Har!

From a program on The History Channel about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“The FBI was very concerned that the FBI or someone connected to the FBI may have had something to do with King’s death. But an investigation by the FBI found no evidence of involvement.”

Iris PSA

Is This Suspicious or What?

I have a video camera on the front porch with a monitor in my office. I know this unnerves some people, even though the camera is in plain sight and it's not exactly a secret. I can understand their discomfort, but in the end I'm very glad to be able to see who's knocking on my door.

Or who isnt.

This afternoon I noticed some teenage boy on my front porch, just standing there by the door. Not knocking. Just standing there. School's not out for another half hour or so, and I'm just about to go investigate when he finally knocks on the door. So he's there without knocking for at least 50 or 60 seconds, I don't know, but it seemed a little weird.

I walked around the side door and asked what was up. He said, "do you know what time it is?"

I said, "You came to my house to ask what time it is?" He nodded yes.

I almost told him it was 8 a.m., but instead told the truth: "I don't know, it's two or two-thirty, maybe, I don't know."

He didn't seem in a big hurry to leave so I prompted him with a "get going" and a dismissive wave of the hand. I watched him walk down the street, which took FOREVER. I took note that there were other kids all over the place he could have asked.

The more I thought about it, the more suspicious it seemed.

Muscle Boy

Most people didn't realize how tuff I looked underneath my jammies and jumpsuits. That age is so tough on your body image, but I was one of the lucky ones.

Animation Experiment #354

A Classic

I'm really only trying out the feature on here that allows you to post movies NOT on YouTube.

Me 'n' Birdbrain

On Torture

I feel like I'm missing something in the debate over the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales's replacement. The debate about whether the U.S. should torture people, and more specifically about whether waterboarding is torture.

Today things got even murkier for me after skimming the op-ed piece in the paper by David Reinhard, The Oregonian's lone voice in support of all things Bush. His piece today tries to argue that waterboarding isn't all that bad -- that's it's not really torture, while at the same time arguing that it's bad enough (apparently) that it makes terrorists give up valuable information. He uses the well-worn example of our lives hanging in the balance and the only way to safety is through torturing a suspect.

Of course, it seems to me if our entire security apparatus comes down to that, we're hurtin' gators. I have a hard time going along with this fantasy scenario. Especially since it comes from the so-called "values" crowd. In effect they are saying we NEED to go against our values to preserve the state. So there's "do the right thing" and then there's "well, it would be NICE to do the right thing, but we can't always do the right thing." If anyone else suggested this approach, they would be charged with "moral relativism," which used to be a bad thing, but now I have learned that, appropriately enough, moral relativism is only bad sometimes!

Here's my favorite snippet from Reinhard:

"But is any and all waterboarding torture and therefore illegal? I don't think so. First, if all waterboarding is torture, why does the U.S. government waterboard its own folks in survival training programs? It doesn't gouge out trainees' eyes or rip out fingernails to get them ready to withstand the horrors of capture. Is it because waterboarding is safe and painless?"

It's confusing, and you'll have to take my word for it that it wouldn't make any more sense if I included the whole piece. It sounds as though he's saying we use waterboarding to train our men to "withstand the horrors of capture" -- but if that's the case, he's saying waterboarding is, in fact, a "horror" of capture. That sure sounds like a definition of torture.

I don't really get it.

The other part of the debate that confounds me is U.S. senators (pro-Bush, pro-torture) who say "well, the nominee for the AG's office can't really say it's a crime because then he'd have to prosecute the people who did it." Um... YEAH, that's right! "We can't really call murder a crime because then we'd have to punish murderers." Does that sound any better?

Spray Paint Rules

A new city ordinance goes into effect today that will put a damper on my spray paint joy. No, I'm not a tagger, but I do buy probably a dozen or more cans of spray paint a year. It's useful and fun. Now when I go to buy some I will have to get assistance from the shopkeeper, and the shopkeeper must "keep [my] information on file" for two years. Oh, I'm sure it will all be worth the hassle six months from now, when we've finally won the War on Graffiti.

I noticed in the newspaper that 11-13% of tagging is deemed "gang-related" (whatever that means, really), and "the rest is political or hate speech."

Heh! here is a photo I took recently: Chief Wiggum from The Simpsons, on a boxcar that was parked out by Smith and Bybee Lakes last week. I'm not sure which gang associates with Chief Wiggum. Or perhaps this is hate speech?

Here's a copy of the new rules:

Horror Shopping

Several weeks ago we decided we should probably rent THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT to round out the kids' pop culture education. You know, it's in the canon. Like Willa Cather or Twizzlers.

But we didn't (read: I didn't) get around to adding it to our Netflix queueueueueueueue. And then Halloween came along and it seeemed more and more like we should watch it. Some of this comes from The Office -- there's a small part of that show that alludes to Blair Witch.

In the last week I've been to five different places that specialize in selling DVDs, and none of them have The Blair Witch Project.

It's a sign o' the times that I find it odd and vexing that I can't go buy whatever movie I want.

Newsmakers

After years of researching and writing about famous people, I have concluded that so-called "newsmakers" are the least interesting people to research. The celebrities and politicians and athletes you see in the news all the time... those guys have pretty uninteresting stories, a lot of 'em.

Mostly because so many of them have spent their entire lives wanting to be in the news. So their life experience prior to becoming famous is often a series of steps to becoming famous. There are exceptions, of course. But celebrities of the modern variety, from Britney Spears to Rudy Giuliani, often seem to have the same basic storyline. They went to the right places and made friends with the right people along the way and were determined to become famous and so... that's what happened.

I find more twists and turns when I research historical figures.

I'm not making any kind of judgement about it, really. There have been plenty of times when I read about some historical figure and it dawns on me that they were just like one of these people you see on VH-1 or E! They maybe go down in history as a great man or woman, but in fact they were basically showboaters and spotlight hogs as much as some of the flashy celebs seen on today's "red carpet."

I could write an entire new post on why I think Red Carpet should become our 51st state. Since we now formulate national policy on non-state entities such as "terrorism," I think there's a legal case for a 51st state being the stretches of red carpets famous for those celebrity forced marches prior to awards shows, screening, etc.

Photo of the Day

Mr. Holznagel sent this to me, but didn't exactly say why. The statue is supposed to be of Vincent Price (write to Who2 and ask them to profile Mr. Price).

Mercy, Mercy Corps.

We have given money in the past to Mercy Corps, the volunteer relief organization that I'm not linking to right now because I'm lazier than they are.

Naturally, once you give money to a non-profit outfit, they never quit asking for more.

Mercy Corps, unfortunately, has turned into a real phone nag. This is because they are one of those outfits that calls for Amy but won't leave a message. They always hang up before I can explain they should go ahead and talk with me. This problem has come up before -- Amy's name is on whatever giving list they have, so they want to talk with her. But she's not home during the day and she sure as hell doesn't want to talk to them when they call back at dinnertime.

I try to explain this, when given the chance. We've been getting calls every day from the Mercy Corps asking for Amy. But they hang up while I'm trying to explain how they should talk to me.

Finally I interrupted this latest Mercy Corps (paid) caller and she let me explain that I'm the one who writes the checks and looks at the mail. I gave them another $50 and thanked her for giving me the time to explain the situation. She was the first out of maybe ten calls in the last week who let me get a word in beyond "can I take a message?"

She said, "Well, that's why I pray every morning before coming to work, so I can have the wisdom to guide me."

"It worked!" I told her.

Grant v. Lincoln

Last night Cleo had to go to the football game as a member of the Pep Band. The game was at PGE Park, and it was the Grant Generals (our home team from just around the corner) against their cross-town rivals, the Lincoln Cardinals. The game was played at PGE Park because the bleachers at Lincoln's field have been deemed unsafe. Grant does not really have a field for games at this time of year.

The game was televised on Fox Sports Network, nationally broadcast (but not in all markets, we're told) as "Nike's High School Game of the Week." Grant, with its winning record of 6-1 (I think), was trying for the PIL division title. Last year's game drew almost 6,000 fans.

It was great to watch on TV. Grant has some good players, all lined up behind their star quarterback, Andre Broadous. Grant got off to an early start and scored twice right away. Then Lincoln came back with some fire to score before the half was over. Things were looking good for Lincoln, but in the second half the game got away from them completely and Grant won 42-14.

Yes, it was fun to watch. But it also took 2 and a half hours. It made me realize once again how much time is required to be a sports fan. Here's a photo from The Oregonian's site:

Smith and Bybee

Yesterday Greg came by after lunch and we went out into the warm sunshine along the Columbia. We stopped at Broughton Beach and watched some gulls fight over a good-sized fish, then drove on over to the preserve at Smith and Bybee Lakes.




We were a little mixed up at first... the stuff they did last year changed the parking and path layout, so we first went to the far south end of the water. Then we went back up to the old path, made a stop at the lookout and headed to the far lookout. There wasn't much in the way of excitement, bird-wise -- in fact, it was pretty quiet. Still, it was about 75 degrees and sunny and the colorful leaves are still on the trees.

Here's what it looked like there:


Here's a Great Blue Heron... this photo was taken by simply putting my camera up to Greg's spotting scope:

Today's Jumble 10/22

30 Days of Wha-?

Saturday Amy and I saw the movie 30 Days of Night. Fans of the comic book -- sort of -- we were looking forward to it. I kind of or want to like Josh Hartnett, even though I can't think of a performance of his that made me think "he's a good actor." He seems like an okay guy, I guess that's his appeal. He must be an okay guy for people to keep hiring him. I don't think they're hiring him because he's the coolest, the hottest or the most intense.

Anyway, fans of the comic will recall that the real protagonist is the female character, the estranged wife of the character played by Josh Hartnett. But this is Hollywood, so the female lead, some mouth-breathing, sissy-looking blonde named Melissa George, basically followed the dude around the entire movie. We were supposed to think she's tough, but she doesn't actually do anything that's all that tough.

Unless you count being rescued by the male lead.

A bigger problem with the movie is there's not much story there. That's easily forgiven in a 30-page comic (those comics were a rip-off, more money and few pages than average). But in a movie you really do want a little bit more.

In the end I can't say it was a BAD movie. It was disappointing to me that they took a very stylized comic and made it into a rather pedestrian horror movie, but fans of that genre probably won't find too much to complain about.

iTunes University

The Stanford-iTunes project I mentioned a while back has been expanded by iTunes to include several other universities, all under the umbrella "iTunes University."

Last night I spent a while poking around, while listening to a lecture from some American Muslim fellow who was discussing the problems with Islam as it is today. You can listen to them without downloading them, but I still downloaded several, mostly in order to add to the iPod in Amy's car. Some bits were only a few minutes long. For example, they had ten of Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac. I also grabbed ten or so of a similar program on composers. And several hour-or-so long lectures on a variety of subjects.

Now I don't have to listen to sports radio, Christian radio or Dr. Laura while I work.

Currently I'm listening to Korea: The Unfinished War by John Biewen and Stephen Smith, from American RadioWorks.

Oh, Ellen!

The Entertainment Industry finally hooked me on their Ellen DeGeneres narrative involving the adopted dog she gave away. The bait this time was that she's maybe a SERIAL DOG RE-GIFTER. You know it must be true if the NY POST got it from Howard Stern.

I've saved you the trouble of actually going to the NY Post's site: