we're talking alternative energy here, which is generally considered to be a Good Thing.

The discussion was about a proposed new notebook computer aimed at the $100 price point, but Ravenwood found this notion lurking in the back somewhere:

All in how you define your priorities. I mean, God forbid someone should have to cancel HBO because of dental work or something, right?

Actually, I am disinclined to blame the actual "poor" persons, except in blatant instances of malfeasance; the fault, in general, lies with those individuals who have built their careers on the notion that if everyone doesn't get to spend each and every Sunday in status-symbol land, it's a symptom of deep, dark inequities in the system, which only government action can ameliorate.

(Disclosure: I once paid $105 for a pair of sneakers.)

Found at Gawker:

I'm guessing that what they're looking for is someone to hack together the "FOX Facts" that crawl under the usual panoply of talking heads, in which case the most salient qualification would be the ability to say damned near nothing in very few words.

Which, alas, lets me out. ("Very few words" is not my most effective mode.) Not that I have any compelling reason to go to New York.

Besides that, I mean.

This makes two Gawker references in a single day. I expect Nick Denton, Lord of Darkness, will eventually demand tribute.

In the meantime, there's this:

I thought this was amusing enough to work up a response, left it up for about ninety seconds, then decided that maybe it wasn't. I reformatted it and stuck it up in a Test directory, then passed the link to Dawn herself to gauge her response.

To my amazement, she linked to it.

Now, of course, it's an Official Item, and I can't very well take it down. On the other hand, it doesn't really belong in the Test directory. So I've copied it to the Writings area, where it can be found here; eventually, I'll roll the first one over to the second and no one (save SiteMeter) need be the wiser.

And George? Would it make any difference if I said I saw her first? (I didn't think so.)

Mergers in the credit-card industry have left the top ten issuers with 84 percent of the market.

I don't know whether this necessarily spells a deterioration in service: I currently have accounts with three of the top ten, and have no particular problems. One characteristic I value highly is the willingness to listen to whatever bee I may have in my bonnet that day and yet not blow me off; each of my favored issuers has been tested by me and found to be at least somewhat amenable to persuasion.

Unlike number three on the list, with whom I have no experience, and who, says Erica, deserves a hearty round of Number Two.

Mike at Okiedoke has a thoughtful piece on the decline in union membership in Oklahoma, now down to 86,000 or so. Losses in manufacturing jobs and the state's right-to-work law are the usual suspects, though the state government does its part: the recent appointment of the ever-surly Patrick B. McGuigan, former editorial-page editor of The Oklahoman, to a deputy Labor Commissioner position, would seem to bespeak hostility toward working folks. (McGuigan, quips Mike, is to worker rights what Michael Jackson is to children, a comparison I hope is purely superficial.)

I've carried a union card; I've carried a picket sign or two in my day. There's a lot of that old labor vs. management distrust still out there today. But I can't help wonder if maybe the union as we know it is the wrong vessel for change, especially when they keep coming up with stuff like this:

Which, were I running a production line, would strongly suggest that I run it with men just to gain that 3-percent added efficiency.

(With thanks to Ravenwood's Universe.)

House Democratic leaders want Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK 4) off the Ethics Committee, apparently because Cole kicked in five grand to Tom DeLay's legal-defense fund.

In a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer asked that Cole and Lamar Smith (R-TX), also a contributor to DeLay's fund, not be appointed to the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.

From the Pelosi-Hoyer letter:

Cole has claimed that Hastert knew about the donation before he started handing out committee assignments.

This would ordinarily be a "Aw, blow it out yer knickers, Nancy" sort of deal, but the ongoing ties to DeLay, who very likely will face more questioning of his ethics, suggest that it might be useful for House Republicans to shuffle the committee assignments once more, if only to sidetrack Democratic sniping.

"I keep seeing these spots before my eyes."

"Have you seen a doctor?"

"So far, no. Just spots."

I remember very little about my one bout with the measles, back in the early 1960s, except that, as attacks on one's person go, it couldn't really be characterized as "measly": this was full on, flat out, balls to the wall.

Fortunately, I turned up no photos of my measled self, which, as I recall, resembled an overripe persimmon, a remarkable observation coming from someone who at that point in his life had never so much as seen a persimmon. Pomegranates, maybe. On the other hand, the pomegranate is the wrong shade of off-red, and then there are those yecchy seeds, consumption of which will land you in the underworld.

This condition passed, although the facial lesions seemed to linger a few days longer than the other symptoms. Just as well, I reasoned, since I couldn't see them from my side of the face. (I avoided mirrors even then.)

Now one should not make light of childhood diseases, as they can manifest themselves later as far nastier adult ailments. On the other hand, it was either this or write about my dunk in the cesspool, which I figure no one wants to hear about.

(Per assignment.)

Our esteemed health-insurance provider, CFI Care (not its real initials), has been pestering me for weeks to sign up for some third-party "disease-management program," and their HQ in deepest [location redacted] calls about three times every two weeks. When I don't respond, CFI sends a letter to scold me, then the cycle repeats.

I was expecting the regular scolding in this week's mail, but instead got a security advisory. It seems that the aforementioned third party had had a security breach which may have jeopardized my personal information, had I bothered to send them any. The nature of this breach?

No Trojans, no keystroke recorders, no secret mirrors in Estonia: some guy just went in and hoisted a PC off someone's desk.

Yeah, I want these people to have all my medical records at their disposal, don't I?

Remember this?

The Second Amendment Foundation carries this to its logical conclusion:

And it gets better:

As Geoffrey notes, "Guns don't kill people. Bridges do."

The city council of Warr Acres, as predicted here last month, will consider calling an election for a 1-cent sales-tax increase at its meeting next Tuesday.

The council is considering basically the same package recommended to them by a city commission: 0.5 percent as a permanent increase, and 0.5 to expire after five years, to be routed to a trust fund for future improvements and/or emergencies. (I had predicted 0.75 percent total, two-thirds to the trust fund.)

Let's say Bob and Tom, about the same age, work together at the same place, making the same amount of money. Personal accounts for Social Security are introduced; Bob takes one particular basket of options, and Tom takes another.

Jump forward X number of years (but let's keep the dollar constant for the sake of argument), and Bob is retiring on, let's say, $3200 a month, Tom on $2150. If a right-winger is moved to say anything here, he'll probably congratulate Bob on his astute investments; a leftist might point out how these personal accounts were a bad idea in the first place — why, look at the inequality of the system! — and might even think about suggesting Tom sue the government.

This is obviously not the only disconnect between the two sides, but it's one I find particularly disturbing.

Then I turned up this at The Shape of Days:

And Ace adds:

Don't be mean, Ace. The left hasn't had a lot to cheer about this century.

On second thought, go ahead. It's not like you're ever going to be lacking for material.

It's not even listed yet on any of the other local versions, but yes, craigslist is now open in Oklahoma City.

Matt Deatherage noticed it before I did.

It's not every day a McDonald's is torn down, and it's a shock to see the vacant lot at NW 67th and May. A bigger and badder Mickey D's is promised for this space, but it's not so big a space to begin with, so something, either facilities or parking, is going to take a hit.

Speaking of shocks, they're taking a hit if you drive anywhere on May these days: the late-winter pothole season has produced some impressive blossoms, ready to take a chunk out of those overpriced rims you bought last year.

And still on May, doing the grocery-shopping thing this afternoon, I watched a puzzled woman scanning shelf after shelf for some arcane item or other. "They always hide the one you really want," I said.

"I know. And this has to be special. Valentine's Day, you know."

"I hope he appreciates all this," I said.

"He'd better," she replied. "Because he's getting dumped right after."

Nothing like, um, softening up the blow, so to speak.

Meanwhile, something unexpected (at least by me) is planned for the new Oklahoma History Center going in near the Capitol: a reconstruction of the lunch counter at the downtown Katz Drug Store, the site of Clara Luper's sit-in back in 1958, the first blow struck against segregated eateries in Oklahoma City. (The store itself is long gone, courtesy of urban renewal.) This is an important chapter in the national civil-rights story, and it's good to see it getting the attention it deserves.

Sign on a marquee near May and Grand: "SUNDAY SERVICES START AT 9." A church? Nope: a tire store.

Greg Hlatky gets an actual piece of hate mail, and it's about, of all things, his lack of comments:

Signed by one "U. R. Pathetic," who presumably comes from a long Pathetic line himself.

Though this is not technically a "rt. wing" blog, I tend to lean toward the "self-centered ego-tripper" archetype myself. I figure anyone who hasn't figured this out by now is too dumb to read this site, and has gone on to pastures more regularly fertilized.

God help this little troll should he run into someone with less patience than I.

See? Sometimes they do come back from "hiatus."

I did like these paragraphs in her opening statement:

Historically, she's always had something interesting to say, and I'm happy to see her back at her soapbox.

Me, on the recent school-board election:

The Oklahoman, in an editorial last month, characterized this sort of thing as "improper etiquette," thereby condemning the practice while suggesting that its infringement is among the more minor of peccadillos.

This morning in an op-ed, five former Oklahoma City mayors expand on this premise:

And the bottom line, as they see it:

Signing off on the piece were Jim and Ron Norick, Patience Latting, Andy Coats and Kirk Humphreys. I think it would have carried more weight had current Mayor Mick Cornett added his name to the list; then again, Cornett, having been the beneficiary of exactly such actions to support his election, might not be in the best position to disavow them.

My opinion is as it was: if these are to be made partisan elections, it's fine with me, but if they're supposed to be nonpartisan, then the parties need to keep their noses out of the proceedings. Period.

"Hey, everybody, we've got nukes!" sings the Dear Leader, or someone under his Glorious Thumb.

Phelps isn't buying:

This suggests a dialogue of sorts:

DPRK: You can no longer ignore us, for we have nukes.

GWB: Did you hear something?

DPRK: I said, "You can no longer ignore us, for we have nukes."

GWB: No, you don't.

DPRK: Yes, we do.

GWB: No, you don't. You don't even have lawn mowers, fercrissake. You think we're gonna believe you have nucular weapons? Not a chance, Kimbo.

DPRK: We will not be treated in this manner!

GWB: Just watch.

Diplomatic considerations might preclude this actual interchange, but at the moment, I'd bet on Dubya's poker-playing ability.

(Procured through the Fire Ant Gazette.)

In Britain, they're called "doorstep lenders," but we have them here too: loan offices which specialize in lending to persons of questionable or nonexistent credit. More mainstream lenders tend to look down their noses at these competitors, and there is constant negative attention from opponents of such schemes.

Up to now, most such lenders have handed over cash through storefronts: there have been subprime credit cards, but so far issuers of plastic haven't approached the astonishing annual percentage rates typical of a cash-advance place. This is apparently about to change, at least in Britain, where Provident Financial, a large doorstep lender, has opened up a subsidiary called Vanquis Bank, whose purpose is to issue Visa cards at 49.9 percent or even higher rates. Few American card issuers venture beyond 30 percent.

With limits starting around the £150 range, the Vanquis Visa could be considered a comparatively-inexpensive alternative to the storefront lenders, but Her Majesty's Government is of course incensed that anyone could even think of such a thing.

Provident is already offering a Visa-branded card that allows access to payday-loan proceeds via ATM.

(Via The World Wide Rant.)

Zero One, maybe.

Not that I'm surprised or anything.

(And while we're on the subject, allow me to point to my Sixties-obsessed Valentine's Day Mix Tape, 25 songs guaranteed to — well, nothing, actually.)

Dawn Eden, recently a topic in the New York Post's infamous Page Six, strikes back on behalf of rather a lot of us:

Richard Johnson, a name so fraught with phallacy that you'd think it almost has to be a pseudonym, is the editor of Page Six.

(Oh, and if the Post link breaks, as I have a feeling it might, let me know. I have a screenshot.)

(Update, 1:30 pm: Would you believe the Post ran the same piece again, with no substantive changes?)

Sammi Smith, who rode Kris Kristofferson's "Help Me Make It Through The Night" to high on the country and pop charts in 1971, has died in Oklahoma City.

Jewel Fay Smith was born in Orange County, California in 1943; she dropped out of school early and began singing professionally. Her first record of note was "So Long, Charlie Brown, Don't Look For Me Around" for Columbia in 1968. Occasional collaborator Waylon Jennings dubbed her "Girl Hero"; she continued to appear on the country charts through 1986.

(Courtesy of Phillip Coons.)

In yet another telecommunications merger, Verizon is buying MCI for $6.7 million, beating out a bid by rival Baby Bell Qwest Communications.

From the Department of Plus ça change:

Dinosaurs don't have wagons. If they did, they'd be arranging them in a circle right about now.

Um, well, no, really it isn't.

JSC Speed has introduced something called the TurboXS DTEC, which takes one ordinary Nintendo Game Boy Advance (not included) and turns it into an actual automotive-diagnostic device. The various modules allow you to read turbo boost, exhaust temperature, intake air temperature, and RPMs; future modules will include detonation sensors and skidpad readings in g.

It won't read OBD II diagnostics, at least not yet, which means that there are still going to be the usual too-cheap-to-buy-a-manual knobs knocking on my mailbox asking how to pull the codes on their freaking '96 Mazdas, but you can't have everything.

(Via Kotaku.)

You know, this used to be done a lot better in the Good Old Days.

And I should know.

(Tip o' the hair-net to McGehee.)

Fond as I am of Movable Type 2.64, it's not really a viable blog platform anymore: its spam repellents are inadequate without a phalanx of plug-ins, and as this database gets larger — it's over 10 mb now — it takes longer to accomplish anything that requires a rebuild (which is almost anything).

MT 3.15 permits dynamic pages with PHP, which would presumably require me to learn a smattering of PHP, but nothing I'd consider particularly heinous. This is probably the simplest upgrade path: I've done three MT upgrades before, so it's not something that scares me.

Still, I'm wondering about the competition. If you use something else, please tell me why you think it's better than MT. My major considerations are ease of importation, since I have almost 4000 entries to move, and spam resistance. (Price is really not a consideration; I'm willing to spend what I need to, though the cheapest is likely WordPress, which my host already offers as a freebie.)

It was always thus: you read The Tulsa Tribune for news, and the Tulsa World for, um, well, no one really knows why anyone read the Tulsa World. But there were two papers, operating under one of those Joint Operating Agreements, and all was well with the world — or with the World, anyway, which shut down the JOA in 1992 and acquired monopoly status.

Editorially, the Tribune was farther right than the World, but the problem, from the World's point of view, wasn't the Tribune's politics: it was the fact that the Tribune was in a position to keep an eye on the Lorton family's wheelings and dealings, not all of which made it into their paper.

And the Lortons still don't like attention being drawn to their back-door deals, in any way, shape, size or form. When their slate of Tulsa City Council candidates didn't do well enough to secure a pro-Lorton majority, the World began attacks on two of their opponents, and World associates put together a recall petition against them, which alleges no wrongdoing, only that they vote the "wrong way."

The World's latest scheme is to fume at bloggers. Both Chris Medlock, a Councilman who opposes the World's agenda, and Michael Bates, a community activist who has been covering the opposition, have received nasty letters from a World vice-president threatening them with copyright-infringement suits for quoting World articles and linking to the World's Web site. This sort of thing would be laughed out of any courtroom in the country, which undoubtedly is why the threats came from a World officer and not from its legal team. (What'll you bet that the World board actually called in the lawyers, and were told flatly that they had no case?)

If it weren't so pathetic, it would almost be tragic. There are many cities like Tulsa, where a favored few seek to maximize their profits at the expense of everyone else; what makes Tulsa different is the World, which evidently would rather be a conspirator than a crusader. The people of Tulsa are the poorer for it.

I was kind of hoping no one noticed, but no such luck.

Anyway, the MSM came calling at Surlywood, and shot about an hour and a half of video (on a good ol' Betacam) of yours truly acting in a bloggish manner; some small fraction of the footage wound up on the KWTV Morning Show today. Mercifully, they haven't made the video stream available on their Web site.

I have been warned that further snippets may show up in Part 3 of this series, which airs Thursday.

Not that I ever had a shot at her or anything, but Jacqueline Passey is swearing off guys until she finishes school. Inasmuch as study requires concentration, and dating borders on being the antithesis of concentration, I don't blame her in the least.

Meanwhile, closer to home, one of the hotties in the adjacent office showed up today sporting a strip of gold alloy with a large crystalline mineral mounted thereupon, excusing her from further participation in the dating game. And really, it's about time: it's always seemed implausible to me that someone hadn't snapped her up by now. Not that I ever had a shot at her or anything.

Fortunately for the likes of me, Valentine's Day is a good 364 days away.

Those who follow my World Tour reports will note that I do a fairly respectable job of avoiding the usual tourist destinations. (I mean, three days in South Dakota without either Rushmore or Sturgis? Heresy!) Matt Rosenberg would probably applaud:

Okay, I did schlep Dawn Eden through Bricktown that one time. But it was on the way, and it's not like the place was full of locals or anything.

Dear Howard Kurtz:

Tulsa is not the capital of Oklahoma.

Sincerely,

C. G. Hill
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (which is)

(prompted by Michael Bates)

Rose Union Elementary School will be the name of the new grade school in the Deer Creek district in far northwest Oklahoma County, and the board has already announced that it's going to be overcrowded the moment it's built.

The new school, to be located on NW 220th east of MacArthur, is well away from the two other grade schools in Deer Creek, but student population is growing at more than 10 percent a year. (Current student counts are here.)

As reported by KOKC radio, transcribed by The Downtown Guy:

The Heartland Flyer is the state's only railroad passenger service. And it's been getting more riders lately; during the fourth quarter of 2004, 14,062 riders took the train, up 27 percent from the fourth quarter of 2003. The track itself is getting some much-needed upgrades this spring.

Even with the additional riders, this route, like most Amtrak routes outside the BosWash corridor, is losing money, and there's always the question of whether the government should subsidize this sort of thing at all. Right now, though, I'm not going to gripe much if the state does kick in $3 million to support the train, which is admittedly a triumph of "Wow, cool" over cold sober reflection. Some days I do that.

Has it been a week already? Of course it has. The 126th edition of Carnival of