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Friday, May 23, 2003

It took under 5 minutes to do this many, a quart of cherries or about two pounds. As I kinda anticipated, some of the cherries got hung up on the "eviscerator", about half of them, but it was no big deal. Most of the time the gravity feed of the next cherry in line would make them roll out into the awaiting bowl. 3:53:29 PM    comment []

State Bird ...of both Ohio and North Carolina. Also Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. Why do the birds at my feeder seem to be missing their tufts? 2:56:18 PM    comment []

What's Up, Doc? With terrorism in Saudi Arabia suddenly in the news, it's time to review our Laurent Murawiec: Iraq is the tactical pivot Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot Egypt the prize Jack Shafer's original story is here and so is the text of the Powerpoint Presentation. Final exams are coming up - don't forget about the material that was covered the first week of class! If it all seems confusing, just ask yourself what we want from the Middle East and what we need to do to get it over here. Hidden agendas are kinda like Easter egg hunts - they start out with a big lie, say about a  beneficent anthropomorphic rabbit, followed by an enthusiastic wild goose chase. But then the joy of discovery quickly fades when you crack the exotically-colored shell and discover there's nothing but a hard-boiled egg inside. The smart kids are the ones who immediately realize it tastes just like a chicken's. The really smart ones ask why they let the adults play them for such fools. The dumb ones can't wait until next year when they get to do it all over again. 7:30:48 AM    comment []

These things are dangerous. This is about as close as you dare to get. 5:49:53 AM    comment []

The Pits They come out very clean. This one dried overnight, but I didn't do anything else to it. These things contain a small amount of cyanide, so it's reassuring when they come out with no fragments left behind. I'm not even comfortable steaming the juice from cherries with the Mehu-Liisa when the pits are still inside because of the poison. Wonder if the squirrels that empty my bird feeder might like them? 5:46:28 AM    comment []

The Orange Man   After some initial head-scratching about Norway, this latest Code Orange is generating about as much excitement as Bill & Ted's Excellent Matrix Adventure. The story is as old as the boy who cried Wolfowitz, but those who didn't study their childhood fables are condemned to live them.   Tom Ridge knows that. Having just been elevated to a cabinet level position, he now feels his power slowly slipping away again as the sad state of the economy takes center stage. Hell, even John Snow (not that one!), the epitome of a boring rustbelt CEO, has been upstaging him with JamesBakeresque retread pronouncements on the dollar. What Tom needs is a gimmick. Something to bring the buzz back to his sequel…   Well, he’s got one – Predator drones to patrol our borders! That oughta keep us awake at night again, the way those breath-taking Code Oranges did in olden times, back when he was somebody. Imagine, Hellfire missiles making lazy circles in the sky, ready to rain down on suspected terrorists at a moment’s notice with pinpoint accuracy. Now that’s exciting! 4:40:39 AM    comment []

Disturbing Pop-Ups I am getting pop-ups upon exiting several popular Salon blogs. I'm using a pop-up stopper (the web is unusable without one) that gives an audible signal when a pop-up is blocked.(I alternate between the sound of a toilet flushing and a bomb dropping0, though I usually have the volume muted. After reading The Meme Manifesto by Christopher Key, I exited for the Washington Post and heard the bomb drop. After reading Kinsley there, I backtracked to The Barbaric Yawp to retrace my steps, holding the Ctrl key so I could see what was being blocked. It could have been any of the usual offenders, but this time it was classmates.com, one of the worst. I don't believe the Salon Blogs are the culprit, but rather a pop-up with a "delayed fuse" so it pops up X number of clicks after it is "implanted." That is pure conjecture. I don't know how those things work and I don't care. When I opened another browser instance, the phenomenon did not repeat when I started at Christopher's blog - so I think it's safe to go there. Safe from pop-ups anyway, he's saying some things there that have led to wars - wars like the American Revolution! I agree with him. It's a good time to review the reasons our country was founded and why the Bill of Rights is more important than ever... …That sounds like a nice “landing zone sentence.” I should stop there, but I'm not going to, at the risk of anticlimax. Each ideological group in this country has their favorite rights in the Bill of Rights. Lefties like freedom of and from religion, freedom of speech, and rights of the accused. Righties like their guns and states’ rights. Rather than lean on this, I’m inclined to be inclusive. These are all beautiful freedoms, even though each contains the potential for abuse. Taken as a whole, they were meant to protect Americans from a more sinister abuse – the abuse of power by the government. When Righties argue that flag-burning shouldn’t be allowed or Lefties that there are way too many guns, they all need to look at the forest. The forest is there to protect us all, so there is no such thing as a “good tree” or a “bad tree.” The only bad thing is no trees, because then we’d be at the mercy of the winds. I’m tryin’ to think of a metaphor here, but the friggin’ muse keeps ignoring me. 4:15:30 AM    comment []