TiVo, China, Dalrymple down The Well of Bad Decisions

The great thing about pulling up a cup of stupidity from this well is that it never runs dry. I just accumulate accounts of poor decisions in my favorites list until the overflow forces me to share from my plenty.

1) TiVo, of which I was an early adopter and ravingly enthusiastic advocate, continues to falter. They have not provided the interface changes we'd like (see some from Lileks' rant halfway down the page), and have been unforgivably slow in rolling out an HD version. Perhaps the last and fatal sign of their dancehall floozy's betrayal of us that brung 'em is that ignoring one of the features that people love most, TiVo's finding new ways to force us to see ads. Unlike other of their technical "upgrades" which roll out behind schedule if at all, I'd just read about this new development when I saw annoying flashing in the top-right of my screen, nagging me to hit the thumbs-up to learn more about Saturn. It wasn't an educational segment about the planet. It's like TiVo's begging to be put out of its misery.

2) In other bogus technical news, if you hadn't heard, companies like Yahoo, Microsoft, and Cisco are actually helping China to implement its censorship policies against its connected citizens who use forbidden words like "democracy" online. I am not one who believes every corporation and its leadership are simply evil, grasping immoral sociopaths. However, on this issue, these companies are DEAD WRONG. Aside from the moral backwardness of companies that flourished because of America's open environment helping enforce repression, China has proven to be an inconsistent respecter of the give-and-take business model. You help modernize their businesses, but they don't allow you open access to their consumers. I think this decision is short-term greed overwheming prinicipal and even commercial prudence. It's a mistake to dance with the devil and think he won't do you wrong. It's a sin to help him.

In better news, here is the spankin' fresh Carnival of Chinese Blogs, where you can support and read the content that leaks through the filters. Also, in the listed Adopt a Chinese Blog program, you can mirror a Chinese blogger's content on your pages or server. That way, if they get shut down locally, they still have an online forum that can't be erased by the Party.

3) Theodore Dalrymple, the British doctor who's practiced in prisons and among the impoverished, whose cultural commentary and writing I adore, has been booted from book reviewing for being too old. It seems impossible to me that his successor could do anything but worsen the content of the "august journal." Here's an example from last month of Dalrymple's review of One Nation Under Therapy for the New Criterion. In fact, Dalrymple's authored several books himself which were critically well received. Whoever prefers a sassy, edgy review written in postmodern pablum has proved themselves both insipid and optional. Dr. Dalrymple is neither.

For the Bittersweet, Gabba Love of Rockin'

Yesterday I delayed this post, hoping to write something thoughtful about the 2001 rock documentary Won't Anybody Listen that I saw last weekend, (great goodies on their site BTW), but I still don't have time to describe with eloquence how sad and true, but totally worthwhile I found it based on my own history as member of an uncelebrated, striving band. Furthermore, I was forgetting that one of the best things about the web is being able to refer to the work of people who've had time to think.

This is part of Randy Lewis' review for the LAT: It paints with unyielding honesty a business in which music is often treated as an afterthought, and in which the players rarely know just how heavily the deck is stacked against them. Kelemer began filming the Rogalas' band, Anaheim-based NC-17, with the simple goal of producing a concert tape to sell to fans. As he monitored their progress, he watched (and kept filming) as their career path took one harsh twist after another, down a sometimes heart-wrenching, sometimes stabbingly funny, ultimately disillusioning road that leads to riches and glory for a select few.

From the TV Guide review: The beauty of Kelemer's choice of subject — probably accidental, since he befriended the band while he was still in high school, but propitious nonetheless — is their fundamental ordinariness. They're talented, but not phenomenally so. Their music is easily categorized without being completely generic. They're dedicated musicians who'd like to be successful — not rock star rich, just able to quit their day jobs, which range from legal assistant to boiler repairman. No one's a crash-and-burn junkie, and for all the inevitable friction between band members, there isn't a flaming jerk in the bunch. Over the course of the film they get some solid breaks, every one of which evaporates. And yet with the exception of Perron, who has a crisis of faith and goes home to Colorado, the band plays on.

Some might find it depressing, and I'll admit I was afraid I would, but I was too fascinated to look away. In return, I got confirmation of my worst fears, but also recollections of some fantastic times, and a renewed feeling of solidarity with all those who live to rock.

Speaking of borrowing brilliance, here's Bummer Girls' poignant and lovely tribute to growing up, rocking out, and finding yourself within the insane joy of the Ramones. Read the whole thing. I excerpt freely to tempt you:

The Ramones were the soundtrack of my emergence from dorky bookworm to....a pot smoking dork who actually had friends. Up until that time I had only and solely been my much more popular and cute sister's fat and unattractive older sister. Mike and Nick and Jim and Jeff and Gina and Kim and Shelley. ...we'd all sit around in Mike's basement talking, playing "power hitter in the dark" and listening to the Ramones, or the Talking Heads or the Jam or Iggy...I found who I was, somewhat, in Mike's basement. Funny what a little acceptance will do for a girl...

Gabba Gabba we accept you, we accept you, one of us

Almost the Blackout-iversary, Teflon Brownout Today

UPDATE: I'm an idiot. I read through yesterday's Carnival of Education more than twice just for browsing before noticing my NEA post had made it in. Thanks to The Education Wonks for hosting, and if you want a great potpourri of the macro to the micro, the sublime to the ridiculous in education, check out these posts.

UPDATE 2: crap, Crap, CRAP! Just heard about the new London bombings. Is this supposed to make us more complacent or madder? Makes me want to find my infidel's Beatle boots and go kick the 3 Cs out of the responsible someones.

The above picture from Shag was just to prove I could. I followed the same exact process the first two times I tried, but this time it worked. Oh well. I have a couple of great, non time-sensitive topics queued up for posts, but I want to write a bit that's intelligent(ish) around them, and I'll need more spare brains than I have available, so here's what I've got today.

1) The afternoon of August 14th, 2001, when I'd been living in Manhattan for about a week and the piles of cardboard boxes were still high, the power went out around 4pm. Reports later called it the biggest blackout in American history (of course, it hit Toronto, too), but my personal odyssey didn't last much longer than 26 hours. Sure, food was spoiled and it took a while for local stores- which carry just-in-time inventory concepts to an extreme- to recover and replenish, but the worst only lasted from one afternoon to another. Still, it was a very long day. When uncertainty is king, time drags.

Being on the 28th floor, it was an ordeal to get down to the street by the steep concrete stairs, especially for the dogs' needs. Also the internal stairs were Sheol-black, and holding a dog in my arms meant a flashlight in my mouth. We could more easily manage the 4 floors up to the roof, but the pooches were freaked out enough about the new surroundings and the newly vague concept of "outside", which now meant not just outside our door, but outside the hallway, elevator, lobby, and front walk. Experimentation proved they wouldn't relieve themselves on the top of the building. So, quad-busting trips down and up with the shortest-legged dog in arms. The biggest problem was lack of water. We had some drinking water in the fridge, but we hadn't immediately filled the tub to aid toiletry or washing hands or sponging the pervasive stickiness, so that meant more up and down to street level where flushing pressure was provided by non-electric forces and the aquifer.

Mostly, we stayed on our balcony with binoculars and the battery-powered shower radio, listening for updates and predictions and watching the fleets of military and news helicopters. We could have camped downstairs, I suppose. Everyone was on their most generous behavior, but if community spirit prevailed, so did ad hoc partying. Since we live among so many bars and restaurants and delis, it was a little wild and wooly at the darkness of street level with the mass quaffing of beer and ice cream before it got overly warm. Also, the police and fire trucks ran up and down the avenues with their spotlights and sirens blazing and blaring to dissuade miscreants which added another jarring vibe to the whole thing. From our balcony, we could see the lit candles in other high rises around us. Across the surreal darkness of the cityscape, the twinkles were beautiful little demonstrations of life and solidarity. I wish I'd had a camera capable of rendering it. I'll have to replay the memory to make sure it sticks.

After a poor night's sleep, the next day we found a pizzeria cooking the last of its already-made pies in its gas oven. We snapped one up, and there wasn't even any price gouging. We took it to a bar serving beverages in plastic cups with a token scatter of pebbles from their last melting pile of crushed ice. After gobbling some slices, we shared the rest with the other schmoes. By 6pm, the Mayor had annouced his house's power was back on and Gracie Mansion is geographically close to us. By 6:30ish, we were electrified, too. Welcome back flushing toilets! I was very glad the cause wasn't some more nefarious thing and that the restoration was so efficient. It was an adventure, and I was impressed by my fellow citizens' response, but I don't want a repeat.

Yesterday, slipped under every door and placarded in the lobby was an admonition to residents to avoid brownouts today in the 5 boroughs by restricting electricity use between noon and 6pm. So, today our blinds are closed like it's a sickroom. There's no A/C on in the bedroom and the new, more efficient unit in the living room is set to low, and I'm sitting close to it. I have all the unrequired appliances off save the electric alarm clock, this computer (which may qualify as an essential device) and the stove nightlight I need to see in my windowless kitchen. I can live with all of it as long as the bathroom works, but I wish I didn't feel so fragile and interdependent. My prayer intentions for the day are for a breakthrough in technology that will provide cheap, renewable, clean, and plentiful energy to the world. 'Cause I love me some electricity. Can't bossa nova if the records won't spin.

2) Those grasping Luddites, the exTORTion lawyers, are suing Du Pont for $5 billion over non-existent chemical exposure from Teflon-coated cookware. I wish they'd get jobs picking up highway litter or something else of public benefit.

(UPDATE: Michael Fumento, the author of the link above, is a discredited creep. Your humble author still believes the litigation is without merit or basis. However, I must alert you that this article link may be dead, as this man was, quite unfortunately, a paid mouthpiece.)

Be the Sales Pitch

If you care, A/C got replaced the same day. Puppy ankle's looking good. Still cranking on the manuscript, and I'm making very edifying progress. I'm almost, but not quite proud of myself. There is still a long haul to go, after all. So, another slapdash entry here.

Someday, all the searchers for text on the blonde teen missing from the island will be gone, and my hits will drop precipitously, and we'll be back to our intimate crowd: you, me, the people who join us from arcane searches for midgets and woodpeckers. Meanwhile, if you came here for the blonde teen, I'd love it if you'd tell me in the comments what you'd hoped to find. Maybe I can provide some flimsy version of your expectations.

From the gossip and entertainment industry site, Defamer, which I'm often too "outside" to decode, I found this link to a blog I'm currently enjoying: Query Letters I Love.

I've written before about the process of pitching novels and how it compares to film. These are actual screenplay pitches that some wisely-anonymous entertainment-type posts for general mockery. This seems cruel (and it is), but it's also amusing and enlightening if you weren't sure why most modern movies suck donkey balls. Reading these skidmarked ideas, I hope you'll realize some of their craptastic nature is built into the design. Even a great film would be reduced to inanity by this format. But as I imagine people who've migrated to L.A. to leap into film careers sitting around the Big Boy regurgitating ideas in smeared ball point into their spiral notebooks of genius, it's funny. Maybe it's just grim. Look, I'm on a deadline and under pressure not to screw up my own execution of what began as a good idea. I'm assuming the temporary license of being heartless about other people's spitballed notions.

Cat Ladies Expanding their Territory

UPDATE: Welcome to attendees of the Carnival of the Insanities. Come on in, the crazy's fine.

The A/C unit has been replaced, and I'm relatively motivated to work, as soon as I shower and take the delicately ankled one back to the vet for follow-up.

So here's an odd phenomenon to consider: pet hoarding. People, usually older women (but not exclusively) collect stray animals (not always cats) and keep acquiring more animals even to the point of accumulating cadavers. As professionals begin studying this strange and sad behavior, I am facinated by what causes it and what can be done to help. And I applaud the recognition that it's a personal crisis, not mere eccentricity or quirkiness. It doesn't demonstrate generous love for creatures by tragically failing to provide good stewardship and then compounding the error with new animals.

One argument with the article, though. Despite the fact it apparently takes more than a few hundred animals to shock your seasoned control officer, forget the headline, this phenomenon is not ordinary.

When you open your frou-frou coffee, cats from the barista's hoard won't spill out. When you go to the ATM, the teller's cats won't paw you through the cash slot. They won't be lurking in the photo envelopes at the drug store or meowing from every corner of the photocopy room at work. You won't see people with kitty faces sticking out of every pocket at the fish counter of the grocery. No matter how popular you are and how many people you know, you've probably never been invited to a house like the one in this article, thank Jah.
Silly headline, bizarre but true story.

History distracts from crummy A/C

Reading that today, in 64 A.D., the Great Fire of Rome first blazed that would destroy 2/3 of the city, I feel like a jerk whining about my broken living room A/C. I reported it to the doorman who will report it to the super who will dispatch a maintenance guy. Although I have confidence that this telephone game will work, I don't know when. Until then, I'll have to camp in the still-chilled bedroom. I dislike being limited to one room, since I already spend the majority of my days between just two. My kitchen's as small as the bathroom and they don't really count as rooms, per se, do they?

I remember reading that Sue Grafton said she gets up each day, showers and dresses as if for a regular job before going to her office to write. Turns out, she's up early and exercising first, too. Balzac spent hazy days in his dressing gown. Solomonic in my wisdom, I split this wide difference. Each day, before beginning more serious matters, I emerge onto the Manhattan thoroughfares, dogs in tow, well-groomed enough to face strangers and acquaintances, fresh enough not to embarrass them or myself. However, this lofty standard suffers under the current wilt of omnipresent perspiration.

Also today: In 1925, Hitler published the first volume of Mein Kampf. In 1936, the Spanish Civil War began. In 1969, Mary Jo Kopechne died as the passenger in Senator Ted Kennedy's car. A recap written last year of that strange and unusual drama is here. (ht: Michele Malkin).

Which is all by way of saying that I know my petty annoyances and disruptions pale in comparison, and wouldn't survive a ranking by importance within even my life much less the nation or the world. And today I wanted to say how immensely I appreciate that feature of history, even such as recent as Chappaquiddick. Over time, events are distilled to the most potent, and partaking of them is wonderful medicine for the self-absorbed. Like sweaty little me.

Why We Need Hell

For a guy so defectively competitive that he'd pay a child to assault a mentally disabled kid so he couldn't play his three innings of T-ball and screw up the team's chance TO WIN!

Many may not believe in crusty olde-tyme virtues like nobility, aid to the weaker, and grace in victory as well as defeat. Many may not believe in the notion of Hell. But immoral freaks like this are why I think we could use them.

WaPo: Almost, Not Quite Catching On

Here's David von Drehle's article from the Washington Post's Sunday magazine. It's 5 mostly-short pages through topics and background related to the rise of political blogging. I liked much of it, but a few items jumped out at me in the lurking-behind-the-lamppost way. I promised myself I wouldn't Fisk, but doggone it, see if you perceive the 7 offenses that I did.

I learned about the article from Michele Malkin. Betsy Newmark's response to the article is here and Barbara O'Brien's here. They'll probably all think I'm nuts.

1) From the second page (bolding mine): The two women are standing one Monday morning inside the National Air and Space Museum, beside an exhibit of Cold War nuclear missiles. Get it? They're arguing about a war while standing next to a Soviet SS-20 and an American Pershing II. They're here at the invitation of The Washington Post Magazine, because we wanted to see what happens when you pluck hostile bloggers from the ether and cause them to spend a day together, sightseeing and arguing in the nation's capital.

To me, the delayed revelation of the article's set-up and snarky aside betrays that DvD realizes how contrived it is. Either go full-bore or don't, but don't be deliverately jive, man, and then tell me you were just foolin'. That's the littlest nitpick.

2) The conversation between Barbara O'Brien and Betsy Newmark is recounted repetitively as she-said/she-said-something-different. Point for counterpoint, zinger for stinger, tit for tat... This bored me while it supported the oft-heard claim that bloggers, unlike "real" journalists, don't care for evidence, just hyperbole and opinions. The author moves on to recount the depth of journalists' fears for the fate of the world as well as their own hides, the personal backgrounds of both women and popularity of their blogs, as well as the answer to every scrivener's favorite fan question: When do you blog? Perhaps he could've asked if they prefer blogging longhand, or whether their pets ever step on the keys. Finally on the article's last page, he writes:

And you can't help being impressed by how much these women know. They know the infant mortality rate in Mississippi, and the average annual return on stocks over the past century. They know the difference between "add-ons" and "carve-outs" in the context of Social Security reform. They distinguish between libertarian and conservative with the taxonomic precision of Agassiz, and they bring the same intensity to the distinctions between the progressive and Clintonian strands of the Democratic Party. Between them, they have informed opinions on topics ranging from European unification to the 1980 NBA finals to the inner lives of cats.

Really? The inner lives of cats? Does the fact that DvD ends the paragraph with that point diminish the power of the first sentence, or is it the fact he happily lets you settle in for the article's bulk with the perception of the women as merely stubborn partisans and purveyors, albeit proudly in Newmark's case, of trivia. I'm just wondering whether the treatment of these women as tit-for-tatters first, proud mommies second, and only finally as people with a tangential concern for facts isn't purposeful.

3) He makes the general assertion, perhaps unintentionally, that bloggers aren't open to opposing views or content. Bloggers scan for bits of evidence that fit into their existing views and then generalize from there. For example, supporters of the Iraq war will notice an article that seems to suggest some progress -- an insurgent leader captured, a new school opened -- and infer a universe of good news from that piece. Elsewhere on the same day, opponents of the war might find a piece of discouraging news -- an interview with a gloomy Iraqi leader, another suicide bombing -- and infer a mirror-image universe. There is no truth, only image universes. He further confesses that Professional columnists have always been choosing tiles and creating pictures of the world. The Internet has opened that process to everyone -- and with an intriguing twist: Now we can all watch as the process unfolds.

This simultaneously portrays journalists as subjective, even extraneous manufacturers of reality while implying we shouldn't be too judgemental, since truth can't be known and we're not willing to listen to opposing views anyway. It's too much effort to untangle this relativist apologia, but I will argue that I have read this article, though I doubted at the outset whether I'd agree with its conclusions. I'm engaging with the author's premises, trying to reason in a lucid manner, but holding firm to the belief that things can be known. Stalin was a mass murderer. The Eur0pean welfare state is under pressure from declining population, revenues, and employment. The Ivory-billed Woodpecker is not extinct. We may disagree on the sequence, causes, or weighting of facts, but things can be known, otherwise we stick our thumbs up our behinds and cry mama for eternity.

4) DvD laments the threat to the tone of public discourse by comparing it to increasing Scoville units for food, and wags that he can't print without repercussions some of the habanero-hot criticisms blazing across the blogosphere. Okay, but what about the contemporary commentary of Ann Coulter vs. Maureen Dowd? Not graphically crude or obscene, but I'd argue that in print they're just as pointed. (My metaphor is stabbiness not spiciness.) Perhaps the journalistic hand-wringing seemed ingenuous after the author himself recounted that James Thompson Callender, a publisher of sexual scandal and heated rhetoric in President John Adams' day, called JQA a "repulsive pedant," a "gross hypocrite," a "hideous hermaphroditical character" and "one of the most egregious fools upon the continent."

5) The multitudes of new blogs don't last, a characteristic often used to discount them whole-cloth. Here, the lack of dedication and consistency is faulted, but sympathetically compared to the historical example of Horatio Nelson Taft who began fresh journals for three years in a row, but never finished a whole year's worth of contributions.

Now this was a man whose children were playmates of Tad and Willie Lincoln at the White House a few blocks away. His daughter, Julia, played the piano as Abe Lincoln listened wistfully. His next-door neighbor was John Philip Sousa. In April 1865, Taft's older son, a doctor, happened to be at Ford's Theatre the night Lincoln was assassinated, and he remained with the dying president through the night. If this man couldn't keep his blog -- er, journal -- going, what hope is there for dull Daves and plain Janes?

This obviously occurs and especially within the tail-end, niche-interest, personal blogs. Also, blogs that arise because of a particular event or situation get dusty as time passes and circumstances change. There's no inherent culpability in that, but it sounds a little like DvD's implying one shouldn't bother starting at all. Most importantly, here's where one of the worst features of the article makes its apparation: the repeated mischaracterization of historical writing and debate as blogging. Yuck.

6) DvD blurbs some history of American political discourse. Quite aptly I think, he compares modern bloggers, in intent if not method, to the gazetteers and pamphleteers of the Revolutionary period and beyond. But, he employs a silly device by repeatedly referring to figures like Hamilton, Madison and Jefferson as "paleo-bloggers" and the Federalist Papers as a "blog" as well as the New York and Chicago Tribunes. Just trying to get the kids to grasp the dead-tree past? Or is the logical alternative too painful to consider? That rather than retrofitting the most important political speech of its day to clumsily declare it bloggy, reason prods a look forward, to recognize the similarities and thus predict that the most important political speech of our futures will be provided and debated in the blogosphere.

7) It's worth reading his recap of national news reporting and the rise of so-called "objective" journalism which would have shocked the industry's founders. This is a big admission, though he does not decry the subsequent elevation of the title "journalist" to holy order, especially not after instructing us in pity for these selfless who carry the burden of the world's cares for half of page 3.

All told, it wasn't badly researched or written. And even if I suggest that the journalist's inner conflict slightly overtook the thing, twisting the manner of telling and his logic, I grinned at what followed his final sentence.

David Von Drehle is a staff writer for the Magazine. He will be fielding questions and comments about this article Monday at 1 p.m. at washingtonpost.com/liveonline.

Meddling in Hawaii and My Soda Pop

1) In a previous post, I expressed the thought the proposal to establish a separate "native" or "aboriginal" Hawaiian state was crapulent. Townhall has two follow up articles, one about the Constitutional basis (lack, rather) for new racial segregations, and another about the practical consequences when people in every state of the union can claim exemption from national law by "tribal" membership.

"For the last time, give me back my weed trimmer and pay me for the snowblower you took last year, or I'm calling the cops."

"Sorry, dude, you'll have to file a greivance with the Native Hawaiian Tribal Council."

"What are you talking about? You were born in Jersey, and your parents ,too. You still live in your grandma's house!"

"Ah, but my great-great grandmother was one-quarter aboriginal Hawaiian. Stop oppressing me!"

2) Can I tell you how freaking tired I am of people stickering my world for my own good? Now, the nannies at the Center For Science in the Public Interest want the government to mandate warning labels (some call them health messages) on soda cans in case you didn't realize excess calories contributed to paunch and sugar to tooth decay. Jacob Sullum takes on Paul Krugman of the NYT who's on a recent crusade about obesity and how the government needs to step in yadda, yadda, because we're so stupid, stupid, stupid and can't tell ice cream isn't a vegetable.

I'm more concerned about overweight children because parents and guardians supply their options for living. If you're a parent with a fat, unfit child because you stock the pantry with crap, I will HOPE (not regulate, not monitor) that you'll care enough to serve the occasional salad or non-fast food. As important as food quality, I'd HOPE you'd consider controlling portions, the number of snacks and empty calories, and getting your and the rest of the family's butts grooving to the old-fashioned fun of "sports and activities." But even if you don't do that, and especially if you don't, I don't merit a flyspeck of authority over how you live, and no government bureaucrat spending our taxes for us does either. I damn sure wouldn't let you tell me. Despite Morgan Spurlock's excessive displays, I really don't think America's weight issue is that millions seriously believe Cheetos and Mickey D's are health food. So get off me, all you uber-labeling, finger-pointing, joyless and dessertless busybodies!

Elvis Will Help Me Face My Private Truth

Ever spend your time ignoring something so important that you're almost impressed by your own stubborn backwardness as you do it? I have been consciously ignoring that I will fail utterly to complete my manuscript if I keep up the gut-busting length of my recent posts.

In sad news from Memphis, USA Today reports that Elvis' longtime cook, W. Pauline Nicholson, has passed away at 76. As those who knew the man age, someday we will only be left with the flat images and historical records of his deeds. Savor these first-hand accounts while ye may.

If you wish to discover the heartwarming (even burning) homestyle recipes that make the southern soul crinkle, here's Brenda Butler's classic Are You Hungry Tonight? And proving that the light still burns, unwavering, here's info for the upcoming October release All Cooked Up by Donna Presley Early.

Perhaps it was the spiritual nourishment of the fried peanut butter and 'nana sandwich that grounded me, reminded of my identity and my goals, and brought me to my senses. I must get to work. For myself and the King.

It's About the KIDS! NEA ad Absurdum

First, thanks to Dr. Sanity for linking to my LAT vs. Harry Potter post within her own deconstruction of same. Now, for more mindlessness.

Today, Michele Malkin's blog highlights a few of the recently adopted positions of the National Education Association, the less-than-voluntary union of American teachers. While she highlights a few with which I disagree: a call for troop withdrawal from Iraq (anti-nat'l security and illogical, too), defeat of CAFTA (anti-free trade, hate that), and need for debt cancellation for foreign nations (do I need to repeat how destructive this is?), my largest beef is that none of this has anything to do with educating American children.

I admit disliking the fact that teachers' union memberships are compulsory whether or not teachers agree with the organization and its practices. I dislike that union reps routinely audit classrooms and parking lots after school to take disciplinary measures against teachers willing to give a scintilla more effort toward their students than the union contract guarantees. I really, really dislike that while facilities are crumbling and supply cabinets are empty and violence by students increases and textbooks are in short supply and academic competency diminishes and the most talented educators burn out in discouragement at the complacency and corruption of bureaucracies above them, the NEA has adequate time and resources to pursue the following , all adopted or deemed deserving of further discussion.

- New Business Item 2 (Revised)
NEA affirms and supports the decision of the Executive Committee to participate in the national Wal-Mart Consumer Education Campaign initiated by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Further, NEA strongly encourages state and local affiliates and individual NEA members to participate in this campaign.
- New Business Item 78
NEA will urge its members that they "do not shop" at Wal-Mart and Sam's Club due to Wal-Mart's anti-union, low-wage, low-benefit policies that have left its employees in need of hundreds of million of dollars in public aid for various health care and social safety net programs. Just because many teachers have to use their own time and dip into their small checks to subsidize class materials doesn't mean they should be allowed to shop for bargains.

- New Business Item 5
NEA Human and Civil Rights Department will begin in 2005-2006 to implement programs and activities, as a part of NBI 13, of 2004, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the historic merger of the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Teachers Association (ATA), which occurred in 1966. We'll use your money to pay for a party celebrating our own existence.Yay!

- New Business Item 8
The NEA President, Reg Weaver, will direct the HIN to write an article on health problems from exposure to fragrance chemicals in NEA Today.This will include a questionnaire for membership using a variety of methods such as an online NEA web site posting, form in the article and questionnaires available at the 06 RA Hall of Health. The results will be published in NEA as well as posted on the NEA Web site, including a list of products identified by members as triggering health reactions.The questionnaire results will be posted to the NEA Web site.
- New Business Item 75
The NEA will declare a designated area of the NEA/RA and related meetings and activities a fragrance free zone. Non-scientific questionnaires on fragrance chemicals? Fragrance-free zones? How they'll enforce that, I'd love to know. I sure hope it costs a lot and takes a long time. They must have extra resources now that American education's fixed and the largest issues of teachers' working conditions are all peachy.

- New Business Item 30
NEA will undertake a two-tiered campaign to educate the public about the alternative governance arrangements required of schools in year 4 of program improvement under the so-called No Child Left Behind Act and promote option (V) restructuring as the most reasonable under the circumstances. Specifically... I just thought it was interesting in a Freudian way that they say it's the "so-called" No Child Left Behind Act. You may disagree about its effectiveness, but I didn't think the name of the thing was in question.

- New Business Item 32
Move that NEA, utilizing existing policy, study the feasibility of initiating a boycott of Gallo wine. - New Business Item 47
The NEA will inform members about reasons for the boycott of Gallo wines called by the United Farm Workers, AFL-CIO.The NEA will ensure that Gallo wines are not served at any function of the Association. If anyone deserves a drink after work, it's educators, and they should have whatever they'd like. This targeting of companies because of their stand on the overarching union concept or an affiliated union's gripes is not only bad policy but, might I mention, UNRELATED to EDUCATING AMERICAN CHILDREN. The NEA wants members to further diminish their personal freedom of choice to protect the survival interests of an entity that they had no option to avoid joining.

- New Business Item 38
NEA Representative Assembly directs President Weaver to express NEA's opposition to the annual observance of "Take Your Child to Work Day" during the traditional school year to the appropriate organization(s). We request this worthwhile day be observed during a non-attendance day for students (or one with less impact on student learning). It's hard for me to believe one "field trip" has more impact on student learning than the shortened class periods, school days, and academic years which we're only beginning to see remedied on school-by-school, district-by-district bases, and which the NEA opposes.

- New Business Item 45
I move that NEA investigate the establishment of an affordable/workforce housing programs for members. Perhaps supporting merit pay and attacking the systemic fiscal corruption in the union and municipalities that skim potential salary resources before they reach the personnel budgets would help.

- New Business Item 53
SUBSTITUTE TEXT:
The NEA deplores the inappropriate use of words such as "retarded" and "gay." The usage of slurs like this is demeaning in nature and conveys a negative stereotype. Whenever derogatory and abusive language is used in the public limelight the NEA, state and local affiliates should regularly and aggressively respond. The first sentence just made me laugh, inappropriately, I admit.

- New Business Item 59
The NEA through the Health Information Network will promote research and resources on women and heart disease by means of articles in the NEA Today, using the NEA website,
an exhibit booth at the annual Representative Assembly, This Active Life Again, they're doing so great with education, let's move onto science and medicine. NOOOO!

- New Business Item 60
NEA-HIN will coordinate resources and provide information through existing NEA publications and the NEA website to members regarding diseases that impact the learning environment as a result of the emotional functioning of students diseases and health conditions not widely publicized, such as Alopecia Areata, Lupus, Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, any illness or disease that may cause temporary or permanent hairloss or baldness, etc. I do pity the hairless, but the question is whether the union should divert teachers' dues to deal with this niche issue among all other items needing attention?

- New Business Item 81
The NEA shall research the possibility of offering, as part of the existing training program, either regional or national levels of training that would support the significant history of labor unions. The training will have a focus that emphasizes delivery of age appropriate curriculum to students. From the cradle, you will be taught to love your overlords.

- New Business Item 88
NEA will ask the NEA Health Information Network to provide information to members regarding "acceptable" mercury levels set by the past administration as compared to the higher levels recently adopted by the present administration, and to educate members about the adverse impact of mercury exposure on student learning. Additionally, NEA will monitor the lawsuit Environmental Defense v. EPA, which challenges the EPA decision to increase mercury emission levels. NEA also will explore the feasibility of filing an amicus brief if and when the case is appealed. Instead of grappling with health and science issues from their inexpert position, perhaps they might address member concerns about deficient science curricula as compared to the rest of the world and the nationwide difficulty in attracting and retaining qualified science educators.

- New Business Item 91
In the interest of member health and safety at NEA sponsored events; NEA will explore alternatives to using LATEX (natural rubber) products (such as latex balloons and gloves) during NEA sponsored events. Another red-hot topic.

There's much more, like how much they DESPISE the idea of Social Security Reform even though it would allow working-class people like teachers (I don't know if they die younger from stress, but I wouldn't be surprised) to pass a legacy onto their families instead of forfeiting a challenging career's worth of contributions into the big black gov't chasm. Of course, the hierarchy of the NEA is just such an abyss. And we can't even see what proposals they're rejecting. Is it all wacky stuff, or were they measures to address the real problems? Outsiders can't tell from the website.

May the NEA one day be held accountable for its lousy stewardship of the dues and interests of its hard-working members and for its disservice to the children whose education it claims to support.

Live Blogging BBC's Stenchriffic Murder in Suburbia

Most of my recent visitors are still people who've misspelled the name of The Teen Missing from The Island. My pride precludes me from mentioning it again simply to drive further traffic, but I suggest multiple manglings of popular subject names as a strategem for those seeking to increase blog hits, especially from abroad. Alas, I want readers, even an intermittent acquaintanceship with people enjoying these kind of somethings to capture or divert their attention. My last NH post still has a working link to the topical Yahoo News Feed for persistent seekers. But with all that's happened in the world since then, I don't know why the unflagging interest in the absence of dramatic new developments.

Speaking of drama, in my role as nibbler of the dry rind of culture after better writers and thinkers have cored out the good bits, I documented a show from TiVo to prove that not all British mysteries deserve automatic esteem. Can I say I live blogged it when it was only live as I watched it from TiVo and I'm posting it here a day later?

BBC America's rebroadcasting this series called Murder in Suburbia which involves a pair of detectives. The hook is they're both women, but of very different types and surnames, though I get who's Ash and Scribbs confused. The website says that "instinctive, chaotic and street-smart Emma teams up with meticulous and often stubborn Kate," but I never heard them called that. Anyway, one has blonde hair with hanks that fall around her face and the other has dark hair swept up into a tight, French twist. One's in jeans and tees, the other in suits, get it? And they're in Suburbia! The entry's already long, and I promise I've trimmed down to the silliest, most illogical aspects. You may assume the depth of characterization by my substitution of types for names.

:00) Pretty blonde teen being pursued, hides behind gravestone to chant something unEnglish right out loud so that her pursuer can easily sneak around and.. Spiky knife, she's a dead girl.

:01) Blonde detective accidentally bloodies her boyfriend's nose after he asks her to play-struggle before sex. Might be the performance, no hilarity ensued for this viewer.

:02) No one comments on pentagram necklace or the athame for stabbling which was conveniently left behind. In this scene and most to follow, acting consists of the two detectives looking at each other, wide eyes versus narrowed squint, after everything IMPORTANT.

:03) Odd girl who found the body is your standard-issue, unpopular high-schooler tormented by all. She's in a chimp suit which, again, reads better than it played. When will the fake costume party ruse stop working? Never on TV.

:04) Drunken, postcoital teen party where dead witch girl was earlier. Meet school's rich bitch, dead girl's best friend until becoming her rival for the wimpy naked boy tangled in the sheets.

:06) Strange choirmaster at school's impromptu floral shrine to the fallen student. Missed the bandages on his hand? They'll be highlighted every time we see him just in case.

:07) Steely headmistress at school day after daughter's murder. Dialogue more wooden than the Ark. Locker produces pentagram-decorated journal full of numbers and a twiny doll pierced with a pin. Why stashed in searchable locker? Not smart but Boo scary!

:011) No forensics or boring cop stuff. Detectives ferry evidence to local priest who knows about hex dolls. Gotta watch that competition! Map from dusty tome shows witches' presence for 500 years. Enlightenment drove them from cities, but they secretly flourish here. IN SUBURBIA! Seeing the journal, priest pulls numerology book from shelf. Unusual for Christian clerics to have comprehensive occult knowledge with accompanying library?

Spooky Minute :13) Black cat on church gravestone and Blonde feels watched.

:14) Overbearing police superior arrives. She's an older, hard-nosed, fuzzy-haired, smokin-drinker who barks how she thought they saved murder for weekends in suburbia. Also how city folk don't get their milk delivered daily, so they're more attached to facts. Huh? Blonde likes the Dragon Lady, Brunette doesn't. Because they're different, see?

:16) Might forget the setting until the high school choir sings a song with the unforgivably heavy-handed refrain ".... in suburbia." Wimp boy's an Olympic-caliber track star (of course) with undiagnosable knee ailment "the specialist" can't figure out. Seems plausible.

:18) Odd girl dreamily tells Brunette about killing witches on hallowed ground to send them to Limbo (why not Hell?) for eternity.

:19) Detectives approach the choirmaster as we hear him singing "....in suburbia" to himself. Detectives flash around evidence bag with hex doll to attract attention.

:23) Choirmaster makes lecherous intimations about rich bitch and dead girl, "one blonde, one brunette." GET IT? Detectives ask to see beneath bandage simultaneously disclosing more evidence. Dead girl had self-inflicted hand wound, perhaps part of a spiritual bonding ceremony. Wha? Remarkably, this causes the choirmaster to show them a jagged, unspiritual-looking cut.

:25) Blonde looks up to see faces including bitch and odd girl packed together, staring from the school's windows. Horrifying if you're frightened by lip gloss and uniforms. Ooops, Fire alarm.

:26) Accident with a tea towel in Food Tech, but during evacuation, detectives' car had window smashed and hex doll is gone! At HQ, Dragon Police Lady is mad. She's moving closer to take charge with her smelly cigarettes 24/7. Oho!

:29) After decoding the journal (snap, done-never explained), we learn dead girl's sluttishness included wimp AND choirmaster who's immediately interrogated and answers in annoying rock song snippets.

:30) Asking wimp about sex with dead girl the day she died, we learn nothing, but get to see his stoned/pouty-lipped portrayal of stripping to shower.

:35) At school shrine to dead girl, rich bitch stomps bouquet from wimp to pieces. Standing mere yards away in otherwise empty lot, detectives are quick to notice and stop her. Rich bitch asserts dead girl's hoodoo magic powers while Brunette mocks on.

:37) At her own door, Blonde gets being-watched feeling again. Candles line the hallway, she reaches for cricket bat. I swear I haven't watched, but I'll guess it's freaky boyfriend with romantic surprise to cause her to accidentally bash him again. Yup. Ambulance. Big ha.

:38) Dragon Lady's swilling Jack Daniels and demanding they crank the heat on choirmaster. Dead girl's phone rings inside evidence bag with text message to meet at school in an hour. But doesn't everyone who'd call her already know she's dead? Never mind. Blonde and Brunette go.

:40) Prowling the school separately, walkie-talkies go dead (never explained), lights go out. Using flashlights, they find each other in basement where red scrawling's on the wall in alien language. Pentagram's on floor with candles a-smoking. They rush through boiler room to find two dangling hex dolls representing them! Eek!

:44) Cue the priest. Purpose of dolls' pin placement was to "blind and deafen the investigation." Unecessary, I'd say. Priest reads graffiti as Romany- a linguist as well as occult historian- saying "the Dark Lord is with you." Our blasphemous man-o-the-cloth says boiler room provides light, heat, and moisture: the Occult Trinity. Spells cast here would be specially effective and detectives should "take care" (no elaboration) when they dispose of the hex dolls.

:45) Odd girl's missing. Dragon Lady talks about her reputation, blah, blah, chance of double homicide. Do as she says, blah, blah, focus on choirmaster.

:46) Choirmaster admits sex with dead girl by shrugging, admits he saw odd girl last night. Odd girl came onto him, garters and lingerie. When rejected (not his type of jail bait?) she blames dead girl for zero-affection curse, and admits she stole original doll from detectives.

:48) Realizing odd girl will need to "take care" destroying the doll in order to null the no-love curse, Blonde and Brunette run again to the priest who indexes exact instructions for effigy disposal at the"spot where the witch died." Why hasn't odd girl broken the spell yet? Because, priest says, "there's a time for everything. Dates are important..." Blonde refers to dead girl's journal she's still carting around for dates. Finds feast of Lupercalia which Father Pagan looks up in his Big Book of Not Christianity. It's TONIGHT!

:54) Sirens blaring, cops reach cemetery before midnight to find rich bitch and odd girl fighting for doll next to small fire. Brunette threatens not to let odd girl burn it, failing to break the spell, unless she confesses what happened to dead girl. Wimp appears, yelling at Brunette not to burn doll. It doesn't represent odd girl, he says, it's HIM! Dead girl convinced him his orthopedic problems were hex-related, told him to meet her. When he arrived, dead girl cut her palm in preparation for handfasting, handed him the knife, and he snapped.

:55) Favorite line: "She said she'd cure my knee so long as we became one person for the rest of eternity." Followed by: "She was evil. She had these powers....I just wanted to be free of her. Even then, my knee didn't get better..." Brunette lets the wimp (who easily squats down by the fire - I did laugh at that joke) say a little rhyme before casting the doll into flames.

:57) Dragon Lady says "Well done. Good instincts....Gimme serial killers and gangland slayings any day of the week." All female police smile at each other. Their dolls hit the fire.

:58) Blonde with battered boyfriend in cast. Starting over. She's made dinner. With mushrooms... She's forgotten he's allergic to mushrooms! Brunette shows up as ambulance leaves for zinger, "One more date and you'd have killed him."

Simply execrable. I'm Leonard Pinth Garnell.

L.A. Times obtuse, half-baked, thickheaded

The last few days, I've been particularly heavy on links and light on original thought, but I'd run dry on commentary until today. Read this L.A. Times op-ed by Joel Klein, titled eloquently Hogwarts fans, you're stupid, stupid, stupid.

As Stein does, let's tackle the obvious first, although, unlike his article, I will attempt to progress beyond it. He uses his finely-honed taste to judge the first 50 pages of the first Harry Potter book as witty, imaginative, and fast-paced. Many of us modern readers find that combination rarer than we'd like, but Stein implies you're a moron if you continue reading or detect more than the plot maneuverings of a kiddie story. Though fairies as such don't play a role in the Potter books (as yet), when Stein dismisses them as fairy tales, I think I know what silliness he's attempting in his fumbling way to communicate.

Of course, such a broad category of fairy tales would naturally include some of our earliest literature, stories rife with ethical dilemmas, with heroes and magic and monsters, stories like Beowulf and the Iliad. However, most thinking folk don't consider these merely ripping adventure yarns for antiquity's children. These tales, which might have survived due to their popularity in their own times, serve as anthropological documents. Just like modern fairy tales, they provide explanations of the living conditions, value systems, and culture of their eras, as well as being our best record of certain historical events. They examine themes of loyalty, love, sacrifice, the cruelties of politics and tragedies of the human condition. Children and adults would have heard the legendary stories of their civilizations repeated, teaching them their pasts, giving them a safe introduction to hard truths, and demonstrating their society's preferred qualities and response to adversity. In more contemporary analogs, the stories of the Brothers Grimm are quite dark. Acts of sadism and trickery are common, and though cleverness and bravery are celebrated, they don't always triumph. Grimm tales don't encourage children or anyone else to trust things at face value, and with their impoverished orphans and frail, crippled creatures, they provide the comfort of companionship to those suffering painful lives.

But fairy tales aren't worth reading, Stein says, because they "simplify the world down to good and evil." Has he read what he's condemning? To be accurate, he specifically condemns the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and E.B. White, other authors in which deluded readers and scholars detect thematic subtleties beyond the mere he-said-she-said of plot schema. With such incisiveness, Stein may yet believe Orwell's Animal Farm to be a happy-time tale about the countryside.

Ah well, if we must eliminate discussing layered content since Stein can't perceive it, could he have instead discussed the books' popularity itself in an interesting, coherent way? He might have examined J.K Rowling by examining the similar sensation of Hans Christian Andersen in his day. What about L. Frank Baum or J.M. Barrie? What were the respectable adults saying when those authors' works first crossed age barriers to find such huge and devoted audiences? Besides recent attention to Barrie vis-a-vis Neverland, there are new biographies of Andersen that could've provided historical viewpoints of what made his work, and by comparison Rowlings', so universally compelling. Though, to be fair, I can't suppose a man who solely uses his grandmothers for quotes would be expected to have background or facts at hand.
Stein does deprecate his vocabulary and his own negligible bibliophilia before berating the LAT's readers that they ought to choose to read things with more complexity, and henceforth, to omit reading his columns we must infer. But my strongest intent is not to defend the Potter series, which doesn't need it, or to defend the aesthetics of visual art in modern animation which are inarguably groundbreaking and breathtaking. Mostly, I want to point out how clearly this piece demonstrates the L.A. Times' descent into fishwrapping irrelevance.

Joel Stein's article is a lousy bit of writing and a worse piece of journalism. His goal may have been to goad the public to reaction by attacking its beloved, especially in the heart of entertainment land, where Harry Potter and friends have been a boon to parents and media companies alike. But I had assumed something more discerning than calling them stupid, stupid, stupid would've been required for publication. And while I am reading and focusing on Stein and his employers today, I probably won't again. And not because I disagree with what I can locate as a premise in this scattered, inarticulate op-ed. But because it's puerile, both badly written and worse conceived. I, like every other reader, deserve better.

When the L.A. Times experimented with Wiki-style contributions to their editorials, in two days they'd shut down the thing due to porno spam. Well, hell- anyone with an e-mail address could have seen that one coming. People actually expect more from a paper than a careless pass-through for morons, thus my objection to Stein. Would it have been so hard to set up a language filter for mass deletions and to station an editorial assistant, even an unpaid college intern, to screen the rest before accepting for post? Sure, you'd have to dedicate a whole person to your interaction with your reading public. Sure, you'd probably have to highlight some of the best and most representative posts to encourage lively contribution. Sure, you'd actually have to hold up your side of the conversation by investing in it with human capital not just opening a message board under your domain name. But why should you bother to listen besides telling, in a decreasingly cogent manner, might I add? Why should you bother to hire intellectually engaged journalists who write pieces substantive enough to deserve discussion and who are unafraid to respond to questions and critique? Why should you indeed? After all, people are always going to read the LAT anyway?...Right?

More Linkliciousness for Your Bad Selves

Again, I'm overflowing with content to share, but no commentary. It is the weekend, you know, and I'm taking it easy by just loading the buffet and leaving the rest to you.

1) Trouble Sleeping? Here's the lowdown on how your pillows affect the equation. I must fault the NYT for not including the sleep marvel we've been rocking at the homestead. It's weird to get used to, but good. The buckwheat-hulled support of Sobakawa Powa!

2) This article examines the still cash-friendly culture of NYC's Chinatown with its love of safety deposit boxes, especially those in fortunately designed spaces and with lucky numbers. Chinatown is a magnet for immigrants and a trusted place to do business, even if you have to commute to your bank from the outer boroughs.

3) What do you call an expert in the lore of creatures whose existence has not yet been substantiated, i.e. Sasquatch, Nessie, the Yeti? A cryptozoologist, of course.

4) Tom Rogers died at 87. And we care why? Because he invented Charlie the Tuna, and helped develop the Keebler Elves and Morris the Cat. This guy had a colorful life, delivering for bootleggers and writing pulp detective fiction, doctoring scripts and writing comedy. This is an example of a dyed-in-the-wool writer who contributed something of value, even if it wasn't profound or literary. I salute the pulp artists everywhere.

5) Does this common virus most of us are carrying have the potential to target and defeat cancer cells? It's being given serious scientific attention.

6) This woman scammed aspiring writers using two different identities and claiming, at different times, that both died in the September 11th attacks. Super bad karma. This vampire of hope's going to jail.

7) Turns out our early human ancestors were ecologically unfriendly, killing the megafauna for food and their own peace of mind. I told you no one wants that prehistorically giant stuff around.

8) Proving that most "talent" is idiotic, an R&B singer who was present but uninjured in the London bombings asks for prayers for his emotional distress.

9) A panda cub was just born at the National Zoo in Washington D.C., but did they have to say it was the size of a "stick of butter?" So... hungrry....

I Cannot Wait to Kick it Sev-Style. Gimme Gulps!

Another hodge podge with just incidental politics. Tim Worstall liked my Pratchetty tribute to Britannia enough to comment, which was a thrill, being so far under the radar that I'm floorboarding with the gum wads.

1) Well, I won't say all my doubts are allayed, and I know it's no one's duty to allay my precocious anxieties, but the following poll of Brits was edifying to see. (ht: Roger L. Simon)

Brits don't hate the Muslims in their country generally, they hate the terrorists specifically. They're rightly proud of themselves for their emergency response, and they're determined to see terrorists arrested. There's support for monitoring suspicious persons and factions before they strike, which is a sea change in the hands-off (and no extradition) policy toward internationally-sought criminals that have previously found safe harbor there. As a measure of their dedication to the goal of security, there's even rising support for national ID cards (which actually I don't believe are effective as well as disliking such loss of liberty anywhere), but they'll decide for themselves. We can truly say that about Britain: even under its monarchy, the place is set sp so that when the subjects are strident, their voices are the loudest and most important determinant of national policy. Whatever course they take, the Brits will decide for themselves. Wish I could say that about everywhere.

2) So many consumer items (like movies) fail, because they're so poorly adapted from a good idea that they squeeze all the fun and sense right out of them. This hilarious review of the pathetically awful Fantastic Four ATV toy (do I mean to imply the toy or the movie is pathetically awful?) from the Portland Mercury is foul in its language and inarguable in its conclusions.

3) Want to be healthier, more active, and happier with your body? STOP DIETING! Here's the research that says it's okay to stop freaking out and feel good.

4) It's about time this barren island got something good. 7-11 is returning to Manhattan! Hell, yeah! Is it too much to ask for the Upper East Side next? If you show up, I promise to get the bird women and sporties hooked on Gulps and Slim Jims pronto!

Battered Britannia, Blackjack, Books and Obits

If I feel powerless over what fellow Americans do and think, you can triple that for my influence on Brits, so the following musings are somewhat below pointless. Still...

7/7/2005 (2+5=7) gives the numerical symmetry that organized terrorists seem to prefer these days. And adding all three sevens we get 21, the day the House of the Union Jack gets beaten by Blackjack. Parallelism all round. How auspicious.

After yesterday's bombings, commentators and Londoners themselves reminded us of their courage during WWII's Blitz and more lately during the IRA's campaign of terror bombing from 1970 on, when people began rationalizing random violence as an appropriate expression of political dissent. One Brit I know sniped yesterday that it was Bush's and Blair's Iraq policy of the last 3 years that had made them unsafe, despite everyone proudly citing survival of 60+ years of continuing assaults on British civilization. And as I watched the calmness and efficiency with which they began sweeping up the pieces, and admired their scrap in heading to the pubs and out to shop, an ugly worm of a thought crept into my head and sat there for hours. Later, I saw a British journalist say outsiders shouldn't mistake the demeanor for complacence, so I'll give it a minute or two and see what happens. But the ugly image occupying my mind was of a battered woman clinging to her abuser, a person become so twisted in her expectations that she's prouder of her strong chin than infuriated she's become a punching bag. That's just what I imagined. I don't claim to know if it's real.

Mark Steyn has long tied the current radicalization of Muslim communities in Europe not to recent aggressive action against Islamofascists, but to the 1990's general inaction on the Bosnian genocide of Muslims. While worth noting that the U.S. eventually applied the leverage that stopped the killing, action was very slow in coming. It was our and the rest of the world's dithering ignorance while Bosnia bled for years, Steyn says, which reconnected previously estranged and disaffected Muslims with their religion in its most extreme form. He also cites P.C. cowardice in facing head-on the known problem areas of hostile, unassimilated Muslims aided financially and otherwise by Saudi Wahabbists. If it's true, all the more reason to work the levers hard on Sudan to stop the killing in Darfur and lock our eyes on the Saudi money trail. I'm afraid in such cases I would choose to be a bit of a meddler. Tell Stalin my idea of other nations' sovereignty stops at mass murder, Mao.

UPDATE: Maybe my perception of the British reponse isn't all my imagination. Some Brit journalists are saying it, too. Here are Melanie Phillips and John Derbyshire. Not to mention foreign policy analyst Victor Davis Hanson who says not much will change from these events.

2) In news I find uplifting, here's the International Digital Children's Library, providing free online books with illustrations in 9 languages. Among the goals of this project, number one is "...to create a collection of more than 10,000 books in at least 100 languages that is freely available to children, teachers, librarians, parents, and scholars throughout the world via the Internet..." Despite the middle-class creds of many terrorists, I still believe that educated minds are less interested in busting heads. Education can create progress for both Africa and the Middle East, especially if we could get all the girls in school.

3) In a special obituary that I didn't want to overlook among the current fluxes, the prolific and gifted author born as Salvatore Lombino in 1926 has died. He became famous both as Evan Hunter and Ed McBain, writer of The Blackboard Jungle, screenwriter of Hitchcock's The Birds, and inventor of the police procedural. After 55 novels of the 87th Precinct alone (not to mention his other series, novels and screenplays), after 78 years and over 100 million copies, whatever your name is, may you Rock In Peace!

4) I was going to tell you to eat a sundae today, in honor and gratitude for the Blue Law workaround of druggist Edward Berner of Two Rivers, Wisconsin on this day in 1881. However, as I researched the details, I found sundae controversy. Did the real inventor work at Chester Platt's drugstore in Ithaca, New York? Or was it popularized in Evanston, Illinois? I ran out of steam to care. Just eat a sundae, darn it.

London Blogging to the Faraway Towns...

In light of the coordinated bombings in London, I find myself unable to blog on the usual minutiae of my outrages. Even though some of those outrages are daily more deadly than this one, this one compels with its shocking calculation. As has been said, the revolution will be blogged. Here's where to get what's fresh, sometimes premature, but quickly corrected collections of real-time words and pictures as people experience this event. All of the following do the service of linking to other blogs as juicy posts emerge, so riding herd on a few, you'll stay atop the story.

Naturally Instapundit
UK Blogger Reaching For Lucidity
The genteel gents of PowerLine, who, in addition to updates, are flying a Union Jack with this quote Churchill's speech from October, 1938:

[D]o not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning.This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.

Aussie Journalist Tim Blair, who rounds up international news and quotes another Tim,
Tim Worstall , with reports and reactions, including my favorite so far:
Fuck you, sunshine. We'll not be having that.

UPDATE: Longer letter with refreshingly frank tone as above from London Daily News.

In my own, puny but well-intended homage, I will list a few quotes from the stylings of Brit Terry Pratchett. These are suited for any thinking man's gallows and provided, to me at least, a wry smile on a darkish day.

"Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it."

"Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."

"It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living."

"...what is there in this world that truly makes living worth while?" Death thought about it. "Cats," he said eventually. "Cats are nice." "

Manuscript Marathon, World's Ugliest Doggie

Is it merely coincidence that today in 1885, Louis Pasteur saved the life of nine year-old, dog-bitten Joseph Meister from rabies with an experimental vaccine? I think not.

I dare not write much. Every word steals from what I need elsewhere. An agent to whom I sent a sample and synopsis, based on her conversation with an author friend of mine, has asked to see the entire manuscript, and it ain't ready. For the next few weeks, I will have to produce like a mad thing, dare the carpal tunnel syndrome, and turn this mother out. I'm thrilled that after seeing my first couple chapters and knowing the entire plot, she still wants the rest. It's great news, even if by July's end, I'll feel like this...

Okay- I just tried to use the new Image function wthin Blogger to insert a photo and Nothing Happened. I filled in all the details and a blank window gaped at me. I tried it again- ditto. BLAST and DAMN!

Sam, judged the World's Ugliest Dog, is here and his story here (hat tip: April)

To continue in brevity:

Here's Mark Steyn's new slant on charity-goading celebrities. You know they don't operate their own finances the way they'd advocate for you.

Here's a 2002 interview with a defected Scientologist. While concete details are scant or mushy, all the wacked lingo's there which hints around the tenets, and the paranoia she still feels as well as her addled reasoning (which may predate her joining the cult of L. Ron) are quite evident.

Here's a Spiked article (ht: ALDaily) by a chansonnier, a singer especially of French songs (I had to look it up), about the sameness and sexlessness of modern pop voices. If I think Barb Jungr gets a little high-falutin' when connecting trance music's style with the rise of HIV awareness, she does give a great history of when and why culture used to prefer, as I still do, distinctive and rich adult voices.

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), is a public and free event I joined last year where people attempt to write 50,000 words during the month of November. The next few weeks will be my private, scaled-down version. I'm starting a storm novena. And I'm off!

Hotel-Eating Vampire Writes China to Rain Pianos

I'm backed up on interesting stories. So, I offer a potpourri day where you may pick among them like wild posies in a meadow.

1) China gets stuck by the thorns of its own progress. Centrally designed, grand redirections of natural watercourses and selective areas of gigundous waste have resulted in rocketers sending payloads of silver iodide over the Fragrant Hills to seed the clouds for rain. Does it work? It's not clear, but China also has a growing contingent of internet addicts who abandon their real lives under central control for the escape virtuale. Comparing this story from other reports, what's the focus? Shock therapy of course.

2) An anonymous man who was found soaking wet near the English coast has been dubbed the Piano Man. He doesn't speak, and has only communicated with medical personnel by drawing a picture of a piano. After being supplied an instrument, he performed a four-hour classical concert. Is the lost virtuoso Norwegian?

3) Update on Competitive Eating, which I first covered here with links to Larry Getlen's article that introduces the major players. The amazing and diminutive Kobayashi won yesterdays' Nathan's Famous hot dog eating contest for the 5th straight year with 49 weiners in 12 minutes. But closest behind him with 37 was the even more petite Sonya Thomas, a 105-pound rising star in the sport. It could just be mustard, but methinks I smell a nemesis!

4) Are the preserved corpses found in German moors executed "criminals" feared to return as vampires? Commenters on the story from Witchvox perceive an anti-pagan slant to the coverage.

5) The National Commission on Writing will release its report today. AP says: States spend nearly a quarter of a billion dollars a year on remedial writing instruction for their employees, according to a new report that says the indirect costs of sloppy writing hurt taxpayers...He shudders to think how the Declaration of Independence, published 229 years ago today, would have read in government worker-speak. ''It would be 10 times as long, one-tenth as comprehensive, and would have lacked all inspiration," [former Senator Bob] Kerrey said.

6) On the heels of the Kelo eminent domain decision, which I despised here, a businessman is protesting by trying to get a small New Hampshire town to take Supreme Court Justice David Souter's home so he can build his Lost Liberty Hotel. I had to laugh.

Enough. I've sufficiently cleaned my backlog. Hope you enjoy one or all.

Independence Day is Halloween for Patriots

Happy 4th of July! Since, despite my original intentions, I've been posting this whole weekend, there seemed no reason not to post today.

In gratitude for my birth as an American, a happenstance I neither merited nor caused, I will focus on a strange fact which I learned only this morning, a strange circumstance of death.

Today we celebrate the adoption, in 1776, of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress. On its 50th anniversary, in 1826, two of the original signers who also served as President, died, aged but celebrated, succumbing at home to natural causes. Here are the final details of John Adams' life and a charmingly florid obituary of Thomas Jefferson. Later, in 1831, America's fifth president would also die on July 4th, again of old age in the house of his son-in-law, then the governor of New York. Here the link to James Monroe's obituary.

Excerpting from TJ's obit which noted the "coincidence marvellous and enviable" :

"...having seen fulfilled and surpassed all that in the most daring aspirations of youthful hope and ardor, they had ventured to anticipate for their country, and having attained to the highest honours which a grateful nation could pay, could no longer worthily linger upon earth."

Three of America's first five presidents all died on Independence Day. Boo!

Running...Out of...Time to Disrespect Live 8

FRESH UPDATE: Today's Washington Post does a great article on the contrast between views from Live 8, the G-8, and what Africans themselves believe they need. (I've long favored ending American farm subisdies as well as supporting free and fair trade in coffee. When I slurp my Kenya AA, I want the local grower to get paid for its fabulousness.)

Regarding Live 8 itself and not just the object of its benevolence... oh, the muddle-headed ethics on display there. My previous disses here and here.

Power Line reports that, as an inducement for viewers to donate, Live 8 commentators are actually repeating the fact that poverty is worse in Africa than it was during Live Aid 20 years ago! Hmmm.... (tapping finger to chin) if we could only figure out why....

Thanks to the excellent Aussie blogger, Tim Blair, here's info on how local shelters, serving Canada's presumably also impoverished homeless community, weren't allowed to set up a food drive outside Toronto's Live 8 concert. The decision, to retard the dilution of charitable giving of course, was not communicated to those planning concurrent activities until this week, and reportedly comes from Sir Bob himself.

"I feel good about curing poverty today, but I totally love my new watch!"
Here's news about the $4,000 to $15,000 goody bags of luxury items arranged for the Live 8 musicians who are appearing for "free." You may argue that although thunder follows lightning, the artists might not have expected posh treatment at this particular event. Then notice that it was the concert's organizer itself who contracted a PR firm to solicit the swag. Do you imagine that PR firm volunteered its services? If they did, it wasn't in the quote, and seems the kind of thing a publicity firm would insist upon bragging about in print. So where did the fees come from to pay Nicole Cashman et al t0 troll for trinkets? Not out of the profits for the poor surely.

Could Live 8 not have given out goody bags of calligraphied IOUs, listing tony items as dollar amounts being donated to the cause? Well, no, because the manufacturer gets his own stuff at cost, and doesn't sacrifice the actual marked-up retail value. And such gifties for celebrity wearing are treated taxably as business promotional write-offs not charity. But it's not about the money and self-aggrandizment and Hugo Boss suits, okay, it's about the kids!

But soon it will be over (sigh), and criticizing the almost-guaranteed mismanagement and skimming to follow will be all I'll have left.

Why You Need Bandwidth- Apache!

I thought I'd go all weekend, and perhaps through El Dia de Indy itself without posting, but thanks to Jonah Goldberg at NRO's Corner, I knew I had to tell at least two friends and so on about this amazing experience.

Here is a link to an MPEG download that will change your life if you let it. It's not a tiny file on a rocket-speed server, but it is worth the wait and then some.

A gift like this is why I thank America's founders for fostering entrepreneurship within a society that would one day produce such innovative deliveries of content to The People.

Enjoy with me, please, the ungorgettable majesty of Apache!

The Dilemma of Writers and Word Counts

Today, I am a writer who's writing about writing instead of writing, a pathetic creature indeed.

The topic of word counts gets a lot of attention among membership of the Great Unpublished. I freely declare myself of this group before sharing my reply to a friend's e-mail which included a link to this WritersNet message thread. I cannot match his brevity in inquiring "Any Thoughts?", but I have listed the bald points up front with screed to follow. Links to Amazon aren't endorsement, just laziness.

1) Writing toward counts is a lousy idea
2) When you get to the counting, actual tallies are easier and more accurate than guesstimates.
3) Padding numbers can't get you an agent or editor if the writing doesn't.
4) Counts are dynamic, and the process of getting published alters them.
4) The common word range of published books is not only huge but rife with disagreement over its sweet spot
5) Even outside this broad norm, the gargantuan and tiny defy word counts with tremendous success.
6) Don't think about word counts much.

I didn't know I had so much to say until I started writing this, which makes my first point for me: I don't think it's advisable to write toward word counts. I think writing to natural scene endings makes sense, but impostion of word counts doesn't aid fluid storytelling. As a reader, I never count words before deciding if the pace dragged or whether there was enough or too much backstory. And no matter how careful a word-counter is during composition, any effective revision must address whether chapters need pruning or plumping for overall dynamics and risks throwing off exactitude. Some experienced authors who have become machines of writing (often producing in their later careers- dare I suggest?- formulaic work) can fit lengths precisely and consistently. I wouldn't expect or encourage any other greenhorn writer like me to focus on that skill since it so favors form over content, and it's always content that gets a non-celebrity published the first time.

The proposed method of estimating 250 words/page would certainly change word counts dramatically as it's inaccurate by design and incorporates huge rounding errors to manufacture results. Imagine, just four hardly-typed pages, chapter ends for example, could add 1000 "words" to your manuscript count. If that sounds reasonable, ask youself whether you'd accept $10 as legit payment on a $250 debt. Writers used to try to estimate manuscripts in all sorts of inexact fashions, because there weren't tools beyond mind-numbing tedium to count every word. Maybe it's my former career in science, but I think regressing to lousy methodology to alter your numbers doesn't feel kosher, and might even beg notice in manuscripts containing unusual formatting or large amounts of terse back-and-forth dialog. Although similar computer applications may differ slightly in how they treat hypenated phrases, for example, Microsoft Word tallies the text on the page as accurately and instantly as anything else, and is accepted as the de facto standard at this point. I'd wonder why any author using it didn't do his word counts this way.

After consulting career authors on the matter, I decided when pitching in person or by query not to mention the word count until asked. So far, agents have ignored the omission, and inquired instead about characters and setting and style. I surely believe agents look at rough metrics and categories as a way to thin down their reading piles, but at best, they know the word count is only a ball park figure, mattering more at the extremes of the range than the huge 50,000 word span between 60-110k where most fiction falls.

Constantly shifting the number are the agents themselves, make their own revision suggestions to enhance the quality of the manuscripts they represent. Further, the copyediting from the acquiring publisher may create swings of thousands of words. But none of this matters to parties who've have already decided they're enthusiastic about the work. If- using a number from the thread- a given agent sees 58K of a book and says she just loved it but must dismiss it completely for not being 60 or 71 or whatever else. And if she says this without any hint of where to expand or how better to market it, the author should face the hard truth that the agent didn't really like it and wouldn't be a great advocate. People have tried padding their counts among other foolish ploys to get their books through the needle's eye, but externalities won't make an unknown the object of the publishing industry's desire. What I keep hearing is that a new author who understands and communicates powerfully what makes his manuscript worth reading, no matter what the length, is the rare prize.

I assume many of the thread's contributors are unpublished shmucks like me, but at the recent Mystery Writers of America mentoring forum, where established authors help the aspiring, the lowdown was that it's wonderful to debut in the 60-75k word range. They said that publishers currently prefer lower printing investments for untried authors. Make it longer, make it shorter. You'll hear it all. But I take the Goldilocks path which I've come to believe the best agents and editors do: all any book needs to be is the right length for itself.

And as for blather about consumers not spending on short books...Crafty publishers routinely bloat the font and the margins to make shorter books visually similar to longer ones, and they reverse the process to reduce enormous opuses to manageable size. Regarding high prices, the many new writers who appear first in mass market or trade paperback don't have to get people to fork over even the price of a movie ticket, just to be interested enough to pick their work over another option that day. The initial gift of a reader's time and his feeling afterwards that it was well-spent is much harder and more crucial to gain than whatever the dollar amount is on the spine.

Mitch Albom's Tuesdays With Morrie is short, Bill Clinton's My Life is long. In each case, the publishers obviously thought the length suited the material and both are bestsellers. Morrie is a puny hardcover at about 5 1/2" x 7 1/2" and not even an inch thick. Even with its roomy font and spacing, the thing doesn't make 200 pages. Yet, it wasn't ostracized in the bookstore, people found it intimate and approachable. Do you know how many of those tiny things, not even usable for doorstops, were sold at the list price of $21.00? I woudn't be surprised if millions had been sold by now, it's certainly hundreds of thousands. Albom's Five People you Meet in Heaven became another bestselling shrimp. Even if he writes 1500 pages next, they'll find some way to fit it into the less-common, friendly format his readers have learned to expect. Rules are made to be broken. As Victor Hugo wrote, "Everything bows to success, even grammar."

I'm currently reading Writing the Breakout Novel by Don Maass and find it quite good so far. Even though this agent showed the bad judgement to decline my latest submission, I'm finding the book stimulating my ideas for improving its chances next time. Representing many popular authors over his extensive career, Maass has also written something like 14 novels of his own, which I disclaim I haven't field-tested, as well as other craft instruction. What's great about this particular book is that the first pages put aside the issues of publisher and publicity and everything outside the writing itself as harbingers of success. Not only can authors not control those things, but Maass denies their predictive power and employs copious examples from published work to make his points. He asserts (as many other career authors I've asked) that the quality of a great story manifested through great writing is the writer's overriding concern and the widest path of the many narrow ones to success.

In that view, word count is merely an effect, not a cause, simply the byproduct of writing.
Done now.

If you indulge in illegal fireworks, just remember you've blown off your fingers in the cause of liberty. Enjoy the weekend and holiday!