Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Crows Are Badasses I've written before about crows.  I wish I could tell you when that was, but my archive abilities are lame now that Google doesn't pull up my hits like it did back in Pipeline's glory days.  Yep, the glory days when I wrote about crows and their funeral ceremony in my back yard. Anyway, this is a nice article about crows.  Crows are brainiacs and vocally talented, and they keep a tight social structure.  I urge you to spend a few moments learning about crows.  One thing I learned from the initial article is that crows didn't become common in urban areas until the 1950's.  Jane's grandmother Lillian used to always talk about the crows, how they just started showing up recently, and now they're driving away songbirds and such.  I used to just sort of nod and smile whenever she'd say that, because of course I remember crows being around for my whole life.  But when you're 92, I guess the '50s can reasonable be called "recent", so I guess she was right.  It's also good to know that if I ever need to feed a crow in an emergency, they prefer the Golden Arches. 10:59:03 PM    Say what?[]

Light Speed Foley The Mark Foley story keeps developing at breakneck speed.  Some thoughts: I think Hastert is going down.  Whether he's telling the truth or not about what he knew (he's not), it's clear the membership is not responding to pressure to absolve Hastert in public.  Bad sign.  Plus, any change in House leadership is a boon to the GOP at this point, the sooner the better. The Wall Street Journal and Slate, at a minimum, today featured pieces that argued the Dems are trying, at least implicitly, to capitalize on homophobia.  The WSJ piece in particular was an object lesson in hilarity, apparently referring to Foley's penchant for young boys as a "private lifestyle choice".  Several thoughts here.  First, it is a private lifestyle choice, in the sense that having sex with a 16 year-old is not illegal in either D.C. or the state where the kid lived.  But I don't think the revulsion comes from the fact that a 16 year-old is talking about sex.  It's that it's someone in their 50's talking to a 16 year-old about sex.  And that would be true whether he was talking to a 16 year-old boy or girl.  Does it make better copy that it's a young boy?  I think we all know the answer to that one, though I would have been absolutely as willing to read the entire IM transcript if he had been hitting on a girl.  Besides that, go figure.  It's a homophobic country.  Which party has done more to try to make it that way the last 20 years? Finally, I can't help but think our nation's newscasts on this matter would have been infinitely more enjoyable if it had been Rep. John Boehner caught in this imbroglio.    10:47:09 PM    Say what?[]

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