Funmurphys: the Blog

It's Clobbering Time

Jason Van Steenwyk makes an excellent point:

You will never have a perfectly surviveable system. And you cannot turn Humvees into tanks. You will bankrupt the country.
...
The insurgency will not be defeated by putting an extra armor on our vehicles. The insurgency will be defeated by dismounts. Dismounts out there engaging with the Iraqi people and collecting real-time intelligence.

And THAT is the effort the Media should focus on. THAT is the effort that Congress should focus on.

All Raise You A Painting

In answer to Busy Mom's question, no, I haven't bid on something on e-bay, immediately regretted it, and then paid for it twice. What my daughter has done, however, was win an auction for a Chinese watercolor painting as Mother's Day gift for our recently redecorated bedroom. So my daughter paid $3 for the painting, $17 for shipping, and now we're paying $75 for the framing. I wish I could have only paid for it twice.

No Body Does Anything About It

Yesterday was a scorcher here. Naturally, I did yard work last evening -- mainly spreading mulch to keep my poopsies's roots cool and moist. So after I was finished and I was moving the sprinkler to water the mulch I had just emplaced, I went to meet the new neighbors who were moving a few things in. I'm sure they were happy to see me coming what with sweat pouring off me, grime clinging to my clothes, and a certain air, if you know what I mean, emanating from me. But they were polite and soon my wife and daughter joined me after their jaunt to the source of inexpensive goods. They were shortly followed by another neighbor taking the trash out. Welcome to the neighborhood and I hope you don't mind us swarming. I won't wonder if they run when they see me coming in the future.

And then it was off to walk the dog, because I didn't want to take a shower and then go back out into the tropical rainforest immediately afterwards. And despite the fact that the night was oppressive with a surplus of heat and humidity, everybody was out. Why pay for a sauna when you can just walk out your front door and bask in the moist heat? It made for a very slow walk because the funWife and I were stopping every other house to chat. It would have been enjoyable, and ultimately funny if it weren't so darn unpleasant to be outdoors. And we weren't even wearing a fur coat like the dog. When we saw the last possible neighbor drag her trash to the curb behind us, the other fearless leader wasn't kidding when she said "run!"

Movin' On

Has Charles Austin run away with Dodd Harris? Having met both Charles and Dodd I can confidently state they aren't ones to run away. But they have both abruptly stopped blogging with cryptic farewell messages. If I were Normal Vincent Peal I'd be happy that I could now read a few more blogs, but I'm not so I'm going to miss them.

Maybe they should do a group blog with the evanescent Juan Gato.

Is Dodd related to Andrea Harris? I never thought to ask until just now for some reason.

Dodd, if you're ever looking for a place to hang out an anonymous shingle, you can always do so here at Funmurphys. And with my traffic, you can use your own name and still remain anonymous. Same offer applies to Charles too.

My Take

My impressions of the President's speech:

His speech writers are much better at writing a speech than he is at delivering one.

I vacillate on his giving it before a military audience: On the one hand, it smacks of using them as props, on the other, they're the people who are actually being killed and wounded. I would rather he gave the speech direct into the camera and then privately schmoozed the soldiers, but team Bush may have decided he does much better in front of a live audience.

As long as it was a live audience, I'm glad they were under orders not to applaud because I hate how much longer that makes a political speech and how that destroys the pacing.

I was disturbed by that proto-smile on his face during a lot of the speech - but I guess that was his thinking to himself "How many times do I have to explain this to you."

I found the irony rich: the smirky Bushitler having a clear grasp of a winning strategy, both for the war on terror as well as the battle for Iraq, while his oh so much smarter opponents keep mewling about how Saddam didn't have anything to do with 9/11 and whose strategy seems to be if we ignore it, it will just go away striking.

Since I was already persuaded by the arguments advanced, I can't tell if anyone was persuaded for or against by the speech. I do think the strategy and rationale was clearly layed out and I'm dismayed by how many people don't seem to get it.

I did find the end of the speech effective. Yes, choked by emotion can all too easily be overdone, but I do think it was genuine, and came across as such. He could barely get out the "May God Bless You All".

On a side note, who would you rather write about politics, this guy or this guy? I don't know what Mr. Maguire does for a living, but I much prefer to reading his slyly cogent take on matters than Mr. Millbank's snarky superficiality.

Closing the Neurotic's Notebook

• Purgatory must be like that moment when your first awake, just before you remember that you love and are loved.
• "Your money or your life." We know what to do when a burglar makes this demand on us, but not when God does.
• Don't be yourself--be someone a little nicer.

From the (still out of print, but prices are rising) "The Complete Neurotic's Notebook" by Mignon McLaughlin. Earlier entries in this series: June 22, 18, 10, 7, May 10, April 25 and 28.

As The Homeowner Turns

We're moving into a new house. As part of the move, we get to sort through all that old stuff we haven't even looked at in years and wonder if we should throw it away? I am convinced that this is what happened to the original copies of Flavius Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews. These great historical works were not lost in battle, or destroyed by fire. No - some Roman guy said to his wife while moving from one villa to another, "Why do we keep that old copy of Josephus? We haven't opened it in 10 years!" And so they tossed it into the paper recycling bin out by the curb. But I digress.

We bought our present house 10 years ago when we were first married. In those early days before children, my organized wife used to print out all the interesting and funny e-mails and place them in 3-ring binders. From the year 1995 I found this old story that I thought was worth re-running. The date is December 1995. The context is that I am a new homeowner, exploring a newly purchased house and learning/fixing what the previous homeowners have done. So take a deep breath, and step back with me 10 years into:

Chapter 5. Wherein it is told how Carl explores his attic some more, and what he finds there.

In preparation for the insulation fairies to come and blow an R50 layer of insulation up into my attic, I decided to go up there and prepare the crawl space by taking out things that didn't belong there, installing a few boards where they would need to step across a pipe, and so on. My key objective was to fix a vent from the stove. The previous owners had arranged for a pipe to come up from a fan over the range where the fan would spew the exhaust skyward. There's a nice-looking chimney vent coming out of the roof there.

Unfortunately, they had neglected to connect the exhaust pipe to the roof vent, leaving instead a 2-foot gap in the attic space between the top of the pipe and the bottom of the vent! I guess they just figured that the heatons and greasons would just know where to go. Or maybe they had been reading the book of Job and knew that "Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward." (Job 5:7)

In any case, I don't think I have 20 years of congealed bacon grease in my attic, but I wanted it fixed anyway. A bigger problem seemed to be that there was no valve to keep the cold air from outside (the attic) from creeping its frosty tendrils into my nice warm kitchen. In the mornings the stove top and kitchen floor were quite cold, and so as a temporary measure I had stuffed a washrag behind the vent grill and below the fan. But that solution wouldn't do for long. No - this sounds like a job for - Super Homeowner!

I put on my respirator and crawled up there, trailing a butterfly valve, a length of vent pipe, and tin snips, and a roll of duct tape. The pipe didn't line up with the vent, so I had to re-direct the air flow in a 45-degree turn toward its destiny. The butterfly valve is forced open by rushing air, and it closes when you turn off the fan (Yay!). A few strips of duct tape (you can actually use it for ducts) made quick work of any minor leaks and made my little interior chimney as stable as the day is long! I tested it and it worked. Hah! Score one for the good guys.

Well, as long as I'm up here, what else is amiss? On a previous foray into the Attic Of Doom I had seen something strange over against the eaves, in that narrow section where the roof slants down to meet the ceiling and everything gets wedged together. There was a board laid between the joists, and a hand mirror. Beyond that, right up against the eaves, was a lower section corresponding to the dropped ceiling in the kitchen above the sink. Hmmm . . . it looked as if somebody had wanted to peer down into the lower section. They had been unable to slide all the way into the wedge, so they had used a mirror to look downward. Hmmm again . . . the plot thickens.

I wedged my body onto the board and held the mirror forward. It was one of those magnifying ones and I couldn't see much. So I wedged forward some more, grunting and groaning, until my scalp was scraping against the roofing nails and my nose was brushing the joists. Unh, ugh, awh! I peered downward . . .

. . . and saw nothing of interest. Just some drywall covered with insulation fuzz. But wait! What is that running next to my ear? It looks like a rubber hose. Yes, it's an old garden hose running farther down into the wall between the studs. What on earth is that doing there?

Well, I don't want no unexplained hoses in our house! Somehow I pulled myself back from the abyss and freed my arms enough to pull on the hose. Gingerly I pulled it up out of the wall, taking care lest a spray of water should suddenly come gushing forth from somewhere. Easy, easy now.

There was something brown stuck near the end, looking like a hardened bunch of rubber or that foam they use to fill holes. In the dim light of the flashlight I couldn't really tell. I pulled up the entire hose and nothing horrible happened. Oh well, let's get out here and back into the realm of the living.

(This next part gets kind of gross, so if you're squeamish you might want to check out the Boulder Cam with Netscape instead or something.)

Back in the garage I looked at the hose and the brown thing. At first I thought it was some Alien child's toy, like the one that almost ate Sigourney Weaver. It had that weird skull and a tail and some claws. But wait! This . . . is . . . a . . . very dry, very mummified, and very very dead animal! Gross!!!

The dead body had absolutely no hair, but was all dry and stiff and wrapped around the hose in a death-grip. Yuck! I finally concluded that it was a squirrel. It was too big to be a rat, and the shape of the skull and length of the tail seemed to suggest a squirrel. I still haven't figured out how it lost all its hair.

I put the mummified body into the garbage, to join three dumb mice that I had trapped earlier that week in the Great Landfill In The Sky. So here's what must have happened: The squirrel got into the attic through the vents and somehow got trapped in the wall next to the dishwasher. The homeowners heard it scratching around and went up into the attic to try to fish it out. They couldn't, but they left a hose there in hopes that the squirrel could climb out of its own accord.

The poor squirrel never did make it out alive. It either starved there or died of thirst, but clutched onto the hose with its last strength in hopes of someday, someday, making it back to the light. The original homeowners forgot about the whole episode. But many years later, I came along, pulled out the remains of the squirrel, and gave it a decent burial. Whimper, sniff, sniff . . .

The attic vents now have screens on them. I also forwarded some postal mail to the previous homeowners and wrote a note on it explaining what finally happened to the squirrel that got stuck up in the attic, so at last they will know.

Whew!

Stick It In Your Ear Isn't Refined Enough

Speaking of people I agree with and who write well, Tom Maguire has opened surrender negotiations with the NYTs.

Long May She Wave

OK, I'm like the 45,365 blogger to link to Mark Steyn's column on flag-burning, but it is both well written and I agree with it. There are certain popular ideas that float around and no matter how discredited somehow keep coming back - bell bottoms, mercantilism, and outlawing flag desecration for instance. So once again the House has taken up the burning issue of flag desecration, and another feel good piece of legislation is passed. I'm against this amendment (in all its forms) for two simple reasons: People should be free to express themselves, even in such a wrong way; and such expressions say a lot flag desecrators, none favorable. OK, three - I'm against feel good legislation on principle.

But let's face it, such a ban is similar to hate crime legislation (what is desecrating the flag if not a hate crime) or campus speech codes. I'm against them, too, and unlike bell bottoms, they don't show any signs of (thankfully!) going out of style.

Welcome to St. Louis. Now Leave.

The weather turned nasty here this weekend - no big storms, but suffocating heat and humidity. The haze is amazing, cutting way down on visibility - the clouds themselves are mostly obscured and the sky is this grey-blue blanket. I had plans for more yardwork this weekend, but I just can't work under such conditions. That's my story, and I'm sticking with it.

A Couple of Movies

Two nights ago we watched Finding Neverland. The pacing was leisurely, which suits the period and subject. The acting was first rate - I've never seen Johnny Depp as restrained yet still smoldering behind the eyes. I have to admit, I wasn't wild about it when the funWife picked this one out, but I thought it was thoroughly enjoyable, excellent family movie.

Last night it was The Aviator, which wasn't as good. Oh, it was a lavish production, but it's an odd movie. If Howard Hughes had any genius, it wasn't on display beyond his ability to spend all his money. The pacing in the beginning was especially off, with a very rushed feel yet later it settled down into a more sustainable pace. And the colors appeared to have been applied later and poorly - a fault I can't quite figure out (I'm hoping it's not my TV!). The best part was his confrontation with Senator Brewster, the kind you wish more such witnesses had. Overall, it was all surface and no depth, and made no emotional connection other than pity (and not much of that) as he descended into madness.

Sudoku

It's Friday, so I'm tired and depressed thinking about a Supreme Court that rules it's OK for the government to take your property and give it to somebody else they think will do a better job with it and it's OK for the goverment to take your property if they think it has something to do with drugs.

Instead, it's Sudoku time with Mathtrek. Follow the links to the world of Sudoku.

Millions For Cows, Not One Penny for Research

Eamon Fitzgerald reports on the growing respect for Tony Blair in Germany, and includes the eye opening statistic that the EU budget "allocates seven-times more for agriculture as for research and development, science, technology, education and innovation. Forty percent of spending goes into agriculture, where less than five percent of the population works." Yowza.

The Miasma All Around

I have to like the title of this article: CIA says Iraq is now a terrorist training ground. Hello, McFly, as opposed to when Saddam was terrorist-in-chief of the place?

The lead sentance grabs your attention: "The CIA believes the Iraq insurgency poses an international threat and may produce better-trained Islamic terrorists than the 1980s Afghanistan war that gave rise to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, a U.S. counterterrorism official said on Wednesday."

At least you only have to go to paragraph 3 to see when this international threat will materialize: "Once the insurgency ends, Islamic militants are likely to disperse as highly organized battle-hardened combatants capable of operating throughout the Arab-speaking world and in other regions including Europe."

That's right, after the terrorists get beat in Iraq, then they'll disperse and be an interational threat. Um, so we have the Islamic radicals that went to Afganistan in the 80's and fought for the winning side being less lethal than the Islamic radicals who are going to Iraq and fighting for the losing side? Am I missing something here? There were a lot of Islamic radicals after Afganistan because they were on the winning team; more were attracted following the war there to be Islamic radicals because they were on the winning team, and then they followed it up with successful actions in Chechnya. Losing two wars, in Afganistan and in Iraq, is not a winning strategy for long term success.

I also have trouble with "Iraq has become a magnet for Islamic militants similar to Soviet-occupied Afghanistan two decades ago and Bosnia in the 1990s, U.S. officials say." Again, the difference is that the militants are dying in far greater numbers and proportions in Iraq than they did in Afganistan two decades ago - it's not more than a magnet, it's a mass graveyard for militants.

Once the insurgency ends, the Islamic milititants are most likely dead; it will be much harder to recruit people to be suicide bombers as a mass murderer in the name of Allah will have lost a lot of zest. And let's not forget the flip side to this -- there will be two countries, Afganistan and Iraq, that will have anti-terrorist forces that will be well motivated and working with us to continue to beat forces they've already won victories over. If I had to pick, I'd pick the winners over the losers as allies in this long struggle. But I guess that doesn't make good copy.

A tip of the hat to Take Back The News for the article.

Impermissible Expression of Beliefs

David Harsanyi makes sense on the perception of religious intolerance at the Air Force Academy:

At the AFA, some cadets pray. Others had the temerity to mention Jesus in conversation. One cadet called another an "(expletive) Jew." This, we should deduce, means that there is institutional religious intolerance?

I've been called an "(expletive) Jew" plenty of times. Perhaps I should call for an investigation of Denver? Colorado?

But more distressing than being called an (expletive) Jew was an e-mail I received from a big shot at the Colorado ACLU the last time I wrote on the AFA.

This person offered to give me a lesson on the First Amendment - which, I suspect, would have been as constructive as a tutorial on marriage from Bill Clinton.

We'll see if the ACLU, which selectively fights for freedom, has a problem with the concept of "impermissible expression of beliefs."

Somedays Are Better Than Others

About a block from work this morning, the guy in the car of me flips me off twice, then waves big and smiles. Did he confuse me with somebody else? Did he have trouble waving the first two times? I thought maybe it was a coworker but he kept on going so hopefully I'll never see him or his fingers ever again.

Break Out The Black Arm Bands

Note to Justice John Paul Stevens: pull your head out of your butt:

"Home and business owners' contention that economic development doesn't qualify as public use "is supported by neither precedent nor logic," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority. "

Stevens added that "because that plan unquestionably serves a public purpose, the takings challenged here satisfy the public use requirement of the Fifth Amendment."

I'm not a big fan of Justice O'Conner, but she got it right in her dissent:

In a strongly worded dissenting opinion, O'Connor wrote that the majority's decision overturns a long-held principle that eminent domain cannot be used simply to transfer property from one private owner to another.

"Today the Court abandons this long-held, basic limitation on government power," she wrote. "Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded -- i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public -- in the process."

The effect of the decision, O'Connor said, "is to wash out any distinction between private and public use of property -- and thereby effectively to delete the words "for public use" from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment."

We're replacing bedrock rights clearly in the constitution like private property and replacing them stretches like the right to abortion, the right to healthcare and the right to free school lunches. A terrible day for the constitution, and more shredding, foot wiping, and overturning than John Ashcroft has ever done and will ever do.

Penultimate Triplet of Quotations from Mignon McLaughlin

• The young have such fervor: nothing can stop them except success.
• In youth we are plagued by desire; in later years by the desire to feel desire.
• When I was a child, nobody died; but now it happens all the time.

From the out of print "The Complete Neurotic's Notebook" by Mignon McLaughlin.
Earlier entries: June 18, June 10, June 7, May 10, April 25 and 28.

Now We're Alone At Last

The funWife and I went to Hollywood Video, rented 3 movies and bought Raiders of the Lost Ark (AKA Indiana Jones I) for $8.50 last night. Yes, that's the cost of one person seeing one movie, but there were coupons involved. Still, it does help explain why fewer people are seeing movies at the theater these days.

When we saw Revenge of the Sith, it was at a new theater which touts the largest screen in the midwest. And it was a large screen by today's standards, but as I informed the Fruit of the Murphy Loins, it would have been an average screen when I was even a teenager. Thankfully the shoe-box theaters that were built during my 20's and 30's are disappearing, replaced by the stadium seating theaters. I guess the owners realized that people weren't willing to pay a lot of money to see a movie on a screen only marginally larger than their TV at home and in the company of strangers. I'm also noticing that people are talking less during movies, maybe because they don't feel like they're in their living room anymore.

I do like movies, and the movies today are able to do things technically and thus make movies that are beyond what once could be done. Compare Master and Commander to Horatio Hornblower, and you'll see what I mean -- although I do have a soft spot in my heart for the scene in HH where the two ships are bearing down on each other with every sail unfurled and filled with the wind. Physically impossible, but it sure looks good as long as you don't think. But along the way Hollywood seems to have replaced dialogue and plot with action and CGI. Can't we have all four? Dialogue written today doesn't come close to what was routinely written well into the seventies.

And that brings us to Hitch, the movie we watched last night. It's a very pleasant movie, and Will Smith is quite believable as a smooth talking charmer and he does have some funny bits. The problem is not enough Kevin James. Kevin lights up the screen and provides lots of laughs, but Will Smith is the star, so we have to see lots of him and Eva Mendes even though we pretty much now how that story line is going to go. And there's your economics in a nutshell - I got a bargain at 99 cents for the funWife and I to rent the movie, and I'd have been unhappy to pay $17 for us to see it in a theater.

Do Anything To Take Us Out Of This Blue

I'll say one thing for Dick Durbin - at least he didn't claim he was just trying to make joke. But that's the only positive thing I can say about his absurd and damaging claim that:

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime--Pol Pot or others--that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.

I can only shake my head at such breathtaking ignorance, and his subsequent attempt to shift the blame from himself, where it squarely belongs, to the media and right wingers is pathetic. There are two problems with his remarks: He makes this inflammatory, bound to be used by our enemies, wrong statement; and by doing so he destroys the discussion over the point I hope he was trying to make. Hugh Hewitt takes a long, full look at the Senator's remarks and concludes, well, that would be telling, wouldn't it.

UPDATE:
Senator Durbin has apologized for his remarks. I thought his apology insincere (he waited until Mayor Daley of Chicago let him have it) and the crying was over the top, but apology made, and in the words of Smash: Apology accepted. Show's over, folks. Move along.

Father's Day

I had a very nice Father's Day, thank you very much. A nice shirt, breakfast, and a couple of neat cards - my daughter turns out beautiful, thoughtful cards. I ought to have her start selling custom made cards over the internet. I sunburned my right side at an afternoon baseball game to match my left side I burned at Saturday morning's game. It all evens out. Except the umping, which stunk at both games. I used to tell my son the umps are doing the best they can; now I just don't say anything because I'm not so sure anymore.

So to all you fathers out there - Happy Father's Day! (slightly belated)

Shadows and Tall Trees

Shelley takes a walk on the wild side and has pictures of it! Now we know what forests symbolize in old tales.

Monday Humor

Who can't use a good laugh on a monday? Therefore I give you Cap'n Wacky's Death Star of Fun. Enjoy. You can thank me later.

More Advice from Mignon McLaughlin

• Don't fool yourself that important things can be put off till tomorrow; they can be put off forever or not at all.
• We have a terror of seeming to exert ourselves, lest it be noticed that we exerted ourselves and did not succeed.
• The neurotic lies awake at night, composing letters to those he hates. He seldom thinks of dropping a line to those he loves.

From the out of print "The Complete Neurotic's Notebook" by Mignon McLaughlin.
Earlier entries: June 10, June 7, May 10, April 25 and 28.

Back In The USA

Many moons ago when I wore a younger man's clothes I spent three months in Pakistan. I didn't know it when I arrived at the airport to leave, but I didn't have permission to leave the country. After I had gone through customs, checked in with Air France (yes, Air France, and I'd fly them again in a heartbeat), I was stopped at the security check, my luggage removed from the plane, and I was told I couldn't leave the country without a travel permit. As an American, I hadn't a clue that a country would stop a traveller from leaving. A criminal, yes. Someone who had spent three months in country without incident, no. The next day I and several co-travellers went to the police station and in a scene from Dickens (imagine very old men in uniforms surrounded by massive amount of paperwork) we were issued Travel Papers and I was able to leave the country (on Air France, who did right by me).

Well.

I'm glad to see that someone else will be now be able to leave Pakistan - Mukhtar Mai, the woman whose gang rape was ordered by a tribal council to punish her family for her brother's alleged indescretion. For reasons best known to the Pakistani government, she wasn't allowed to leave the country until the prime minister of Pakistan himself took her name off the do not leave the country list yesterday.

But while her story ends there for now, my tale continues on.

I look at the AP version at the KC Star -- it reads like the woman's appeal moved the PM. Ditto for The Independent. I look at ABC News and it reads like international pressure moved the PM. The Indian Express notes that it was pressure from "key ally" United States that did the trick. Finally the WaPo version cites a single factor: "a stern protest by the Bush administration". Australia's News.com.au isn't content just to cite some amorphous pressure, they have the best detail on who said what stern protests. The NYT, God love them, can't bring itself to mention the word Bush in a positive light, so it has a "pressure from Washington" formulation. Could be the state, could be congress, could be George, who knows for sure. Reuters, Reuters makes it clear just who applied the pressure and how it was applied.

But the best coverage was at Voice of America, which supplied all the details, and even covered the NYT's prior coverage. In head to head coverage, the VOA is consistantly one of the best for news coverage.

Google News - it's how you can compare a bunch of different versions of a story in a hurry.

Same Old Story

Omar discovers a well known story -- he's courted by the press, they hang on his every word, and then boom he's dropped like last weeks newspaper when he doesn't tell them what they want to hear. Just ask David Gelertner.

You might even think that re-opening of Baghdad Stadium and a crowd of thousands enjoying soccer without mishap would be news, but you'd be wrong according to news organizations.

Rip Off The Masks And Let's See

I'm no tree hugger, but this does make my blood boil. Since we brought back Riverboat Gambling in Missouri -- which has since turned into gambling in buildings built on liquid foundations -- why don't we bring back hanging? If the $279.50 fine isn't enough to keep these jerks from ruining the streams in Missouri, maybe a few of them swinging by the neck will. Instead of ruining these great natural streams, why don't these yahoo's make their own concrete stream bed and play in that instead?

As long as I'm on the subject, another thing that really bugs me is the way subdivisions are built in my neck of the woods these days. The way they just level all the trees first thing sends me around the bend. I don't get it. I understand you have to knock down the trees where the streets and houses are going to go, but why knock down every single one of them? One of the things I like about my subdivision is that they didn't do that - my back yard is filled with mature oak and ash trees (and dogwoods before the anthracnose got them). The subdivision is old enough now that the trees planted along the street have grown together to form arches in spots, but thirty years isn't long enough for oaks to become mature. I'd figure that you could get a higher price for neighborhoods that still had stands of mature trees and not just nothing but sod. First thing people do when they move in is plant trees, so why not leave a few? And since my area is hilly, it can't help with erosion to clear cut like that.

Too Much To Hope For

I hate to even mention it, but is comment spam a thing of the past? I used to get it regularly which made me install MT-Blacklist and MT-Close. That really cut down on it, but I'd have to update my Blacklist and run MT-Close frequently. I could see the spammers being denied on my activity log, so even though they weren't showing up, they weren't getting in. But I haven't even seen a denial in the log in a while. Have the spammer given up, or are they retooling, or are they leaving the little guys alone?

The Reese's Solution

For reasons that escape me, the news media seems to think that the acquital of Michael Jackson on child molestation charges is REALLY BIG NEWS, of the caliber only slightly below THE END OF THE WORLD. Personally, I couldn't even muster a yawn.

They also seem to think that interrogaters playing Christine Aguilera to a mass murderer wanna be at loud volumes at all hours of the day is also REALLY BIG NEWS. I have to wonder if they've ever lived in a college dorm. I don't to make light of the plight of prisoners at Gitmo, but after reading the EXCLUSIVE article in Time I have to wonder how anybody can survive three years in a frat house. Do the faculty know what goes on there? George W. Bush has probably already been through worse during his time in college.

Now that Michael Jackson isn't going to be sharing his bed with boys anymore, and his career is further in the toilet than a Quran has ever been, and the use Christine Aguilaria is now out of the question, how about the government hires Michael to conduct interrogations at Gitmo? It would be a perfect fit and let Michael do something productive again. He can be good cop and he could share his bed with men. Just a thought.

Turn And Face The Change

I've made a few changes around here. I added to the blogroll (make sure you check out two new St. Louis area bloggers The Listless Lawyer and Steve Priest, along with new favorites Jeff Harrell at The Shape of Days, the reportage of Michael Yon from Iraq, the left/right discussion at Debate Space, and the writings of Paul Graham thanks to Mark).

I finally corrected the link to the Belmont Club (finally!) - I'm hoping wretchard doesn't get his hosting problems fixed because it will be a while before I'll get around to updating the link. Sadly I dropped a couple (Good Luck Brad!) from the blogroll which I only do (except for rare circumstances) because the blogger announces an end or long hiatus, or simply stops posting for many months.

And I've started category archives, so you can peruse what my fellow authors (Sean and Carl) have written in the past by subject. I have probably half the posts categorized and will get to the rest at flank speed.

We work overtime here at Funmurphys just to satisfy our readers. Please leave any other ideas right here in the comment section to this post.

Once A Baptist, Always A Baptist

John Smith was the only Protestant to move into a large Catholic neighborhood. On the first Friday of Lent, John was outside grilling a big juicy steak on his grill.

Meanwhile, all of his neighbors were eating cold tuna fish for supper. This went on each Friday of Lent. On the last Friday of Lent, the neighborhood men got together and decided that something had to be done about John, he was tempting them to eat meat each Friday of Lent, and they couldn't take it anymore.

They decided to try and convert John to be a Catholic. They went over and talked to him and were so happy that he decided to join all of his neighbors and become a Catholic. They took him to Church, and the Priest sprinkled some water over him, and said, "You were born a Baptist, you were raised a Baptist, and now you are a Catholic."

The men were so relieved, now their biggest Lenten temptation was resolved. The next year's Lenten season rolled around. The first Friday of Lent came, and just at supper time, when the neighborhood was setting down to their tuna fish dinner, came the wafting smell of steak cooking on a grill.

The neighborhood men could not believe their noses! WHAT WAS GOING ON? They called each other up and decided to meet over in John's yard to see if he had forgotten it was the first Friday of Lent?

The group arrived just in time to see John standing over his grill with a small pitcher of water. He was sprinkling some water over his steak on the grill, saying, "You were born a cow, you were raised a cow, and now you are a fish."

Health Savings Accounts bring Market Forces to Health Care

as Kevin wrote almost a year ago:

But healthcare is something too important to be left to the market you say. Or healthcare doesn't work like other goods because you have to have it inorder to live you say. Doesn't food meet those same requirements? Yet we allocate food in this country via the free market, and the crisis du jour is obesity. If we stopped allocating healthcare in this country via the current odd employer standing in for government system, and instead allocated healthcare via a free market, the crisis du jour would be longevity.

Michael Barone now observes that HSA accounts are bring market forces to health care:

How many times have you heard that health care costs are rising at record rates? Well, they aren't any more.
[...]
Something is going on out there. Politicians and political commentators always assume that government must do something new and different if health care costs are to be held down to bearable increases. But the evidence is that health care costs are being held down, by the workings of the marketplace, partly in response to health care legislation passed in the last four years.
[...]
The other interesting development is the emergence of health insurance policies that encourage healthy behavior. Health care experts note that the increasing incidence of diabetes and other obesity-related diseases threatens to hugely increase health care costs in future years.
[...]
The overriding assumption in much commentary on health care finance is that individuals and companies are helpless automata waiting for government action before anything can be done anything about health care costs. But recent developments suggest that, in fact, employers and employees are active players, and that provisions of recent legislation that were not much noticed by the commentariat have enabled them to take action that reduces costs and provides increased benefits and incentives for healthier behavior.

We have problems, yes, but we are not helpless.

I don't know that we are at risk for a longevity crisis yet, but it's a welcome developement that market incentives are finding their way into the health care equation.

Light Of Day

I wrote a letter to the editor at my local paper, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, last week about how I thought they and the rest of the media were handling the Quran "desecration" issue. I was surprised when it didn't run, but then they whole thing seems to have sunk without a trace from their pages. But since I do have my own virtual printing press, I'm running it here:

The headline read “White House plays down report of Quran desecration by guard” but it should have read, “Media plays up American Quran mishandling”. The media seems to show little interest in informing the public but plenty of interest in settling a score with the White House which called Newsweek out on inaccurate reporting. So we went from a report of a guard flushing a Quran down a toilet to a guard deliberately kicking a Quran and a bare mention that the only Quran in a toilet was placed there by a detainee. Detainees abused Qurans three times as often as guards. Some scandal, especially in light of real, documented abuses of detainees at the hands of US soldiers, and the routine murder of captives at the hands al Qaida.

What puzzles me is the lack of interest in the media that the US government is providing a religious book to prisoners and issuing instructions affirming the holiness of the Quran. I wonder, do they provide Bibles, or Bhagavad-Gitas, or even copies of Dianetics on request? If my local school district or prison started passing out Bibles and issuing guidelines on the proper handling of the Bible based on the idea that it is the one true scripture of God, wouldn’t there be a huge uproar? Hindus would be pleased with the size of the cow that a certain segment of American society would have over that. But the media is focused with laser like intensity (read the transcripts at www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/) on guards mishandling Qurans and the meta-questions that raises. No wonder people no longer trust the media.

A Trio of quotes from Mignon McLaughlin

• Despair is anger with no place to go.
• The death of someone we know reminds us we are still alive--perhaps for some purpose we ought to re-examine.
• We are like people with short term leases on summer cottages; we can never seem to make our provisions come out even with our stay.

BooYa!

Stanford students are big on word compression - reducing words to their first syllable. So Memorial Church becomes MemChu, Memorial Auditorium becomes MemAud, and Hoover Tower becomes HooTow. I think we can use this to predict politics. For instance, George Bush would become GeBu but John Kerry would become JoKe. Hillary Clinton would become HillClin, but Howard Dean would become HowDe (with Doody invariably added). Okay, maybe the analysis is not up to the standards of a MicBar, but fun for me anyway.

Speaking of John Kerry, did you notice that although his grades were ever so slightly lower than Bush's, it's always reported that they were similar or nearly identical. Would the headline have been the same if they had been ever so slightly higher? Anyway, JoKe has a good explanation of why.

Speaking of Howard Dean, maybe HowDe should just go back to the all purpose "yeaghhhh!!!" instead of saying anything else.

The Vikings Are Coming!

The last couple of days I've been getting a lot of hits (for me, anyway) from Norway and I haven't a clue why. If I'd finally gotten around to writing the monster post about Njal's Saga and culture I've been meaning to do for the last 3 years I could understand (and yes, Skarp-Hedin is my favorite character in the book), but it's been the same old same old around here. Technorati and Google haven't been any help in figuring out why they are coming and the two trackers I use show them coming but no link. So if you're reading this in Norway, please leave a comment telling me how you found out about this site.

Nitro Stat

I'm still reeling from the Apple's announcment that they were switching to Intel processors. Whatever Apple may say, I think the only reason is that the AIM alliance (Apple, IBM, Motorola) didn't work out the way Apple had hoped when they started it to make PowerPC chips (which are popular not just in gaming consoles, but lots of military applications as well). The two companies that actually manufacture the darn things have pretty much lost interest in making PowerPCs for personal computers and have often left Apple with egg on its face.

Apple faces a significant short term hurdle - will people buy PowerPC computers now knowing that software support for them may be problematic in a few years? The only bright spot is that Apple has tackled this problem before, when they switched from 6800 chips to PowerPC, and even when they switched from the old System 9 to the new System X.

And finally, the most important question: How will this affect Mac gaming?

Can't Get Enough of Mignon McLaughlin

• Every group of six or more has its inner circle, its circle, and its hangers-on.
• Traditions are group efforts to keep the unexpected from happening.
• We catch frightful glimpses of ourselves in the hostile eyes of others.
• It's terrifying to see someone inside of whom a vital spring seems to have broken. It's particularly terrifying to see him in your mirror.

In The Pouring Rain

Every newspaper in the country keeps a coterie of solons on staff; a group of such surpassing wisdom and intellect that they can write on any topic with cogency and empathy, able to advise from the most exhaulted potentate to the humblest personage; comfortable at all levels of government from President to Governor to Mayor; equally adept in advising CEOs, school boards, and fellow citizens; nimbly covering politics, business, fashion, entertainment, science, and society at large or small -- any and all subjects they put a mind to -- and all for no extra cost to the reader. For them the past is illlumed like midday in the tropics and the future is no more the undiscovered country. What are these august sages called you might wonder? Why, editorial writers.

But it is passing strange that on the subjects nearest and dearest to the hearts of newspaper owners, circulation and reputation, these solons are not consulted, nor do they propound their wisdom to the masses. The subject must gnaw at them day and night - why do our readers abandon us? Yet the editorial writers remain silent - unasked and unanswering. Why are they not consulted? Yet not consulted, why not act still? Why do they approach their doom without their customary overflowing, uncontainable wisdom and knowledge? It remains a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma that the owners do not ask, and the editorialist do not tell.

(After composing most of this in my head I find out that Michael Kinsley wrote something similar. Great minds think alike.)

Celestial Gravity Surfing

Science News has a really neat article about the real minimum energy transfer between planets. No, not the Hohmann transfer orbits I learned about in Orbital Mechanics class, but a solution to the three body problem. It uses gravity to do most of the work, and so while it takes a lot longer to get somewhere, it's eyepoppingly low energy - one mission only took 4% of total mass.

The Post Is Like A Box Of ...

The St. Louis Post Dispatch ("stupid is as stupid does") runs a stupid article on the war in Iraq that asks the question "Are we losing because US casualities are increasing?" and unsurprisingly only interviews people who say yes or maybe.

The premise is stupid and if you think but a moment you can figure it for yourself. In the spirit of science, perform this Gedankenexperiment: A war starts and ends. The casualites for one side starts at zero before the war, increases, and then decreases to zero at the end of the war. Does this describe the winner or the loser? It describes both, doesn't it? So when casualties were increasing did this mean one side was losing? You can't tell, can you. And it's not just a thought experiment, but it's the reality of war -- look at US casualty figures from WWII and you'll discover that they increase dramatically year after year until 1945 - and had US soldiers not been saved by the deus ex machina of the A-bomb from invading Japan, they would have been highest of all in 1945. So using one side's casualty figures as a proxy for who's winning is both theoretically and practically an error.

But even if you think the figures indicate who's winning or losing, isn't there something(s) missing from the story? Like shouldn't we use numbers for coalition forces, not just US? And shouldn't we include Iraqi figures as well? Wouldn't that give a more complete picture? And shouldn't we compare the two side's casualty figures? I mean if you think these figures have meaning, shouldn't you be comparing the two sides?

You'd also have to know what kind of stratagies the two sides have picked. Are we fighting a battle (or battles) of attrition, maneuver, position, what? What kind of strategy is the enemy fighting? If their goal is to kill enough Americans to cause war fatigue at home, isn't reporting only American casualties the stupid thing to do? If you run articles that only mention or highlight failure are you really being objective, cynical, or stupid? Is there any mention in this article of the comparitive strategies and what they would mean when looking at casualty figures? This is it:

"While Americans are hoping that the training of Iraqi forces will mean the end of a major U.S. presence, Abenheim says the plan harks back to a failed strategy in America's last major war.

"It does suggest Vietnamization," he said, speaking of the U.S. policy during the Vietnam War to train the South Vietnamese to protect their own country so American soldiers could slide into the background. "

More stupidity. The failed policy in Vietnam was Americanization - the policy persued by Kennedy and especially Johnson along with a strategy of attrition picked by Westmorland. Those were the strategies that failed and in so doing so turned so many people against the war. Vietnamization and positional warfare were successes under Nixon and Abrams. South Vietnam fell because when invaded for a second time after the peace treaty was signed, the US cut off not only all aid, but any purchases of weapons and ammunition as well. The penultimate tragedy of Vietnam was this very real stab in the back of an ally. (The ultimate tragedy is the floodgates of death and misery that were opened on South Vietnam following its occupation by the tyrannical communists of the North).

To further prove the writers don't understand what they're writing about, they back up the assertion that iraqification is a losing strategy with a quote by a wounded guardsmen:

""It doesn't matter how many troops you have there or what they do, you are never going to beat an insurgency like that," said Oversmith, now a police officer in Smithville.

"In their view, they think they are being conquered. If they think they are being conquered, they'll fight for years and years. Look how long the Vietnamese fought."

And an earlier quote is also priceless:

"The evidence to date suggests that U.S. military officers don't really understand the sources of the insurgency or how to blunt its effects," he said. "For example, every day we hear stories of suicide bombers killing innocent Iraqis, but we have no detailed insight into the recruiting mechanisms or the training to produce suicide bombers in such large numbers."

One of the things I do wonder about, and which isn't covered in the article, is what is taking so long in standing up a viable Iraqi military. We're seeing it now, but what took so long? And then I harken back to WWII (again), and I guess I shouldn't be surprised. In Europe, it was clear that the decisive blow would be an invasion of France and then on to Germany, yet the first step was to secure North Africa where 13 long months after entry the American Army suffered a stinging defeat at Kasserine Pass. After North Africa, the next stepping stone was Sicily, then Italy where Allied forces would be bogged down for the rest of the war. It wasn't for 2 and a half years after the US entered the war that France was invaded and the war was really taken to the Germans (and American casualties really mounted). The new Iraqi army in a little over 2 years has begun the decisive battles for Iraq - not bad by American historical standards.

The most appalling thing about this appalling article is that it is so American centric. I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
Right now, successfully replacing a murdering, terrorist supporting dictator with a half way decent, reasonably representative government in Iraq is critical to the US, but it is with no exaggeration a matter of life and death for Iraqis. For decades, they haven't held their own futures in their own hands. Right now, they do. We can support them to the best of our abilities, but ultimately, what Iraq becomes is up to the Iraqis.

Sometimes You Get Kicked

I had a great post built around this amazing article about Watergate by Edward Jay Epstein
from 1974. But as I was wrapping up my browser quit and took my post with it. Instead, you'll have to read the Powerline post about it instead.

OK, I can't resist. What's so amazing is that the article not only nails the press, but it also nailed Deep Throat -- high ranking official(s) who wanted to bring down the head of the FBI L. Patrick Gray.

And one last dig. Nixon deserved to go for running a criminal conspiracy from the White House. But didn't JFK deserve to go, for a lot more than petty burglery? He not only attempted the assassination of foreign leaders, he succeeded.

Laugh of the Day

On a whim a read this BBC article on "When Pop Stars Get Political" and had to laugh at this paragraph:

George Michael's anti-Iraq war song Shoot the Dog , which accused Tony Blair of being George Bush's poodle, so angered Americans that the former Wham star moved out of the US for a time.

How Very Yeah

It's all about hitting what you want, and only what you want.