Category archives from Movable Type, 19 August 2002 through 5 September 2006 (with number of entries)

Almost Yogurt  (729)
Base Paths  (26)
Birthday Suitable  (73)
Blogorrhea  (937)
Bogus History  (19)
City Scene  (506)
Common Cents  (92)
Driver’s Seat  (257)
Dyssynergy  (702)
Entirely Too Cool  (131)
Family Joules  (80)
Fileophile  (14)
General Disinterest  (323)
Greatest Hits  (40)
Immaterial Witness  (103)
Life and/or Death  (67)
Listing to One Side  (30)
Net Proceeds  (160)
Next Generation  (39)
Outgoing Mail  (23)
Overmodulation  (135)
PEBKAC  (221)
Political Science Fiction  (852)
QOTW  (42)
Rag Trade  (40)
Say What?  (62)
Scams and Spams  (52)
Screaming Memes  (50)
Soonerland  (669)
Special Guest Scriveners  (5)
Surlywood  (107)
Table for One  (216)
TANSTAAFL  (12)
Tongue and Groove  (363)
Warn Mode Due  (30)
Wastes of Oxygen  (40)
Weather or Not  (91)
World Tour ’03  (25)
World Tour ’04  (23)
World Tour ’05  (25)
World Tour ’06  (12)
Worth a Fork  (78)
You Asked For It  (32)
Your 15 Minutes Are Up  (17)

Monthly archives from Movable Type, 19 August 2002 through 5 September 2006 (with number of entries)

September 2006  (24)
August 2006  (171)
July 2006  (169)
June 2006  (171)
May 2006  (176)
April 2006  (171)
March 2006  (176)
February 2006  (163)
January 2006  (197)
December 2005  (234)
November 2005  (228)
October 2005  (208)
September 2005  (202)
August 2005  (206)
July 2005  (130)
June 2005  (171)
May 2005  (168)
April 2005  (154)
March 2005  (167)
February 2005  (145)
January 2005  (148)
December 2004  (145)
November 2004  (132)
October 2004  (155)
September 2004  (131)
August 2004  (125)
July 2004  (85)
June 2004  (123)
May 2004  (143)
April 2004  (133)
March 2004  (130)
February 2004  (124)
January 2004  (138)
December 2003  (132)
November 2003  (117)
October 2003  (149)
September 2003  (141)
August 2003  (130)
July 2003  (82)
June 2003  (129)
May 2003  (145)
April 2003  (136)
March 2003  (147)
February 2003  (121)
January 2003  (113)
December 2002  (124)
November 2002  (112)
October 2002  (129)
September 2002  (104)
August 2002  (38)

Pre-Movable Type archives, 23 June 2000 through 18 August 2002

1-18 August 2002
July 2002
June 2002
May 2002
April 2002
March 2002
February 2002
January 2002
December 2001
November 2001
October 2001
September 2001
August 2001
July 2001
June 2001
May 2001
April 2001
March 2001
February 2001
January 2001
December 2000
November 2000
October 2000
September 2000
August 2000
July 2000
June 2000

The most maddening thing, of course, is that during the Quiet Times, my traffic went up about twelve percent. Obviously I should post less.

So why start again? Well, for one thing, the old database, with seven thousand and odd items, was getting cranky. For another, it’s not like anything is missing: all the old posts are still archived and are available at their original URLs. And the last time I ran an export of said database, it clipped off at the 18-MB point for some reason, meaning that if I reimported it, I’d have to port over a couple months’ worth of entries anyway, and I’ve already put enough work into this thing.

However, my string of consecutive days with posts remains intact. (It’s at 2,266, if anyone cares, and why should you?)

Stuff from the old templates will be gradually reintroduced. Right now, I just want to get moving again.

My thanks to Liz Lubowitz, at whose designs I sneaked a peek, and to Melody, who held down the fort in my enforced absence.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled bloggage.

The state of Maine is resisting efforts to give it a second area code, preferring to stick with 207.

TamsPalm, the Palm OS Blog, presents Carnival of the Vanities #207, and since there’s only so much real estate on a Palm screen, the carnival is nicely divided up into sections, in case you’re reading it on the go.

A couple weeks’ worth of old posts in the archives still have comment windows, because I haven’t yet gone in to edit them out; however, the windows don’t work anymore, so if you’re getting glared at by MT if you try, that’s why.

Eventually I’ll get around to cleaning that stuff up and putting up a page of archive links. (Update: You can now access all the old archives, by category or by month, here.)

In fact, I was seriously thinking of chunking this look entirely and going to a new one, but I figured I had enough people peeved at me already.

I posted this at, um, a dating site:

“I just lost the database with 7200 blog posts.”

Oh, that’s bad.

“No, that’s good. All the original posts are archived, and the site will run much more quickly now without all that dead weight.”

Oh, that’s good.

“No, that’s bad. It plays hell with the continuity, especially if you have a regular audience.”

Oh, that’s bad.

“No, that’s good. At least they can’t take me for granted.”

[this could go on for hours]

It is with great relief that I announce that it did not.

Or is it? Hertz is offering something called the Green Collection, but it’s vaguely chartreuse at best:

The company is touting models with EPA highway ratings of 28 or more miles per gallon, with models like Toyota Camry, Ford Fusion, Buick LaCrosse, and Hyundai Sonata on the list.

Where are the hybrids? Heck, where are the non-hybrid cars with really decent gas mileage, like a Honda Civic?

The Buick LaCrosse gets 19 mpg in the city, and 27 on the highway, according to the EPA’s own site, FuelEconomy.gov. 19. Nine-frickin’-teen miles per gallon is not green.

Actually, none of the Hertz “Collections” qualify as entirely true to the adjective given. Their Fun Collection, inexplicably, includes things like the Chevrolet HHR, a PT Cruiser ripoff that resembles a ’49 Suburban, and, well, the PT Cruiser.

Still, 28 mpg on the highway sounds impressive, especially for something that qualifies as a mid-sized sedan — if you haven’t driven any recent mid-sized sedans.

I think I have the RSS thingamajig working now. The URL has changed, however: it’s now at http://www.dustbury.com/feed.

Is there any interest in an Atom feed? If so, I’ll see if I can work one up.

(Title stolen from the Oklahoma Gazette.)

Update: It’s here.

File under “Terribly Catchy”: from the Dawn Eden Archives, “You Did Me Wrong”, written and sung by Dawn herself, circa 1990, in splendid medium-fi, worthy of your favorite girl-group mix.

You really should play it twice and let it sink in. It’s that nifty, and it takes only 4:18 for the twin-spin.

A tip of the bonnet to Joe Ward, who plays all those instruments behind her.

Rocket Jones actually has an apology for a post title, which happens to be “It’s my party and I’ll die if I want to”:

Sorry for the mixed-up title. You see, my birthday is coming up, and this year my wife gifted me with several of those crappy horror movies that I love so much.

Which, of course, makes the title perfect, since, as anyone who’s seen said crappy horror movies knows, you would die too, if it happened to you.

Reportedly, this comes from the Policy and Procedures Manual of the Tulsa Police:

Criminal violations of immigration law such as undocumented entry into the United States are appropriately dealt with at, or near the point of entry, or by a federal warrant. Other deplorable offenses, such as overstaying a work, educational, or special visa, are considered civil violations and not criminal offenses.

The Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS) has the responsibility and authority to enforce federal immigration laws. Their officers are uniquely prepared for this law enforcement responsibility due to their special training in dealing with the complexities and fine distinctions of immigration laws.

Therefore, officers of the Tulsa Police Department will not stop, detain, question or arrest any person solely on the basis that the individual might have unlawfully entered this country or exceeded his/her authorization to remain in the United States. Furthermore, officers shall not enforce the provisions of federal immigration law either by arrest or by placing holds on persons suspected of being undocumented aliens. This policy applies to situations where immigration status is brought to an officer’s attention either in the context of an arrest, during a criminal investigation, or otherwise.

If, during the course of an investigation, an officer obtains reasonable suspicion that an individual possesses, or should possess immigration credentials such as a visa, passport, alien registration card, or any other official documentation issued by the BCIS, the officer may request such documentation for identification purposes only.

I’m just cynical enough to wonder how much of this is wanting to avoid trespassing on BCIS’ turf — these are Federal laws, after all — and how much of it is wanting to avoid confrontation with open-borders advocates.

On the upside, now we know that overstaying one’s student visa is “deplorable.”

(Via Meeciteewurkor.)

Programming is an unusual art form: it fights back. Part of the collateral damage is the bug. (If your immediate response is “That’s actually a feature,” you’ve been doing this too long.)

And the smaller it is, the harder it is to get a grip on. Terry found this anomaly in Firefox:

I was generating a monthly archive list from a database…. Simple, straight-forward. Until I added May. It viewed over the top of April. June did the same. July viewed normally, as did the rest of the months of the year. This only happened in Firefox. IE and Opera were fine. To make it weirder, it straightened right out if I made the date May 2006. Apparently only strings of 4 characters or less were affected. Bizarre.

So I went back over everything I’d written. I stripped every div out of the file and reduced it to that one element, an unordered list. A piece at a time, I disassembled the li definition until only 2 things remained —

text-indent:-2em;
font-weight:strong

It didn’t matter which of those 2 lines I took out — removing either one fixed it.

But combined, it blew up. CSS is not my strong point, as should be obvious, but I’m wondering if maybe those two parameters overlap slightly: bolding the text changes its size, after all. Still, two em is a fair amount of real estate on screen, and it’s not like she was using Double Secret Ultra Bold or anything.

What a wonderful use of 4 hours. Now I have to decide if it’s worth the hassle to file a report on it.

Just email them a copy of the article and let them figure it out.

For some reason I can’t imagine this on a German car: it’s a Hello Kitty exhaust pipe. I don’t know if it’s a one-off or if it’s actually in production, but the ad campaign, if the latter, would seem to be obvious: Puts the “cat” back in “catalytic converters”!

James Frey, the Milli Vanilli of memoirists, and publisher Random House will settle various class-action lawsuits filed against them by aggrieved readers of Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, which was billed as “nonfiction.”

How readers will be compensated:

To receive refunds — $23.95 for the hardcover, $14.95 for paperback — consumers will have to submit a receipt or some other proof of purchase: for the hardcover, page 163; for the paperback, the front cover. They will also need to sign a sworn statement that they bought the book because they believed it was a memoir.

A word to librarians: lock up this title now, before the patrons start ripping up your circulating copies.

(Via The Consumerist.)

Update, 10 am, 9 September: Chase at Taste the World thinks this is a good enough idea to extend to other forms of deception.

This can’t be good:

The Walt Disney Company is experimenting with ways to communicate with its visitors by non-visual means in order to enhance visitors’ experiences and protect the visual landscape. We have successfully created a technology for pavement “grooves and ridges” which cause tires literally to hum a tune as a vehicle passes over them! In the future, this non-visual “cue” to guests could let them know they are approaching a Disney property and bring smiles to their faces.

The House of Mouse is late again: we’ve had this sort of “technology” in Oklahoma City for years. If you take NE 36th westbound from Kelley to Lincoln at exactly 47 mph (which is a tad in excess of the speed limit, so don’t do that), you get a pretty fair transcription of Ron Bushy’s drum solo in Iron Butterfly’s “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida”.

John Owen Butler finds one saving grace in this scheme:

Maybe corporate sponsorship of stretches of highway might just get them fixed.

Think we could interest the makers of Accutane^® in sponsoring the pockmarked surface of NW 50th between Pennsylvania and May?

From the “Monologue” section of the Oklahoman’s editorial page today, attributed to www.inopinion.com:

In her first day as anchor of the CBS Evening News, Katie Couric broke the story that Vanity Fair would publish the first photos of Suri Cruise. Immediately after, Walter Cronkite made a note to himself to spin in his grave just as soon as he gets there.

These revolutions, incidentally, will not be televised.

Zillow.com lets another $2819 out of the price tag here at the palatial Surlywood estate; the Zestimate, once pushing $120,000 for no discernible reason, is now down to $105,082.

At this rate, the numbers should be at least somewhat plausible in two or three weeks.

(Previous Zestimates recorded here.)

Detroit Lions defensive-line coach Joe Cullen is under suspension for Sunday’s game with the Seahawks, partially because he placed an order at a Wendy’s drive-thru in Dearborn without any clothes on on the 24th of August.

As grievous offenses go, this one is pretty trivial compared to the other charge against Cullen: he was busted for DUI last week. The Lions, in a statement, called both incidents “alcohol-related misdemeanors.”

Wendy’s presumably didn’t offer to Biggie-size anything for Cullen.

A year ago, Oklahoma Natural Gas Company offered what they called a Voluntary Fixed-Price Plan, under which you would pay $8.393 per dekatherm for the next twelve months, regardless of the actual price of natural gas. I passed, noting that gas, at the time, was about a buck and a half cheaper than that.

It didn’t stay that way, though, as the numbers show:

• November: 2.4 used at $11.044; total price $26.51; VFP price $20.14; loss of $6.37.

• December: 4.4 used at $11.550; total price $50.82; VFP price $36.93; loss of $13.89.
• January: 9.7 used at $12.012; total price $116.52; VFP price $81.41; loss of $35.11.
• February: 6.4 used at $9.589; total price $61.37; VFP price $53.72; loss of $7.65.
• March: 7.6 used at $8.455; total price $64.26; VFP price $63.79; loss of $0.47.
• April: 4.6 used at $8.660; total price $39.83; VFP price $38.61; loss of $1.22.
• May: 2.0 used at $8.781; total price $17.56; VFP price $16.79; loss of $0.77.
• June: 1.2 used at $8.486; total price $10.19; VFP price $10.07; loss of $0.12.
• July: 1.1 used at $7.520; total price $8.55; VFP price $9.53; gain of $0.98.
• August: 1.0 used at $7.566; total price $7.82; VFP price $8.67; gain of $0.85.
• September: 0.9 used at $7.577; total price $7.06; VFP price $7.82; gain of $0.76.
• Cumulative: 41.3 used at $9.939; total price $410.49; VFP price $346.89; loss of $63.40.

(Rounding errors lurk.)

It’s not on their Web site yet, but the flyer with the new bill contains the details of next year’s VFP: it’s $9.25 per dekatherm. I have until the 20th of October to either sign up or start whining for another year.

“It was turning into a hazard,” he said, and I suppose it was awfully close to the power lines at that. So last week he brought out the chainsaw, with the results you see. (Click to embiggen.) Yesterday most of the detritus was hauled off. Admittedly, I have something of a reputation as a treehugger, so I wasn’t exactly overjoyed at seeing it come down, but hey, it’s their tree, and for all I know, clearing this space might actually help with the process of selling the house, which is presumably uppermost in their agenda right about now. Still, when something you’ve seen every day for three years disappears, it takes a while for the image to right itself in the brain and the correction factors to be applied. In another three years, I might well forget about it — until, of course, I browse the archives for something or other.

Say, from 1 to 100.

(Suggested by Venomous Kate.)

On New Year’s Day, I issued a batch of predictions. For the Oklahoma Redhawks of the Pacific Coast League, I projected the following:

Actual results:

Considering the fact that the ‘Hawks got off to a 9-18 start, 74-70 doesn’t sound all that bad, and nobody came close to Round Rock this season anyway. (The Express finished at 85-59, 11 games in front.)

Still, the 8-ball is a tad cloudier than I’d prefer.

Governor Henry introduces the Oklahoma Centennial Stamp, to be issued next January:

(Photo by the Oklahoman’s Nate Billings, from the AP wire. Inexplicably, this wasn’t to be found at NewsOK.com.)

Forget these sandals, if you can. What catches my eye is this statement:

Nicole Richie has become the new face of Jimmy Choo, the hot Hollywood shoemaker.

Are shoemakers looking for faces now?

Then again, I don’t suppose anyone is going to write “Nicole Richie has become the new foot of Jimmy Choo.”

Amazingly, I have some new roses coming in, which reminds me that today is World Naked Gardening Day, a time to give the sunshine a chance to do for you what it does for your flowers. (Yeah, eventually they wilt, but they’re outside 24/7 and you’re not.)

Last year’s commentary on WNGD proved to be surprisingly popular, and I need not repeat it here, except to echo one of the cautions: you might want to have something on when you bring out the Weed Wacker.

And someone asked if I’d ever been, um, damaged during activities of this sort. Well, not with the string trimmer; but once I dropped a rake on my foot, and one of the tines landed exactly between two sandal straps. Still, this is an instance where neither shirt nor pants would have saved me.

Update, 8 pm: This chap seems to be getting into the spirit of things.

Generally, I avoid enclosed retail compounds, at least partly because of some as-yet-undiagnosed phobia, but mostly because what I’m looking for can usually be had elsewhere, perhaps at a slightly lower price. Still, I wound up at Penn Square today, mostly because the Foley’s signs have come down and the Macy’s signs have gone up, and I was curious to see if the store looked any different under its new branding.

The answer, apparently, is “Sort of.” There seems to be slightly less clutter, fewer displays sticking into the aisles, and there are areas of the floor where you can tell something used to be there and was taken away. Still, the market positioning — upscale, but not that upscale — remains much as it was. And there is logic behind this, I suppose: on the lower level of the mall near the Macy’s entrance, the local Mercedes store has parked a red C230, the bottom of the US Benz line, which practically defines that position, inasmuch as for about the same money you can pick up a top-line Hyundai with more space, more features, and a complete lack of gotta-have-it factor.

My actual shopping, I should note, was done in faraway Edmond, at another unlikely venue: Spring Creek Village, where I dropped in at the New Balance store, of which there are only two in the state. (The other is at Tulsa’s Utica Square, which seeks similarly-bucks-up customers.) Being a Target kind of person at best, I don’t normally feel 100 percent in venues like this, but I reasoned that I stood a better chance of finding what I wanted, which was a close approximation to my old-and-busted NB 572s, at an actual company store.

What I came away with was the 925, which seems to have been just discontinued in favor of the similar 926. It’s much like the 572, with a better-grade upper and more of a support system below. And, mirabile dictu, they had it in a 14 wide. I will, of course, keep these guys in mind when it’s time to replace my 587s. While I have a certain psychological resistance to paying a hundred bucks for a pair of shoes, the NBs I’ve bought have shown surprising durability, considering the minor detail that they have to haul me around, and I figure, for the 2½ years I expect these to last — I got nearly three out of the 572s — that’s a fairly-insignificant three dollars and change a month. (I have one other pair of NBs, a semi-dressy loafer whose number I forget, but given the number of times I do things that demand dressiness, they will likely outlast me.)

Spring Creek Village, incidentally, is very nice, decidedly low-key, and for me anyway, a more pleasant experience than any of the Big Malls, despite its lower concentration of bored young women in abbreviated costumes. (Note to Oklahoma City movers and/or shakers: You need a cluster like this if you expect to continue to compete with the ‘burbs for serious retail dollars, and slapping something down amid the clutter on Memorial Road isn’t going to do the job.)

Lowest gas price seen today: $2.169 (!) for regular unleaded, at 63rd and Meridian.

Way back in September 1956, IBM built a hard drive.

The IBM 350 Model 1 was huge: 68 inches tall, 60 inches wide, 29 inches front-to-back. The drive contained fifty metal platters, two feet across, each of which was subdivided into a thousand sectors storing 100 characters — bytes, more or less — each, for a total of 5 MB. The disks spun at 1200 rpm. By 1958, they’d built a 10-MB version in the same space.

Nowadays, of course, you’d wonder about a box the size of a Sub-Zero fridge that had the same capacity as a handful of floppies. But for the 1950s, this was space-age stuff, and a good thing too, since the actual space age was starting up right about then.

The 350 was produced through 1961; it was superseded by the 1301, which could store an astounding 25 MB.

Big Blue probably never imagined in those days that in a mere fifty years, it would be possible to store 250,000 MB — the size of the drive on my current primary PC — in a space smaller than an issue of TV Guide, and I mean the old TV Guide, and not the Fall Preview Issue either.

Four Weeks Magazine is — well, let them tell you:

Four Weeks is a free, monthly online lifestyle magazine for women that introduces something new: it’s the first magazine to be specifically tailored to each week of a woman’s monthly hormone cycle.

This means we don’t simply recommend the best undiscovered and quintessential products and travel destinations that help make a woman’s life fuller, easier and more fun. We go one step further. We recommend only those products and places that a woman will enjoy and need most during each week of her monthly hormone cycle.

I suppose it would be difficult to make this a print publication, inasmuch as you’d have to send it to a quarter of the subscribers each week.

(Via All Things Jennifer, where this question is posed: “Why?”)

“Mathematics,” says Jason Rosenhouse of EvolutionBlog, “is unique in its ability to bamboozle lay audiences, which makes it well-suited to creationist ends.”

Mathematician John Allen Paulos explains how this should be so.

Leaving aside the issue of independent events, which is too extensive to discuss here, I note that there are always a fantastically huge number of evolutionary paths that might be taken by an organism (or a process) over time. I also note that there is only one that actually will be taken.

So if, after the fact, we observe the particular evolutionary path actually taken and then calculate the a priori probability of its being taken, we will get the minuscule probability that creationists mistakenly attach to the process as a whole.

Misunderstanding this tiny probability, they reject outright the evolutionary process.

Not to mention the fact that when one path is taken, all the alternatives to that path are summarily erased and can’t be counted in the aggregate. (If the first Powerball number is, say, 10, combinations that don’t contain a 10 are out of contention for the Big Bucks; if you have a 10, your chances have just improved markedly.)

Besides, probabilities don’t quite combine in the manner we tend to think. For instance, the chance of someone standing next to you having any particular day as a birthday is 4/1461 (which is easier to look at than 1/365.25), or 0.274 percent. The chance that two people in the room have the same birthday obviously increases with the number of people you have, but it becomes a better-than-even bet when the twenty-third person comes in. (Really.)

My own thinking here is that God understands the numbers better than we do.

(Via white pebble.)

Oklahoma City has no Beltway to speak of, but it does have a loop of sorts: the not-really-circular area enclosed within Interstates 40, 44 and 235. (I, as it happens, am out of the loop.)

There’s a sidebar to this Sunday Oklahoman story which defines the “inner city” as NW 63rd to SW 44th, Meridian to Martin Luther King/Eastern, a zone eight miles by seven with 160,000 of the city’s 541,000 people.

A term like “inner city,” of course, comes with all sorts of contemporary (or leftover-Sixties) connotations, not all of them necessarily pleasant. Still, this seems to be a reasonable approximation of what I’d consider the city core. I went back to the 1940 city limits, which are well within this zone: the northern boundary was around 36th, and the western edge of town was right around where I-44 runs today.

My preferred line of demarcation runs right along the original Grand Boulevard sort-of-circle, parts of which have been superseded by the present-day I-44. (The apparently-quiescent Criterion Group preservationists also used Grand as their boundary.) The disadvantage, of course, is that hardly anyone pays attention to Grand anymore; it’s just one more road that’s not on the grid.

That Oklahoman article itself, incidentally, deals with future development: at the present rate, the 600-square-mile expanse of the city will be pretty much filled up some time between 2050 and 2100. Population numbers are harder to quantify, but I think it’s unlikely we’ll end up with numbers like present-day Houston, slightly smaller at 580 square miles but already boasting two million residents.

This is a ride worthy of an X Games event:

I started out as a high school teacher long ago. Then, I was a junior high assistant principal then middle school principal then executive director of curriculum and instruction then middle school principal (again) then high school principal then school superintendent then college professor then high school principal (again) and now elementary principal. My brother Chipper said that if I continue at my current rate of descent that I should be a bus driver by the time my career ends.

Yeah, but just imagine the sheer volume of her CV.

Because, you know, it’s important to get back into the swing of things.

• An upsized combo meal at Whataburger will take a month off your lifespan.

• The advantage of having 19-year-olds learn poetry is arguable.
• Google has more listings for “ex-liberals” than for “ex-conservatives”.
• The Red Hot Chili Peppers are an instrument of torture.
• Jennifer Aniston’s legs have been scientifically proven to be the best in Hollywood.
• Speaking of legs, apparently those aren’t really Emily’s. (Addendum, 28 September: Got Detroit says they are, and, well, they’ve seen her and I haven’t.)
• All poop scoops are not created equal.
• So far no one has confirmed that the doofus from Orange County who joined up with al-Qaeda is really working for the CIA.
• On the other hand, Anderson Cooper would be a really great CIA operative.
• Don’t ever spam Karl Rove.

Ask yourself: “Is our bloggers learning?” Some of us is.

Well, we’ve gotten the actual content to the point where it’s just as long as the sidebar (depending on screen width), for the benefit of those of you who just love to scroll.

Also, the 500th Vent went up this weekend. Seriously, you have to wonder about anyone who puts five hundred anything on the Web. (We will not mention the thousands of previous blog posts here, because — well, we just won’t.)

I had notes and outlines and text fragments and cross-references and all manner of stuff ready to go into a full-blown screed here, but to what purpose? This isn’t a day to point fingers: this is a day to bow heads.

So I pray, and hope you will do the same, in memory of those who were taken away five years ago.

Each minute bursts in the burning room,
The great globe reels in the solar fire,
Spinning the trivial and unique away.
(How all things flash! How all things flare!)
What am I now that I was then?
May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day:
Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.

               — Delmore Schwartz

Somewhere around 6000 people come here every week, and they’re not necessarily coming specifically to hear me pontificate. Sometimes they’re looking for stuff like this:

“over 30″ “forget about sex”:  About what?

classical music dreary mournful defeat:  Obviously not a Strauss waltz.

women judge mens penis size on nudist beach:  Like they don’t check you out elsewhere?

how to make a girl blush:  Have her read the previous item out loud.

How to use the word Don’t:  If you have to ask, you don’t need to.

Snipe Shipping S.A. Panama:  Make your snipe hunt a success!

Laura Ingraham, Monica Crowley and Ann Coulter:  <carnac>Name three women who are less chirpy than Katie Couric.</carnac>

girls what do you like better cut or uncut guys?  I can see no reason to ask me this.

“Peter Noone” “misdemeanor”:  Second verse wasn’t same as the first.

what is crestfallen:  Tom’s condition after he dropped the toothpaste.

boobiethon photos unedited:  They don’t edit any of them. However, you have to donate more money to see the more explicit ones.

“happy thoughts and fuzzy bunnies”:  It perplexes me no end that I am the only result for this search.

www.dustbury.com fame:  Um, what fame?

In the current Entertainment Weekly (#895/896), Allstate Insurance has an ad (page 119) which asks “What’s your road sign?”

“The fact is,” they say, “a Virgo is more likely to get into an auto accident than any other astrological sign.” These are the overall rankings, “from best to ‘maybe you should walk’:”

1. Aries

2. Cancer
3. Taurus
4. Gemini
5. Sagittarius
6. Capricorn
7. Pisces
8. Scorpio
9. Libra
10. Aquarius
11. Leo
12. Virgo

I’d hate to be the actuarial type who has to corroborate this stuff.

And while looking for some sort of corroboration, I found this, dated 28 June 2005:

Shy and retiring sensitive Cancerians are renowned for being tough cookies behind their delicate exteriors and being at the wheel obviously brings them out of their shell — a third of people born under this sign have made an insurance claim.

Fast and furious Leos reported the highest number of accidental damage claims — in fact Leos and Cancers are more than twice as likely to submit claims as drivers born under the astrological signs of Gemini, Sagittarius or Pisces.

Despite being safe drivers, notoriously inconsistent Geminis are careless with security and make the most number of claims for theft. Aries, famous for putting themselves first, have turned this to everyone’s advantage — with their excellent history of no claims they are helping to keep overall premiums low.

Frisky and critical Virgos are obviously too busy thinking, with a quarter admitting to being distracted while driving.

Contrariwise, this article, from 27 June 2005, claims that Geminis are the worst drivers, with Capricorns the best.

I am, of course, skeptical of all this stuff, but you should expect no less from a Sagittarius.

On those not-quite-infrequent-enough occasions when I have to have automotive repairs done, I search for TSBs: Technical Service Bulletins, those handy addenda to the factory service manuals that cover the problems that weren’t necessarily anticipated beforehand. (My subscription to Alldata’s online manual includes all the latest TSB updates.) Sometimes — not always — they’re the next-best thing to a recall, because they indicate that the automaker knows about this problem and has a fix that doesn’t require hours upon hours of hyperexpensive diagnostics: if A and B, then perform C.

There exists, in fact, a TSB for Gwendolyn’s minor indigestion: if code set=P0420 and drivability issues=none, then there are two choices for C: if the ECU is not at current release level, flash its little EPROMs; if the ECU is at current release level, replace one particular oxygen sensor (of four) and the front pipe assembly.

It was the latter in her case, so she’s getting new hardware. The front pipe, I regret to say, contains all the pre-catalytic-converter stuff, and costs more than the actual cat. (And since it’s not the actual cat, it’s not covered under the Federal emissions warranty, and yes, I took this up with the service manager; force of habit, I suppose.) Still, I feel vaguely better paying for real live parts than I would paying for a lot of part-swapping and other guesswork.

No, not wedgie issue. Pay attention.

Eric Sapp sees the potential:

When I talk about “wedge issues,” I’m talking about issues that divide the Republican religious base from the Republican Party leadership and force Republican voters to face the hypocrisy of the overly-simplistic (but heretofore extremely effective) approach of Republican strategists to electoral mobilization and policy development.

And what issue might do that? Why, pr0n, of course:

One in eight Internet websites is pornographic, and the on-line porn industry generated $12 billion in largely untaxed revenues in 2004, which equals the revenue of ABC, NBC, and CBS combined. If ever there was a family-values issue that affects our children, it is this one. And believe it or not, Dems have a brilliantly-crafted legislative solution: S. 1507/H.R 3479, which require credit card age verification before anyone would be allowed to view any on-line pornographic content. What makes this bill a work of legislative art is that it would pay for the substantial costs of enforcing these regulations by imposing a 25% tax on the internet porn industry.

Anyone figured out why this is a winner for us yet? You’ve got it, the Republican leadership has been holding up this legislation because they don’t like the tax on business! It’s hard to imagine a stance more counter to family values and anathema to religious voters than not protecting our children from internet porn because we don’t want to tax the on-line porn industry. But that’s the position the Rs have taken so far. The White House has also sided with the telecommunication companies and turned a deaf ear to evangelical Christian leaders who have pleaded with them to regulate streaming video on cell phones to prevent our phones from being spammed with streaming pornography. We all know what Jesus said about where one’s treasure is, and since the R political machine is run on big-business and lobbyist money, it’s no surprise that’s where their heart is.

I’ve regulated streaming video on my cell phone: I’ve got a phone that won’t receive it.

But Sapp has a point: when the big-bucks and the Dr. Dobson segments of the GOP base are in conflict, bet on Mr. Moneybags to win out.

Frosty Troy (The Oklahoma Observer, 10 September) quotes an unnamed “former TV reporter”:

To run a bulletin or even a crawl on a grass fire is sufficient. Instead, I stood out for three hours doing cut-ins for non-stop live coverage. God knows what the helicopter cost.

Frosty’s been harping on this for at least twenty years; I sent him a particularly heinous example of non-news from Los Angeles back in 1988. Things have not improved a great deal.

And another thing:

KOSU-FM [at Oklahoma State University, Stillwater] and OKC’s KTOK are the only radio stations with full-time Capitol correspondents.

That’s scary, if nobody in Tulsa, where there’s more serious news/talk competition than there is in Oklahoma City, bothers to position a reporter at the Capitol.

This came in as a Google search last night: member of congress senile or sickness.

Nice to know we have a choice.

Once there were gold cards, then platinum, even occasionally titanium, and finally Visa and MasterCard opted for nonmetallic descriptions for their high-end cards, Visa issuing “Signature” cards and MasterCard offering a “World” card.

But, as James Bond might have said, the World is not enough. MasterCard now has a World Elite card, issued by HSBC on behalf of Saks Fifth Avenue. Benefits:

The new card offers up to 6% back on Saks Fifth Avenue purchases and 1% back on all other purchases. Customers’ points will be converted automatically into Saks gift cards. The card also offers access to the Virtuoso travel network; complimentary companion tickets with the purchase of full fare “Business Class” tickets for international travel; tailored shore excursions and private cocktail receptions on four cruise lines; preferred rates at more than 650 hotels plus value-added amenities such as complimentary daily breakfast for two, room upgrades, late check-in, late check-out, hotel dining credits and customized offerings that are unique to the destination and VIP status; complimentary subscriptions to travel publications; special event access and tickets to performing arts and theater events; and airport lounge access for a nominal fee.

I don’t expect to see many of these at the drive-thru at Church’s Chicken.