Personal Musings category archive

My cat’s not getting fat.

Her legs are just getting too short.

The Cincinnati Reds’ naming their baseball stadium “The Great American Ballpark” is as arrogant as the Dallas Cowboys pretending to be “America’s Team.”

In my part of America, any day on which the Cowboys lose is a good day.

(True fact, as contrasted to untrue facts: It was a sell-out to the Great American Insurance Company, whoever they are. It is now my policy to avoid their policies.)

If there is a great American ballpark, it is Yankee Stadium (and I’m not even a Yankees fan, though I was one in the days of Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford, in the days of ships of wood and men of iron).

Attending a ballgame in Yankee Stadium is a thing unto itself.

Proposals to introduce a law compelling non-Jews seeking Israeli citizenship to swear allegiance to Israel as a ”Jewish and democratic state” have generated a lively debate in Israeli papers.

Loyalty oaths were stupid during the Cold War and they are stupid now.

Someone with dastardly intent will quite happily swear a loyalty oath. What’s the little betrayal of a loyalty oath to someone who has already determined to betray a trust?

The only persons who benefit from loyalty oaths are politicians who use them to create fusses and furors.

Follow the link for more details on this particular fuss and furor.

In Wilmington, Delaware, there is a strong Christian Orthodox presence, reflecting the pattern of immigration (you know about immigration; it’s a word that means, “We’re here; you’re not allowed”). Up the road from my old house was a Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

When they held their annual bazaar, you could get pierogies to die for. (For those of you who have never heard of pierogies, they are sort of eastern European raviolis, usually filled with mashed potatoes or mashed potatoes and onions. You boil them up and, for a true treat, simultaneously fry up some onions and finish by browning the pierogies with the onions. You can sometimes find a pale imitation in the freezer section of your grocery store).

We attended it once, because the Pastor was our neighbor two doors up. The service was two hours of beautiful liturgy, much of it spent standing. The most memorable event was that First Son’s girlfriend of the time fainted from all the standing and incense. She went to the Narthex for a breath and, the next thing we knew, an usher was at our pew whispering, “Your daughter has fainted.” Daughter was standing right there . . . process of elimination and all that.

Anyhoo, in the course of a discussion of the place of archangels as opposed to angels (I took the position that angels were, at best, a metaphor, but that, in Christian tradition, archangels were sort of like the sergeants of angels–sergeants run the Army), I stumbled on the Orthodox Page, which discusses the Orders of Angels.

We are tired of “hearty soups.”

We’re going to start our own brand:

“Pine View Farm Puny Soups.”

For small appetites.

Susie Madrak managed to get the term “hippie punching” into the news this week.

I’ve never quite been sure what “hippie punching” means, other than a sort of misdirection play, sort of a modern equivalent of “shoot the messenger” that might be expressed as

When you don’t want to deal with the cause of a problem, blame the hippies.

Never mind that no hippies have been seen in the wild since 1969 and that many of the persons who use the phrase with themselves in the role of “hippie” not only were not hippies, but also have never seen one–indeed, their activism is quite the opposite of anything hippie–but let them have their little fantasy.

As of today, the Urban Dictionary has only one definition, added three days ago from what is clearly a rightwing perspective (the user who posted it uses a nom de innertubes of DA+IRS+IS+GONNA+GETCHA+SOON).

With that out of the way, what Mithras said.

Interpolation:

Noz defines the term for me. From the comments:

“hippie punching” is when democrats gratuitously attack their liberal base, perhaps for the misguided reason that it somehow helps their credibility with “regular” americans.

End Interpolation.

Read more »

The road to perdition oft leads through tradition.

I didn’t much like Hawaii Five-O the first time around.

For some fool reason, the local cable people think that the only baseball team that matters to people in these parts is the Washington Nationals.

The networks seem to think it’s either the Nationals or the Orioles (who are rumored to have at one time played in the Bigs).

We do get WGN (Cubs).

The Phillies are playing the Nationals this weekend. Then they’re playing the Braves and the New York Mutts (both probably not available here), and then the Nationals again at the end of the week.

There’s at least a little bit of baseball on the telly vision.

3,000 is not such a big deal, but grasping at straws etc. (emphasis added):

Applications for U.S. unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell last week to the lowest level in two months, a sign the labor market is improving.

Initial jobless claims dropped by 3,000 to 450,000 in the week ended Sept. 11, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The median forecast was for a rise to 459,000, according to a Bloomberg News survey. The total number of people receiving unemployment insurance fell, and those getting extended payments plunged.

Ernest C. Withers, celebrated photographer of the Civil Rights movement and intimate of many civil rights leaders is revealed to have been a paid FBI informant.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the story is buried deep inside, that persons trying to make real the vision that

“that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”

were–and may still be today–considered “subversive”:

In addition to spying on citizens, Hoover’s FBI ran a covert operation, called COINTELPRO, a counterintelligence or “dirty tricks” program that attempted to disrupt radical movements. It did this with tactics such as leaking embarrassing details to the news media, targeting individuals with radical views for prosecution or trying to get them fired from jobs. First launched in the 1950s to fight communism, by 1967 it was aimed at a range of civil rights leaders and organizations deemed to be threats to national security. Congressional inquiries later exposed it for widespread abuse of personal and political freedoms, including a fierce campaign against King.

Shaun Mullen shares his take on the story at Kiko’s House.

Gainesville, Florida, has found theirs. Leonard Pitts, Jr.:

Maybe you know the term “terrorist veto.” It refers to the ability of a single obscure malcontent, powerless but for his willingness to sacrifice lives, to make himself heard at the highest level of geopolitics and force his way upon the international stage.

As this case makes oppressively clear, the Internet and the 24-hour news cycle have evolved an analog to the terrorist veto. Call it the idiot veto — the ability of a single obscure malcontent, powerless but for his willingness to do some outrageous thing, to make himself heard at the highest level of geopolitics and force his way upon the international stage.

Two weeks ago, no one had ever heard of Jones, podunk pastor of a tiny church — 50 members — in Gainesville, Fla. Twenty years ago, his proclaimed intention to burn the Quran might have gotten him a few minutes on the rump end of the local TV newscast.

“Man bites dog is news,” because it’s unusual.

“Some persons are idiots is not news,” because a certain percentage of the populace will always be idiots.

It is a law of nature. When

K = the symbol for constant and
i = idiocy,
Ki= the Idiocy Constant of Human Nature.

Corollary to the Idiocy Constant:

Do not try to make anything idiot-proof. God will simply make a new and better idiot.

All seriousness aside, it’s persons like Mr. Mustache Jones who make me ashamed to call myself “Christian.”

What Noz said.

I was at a function this morning where the commemoration took the form of a moment of silence after the invocation and before the breakfast meal. It was appropriate and adequate.

As I recall, when I was a young ‘un, that’s how we commemorated Pearl Harbor and Armistice Day (Armistice Day on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month) (and, yes, I’m old but it had already been rolled into Veterans’ Day by the time I started school–it was still Armistice Day for my teachers, who, for some reason, were older than I).

One of my friends voices his alienation from the current state of American politics. Read the whole thing; it’s short.

Here’s the heart of it:

While I continue to believe at this relatively late date that the Republicans will fail to recapture House or Senate, although likely to come closer in the lower chamber, at this point I don’t give a crap. While the 111th Congress has passed some salutatory legislation, notably health-care reform, it has dithered away what little credibility it had at a crucial juncture in American history. President Obama, too.

I care little at this point that Obama was dealt a bad hand. Or that the Republicans have been archly obstructionist. Or that the Democratic base, so fired up a mere two years ago, is disillusioned. Or that the Republican message (sic) dominates the airwaves and much of what passes for political discourse.

I do indeed understand the frustration; I feel it also.

But, with all respect, no one is talking about taking to the hills and waging armed struggle for decades while living on roots and berries and maybe the occasional pic-a-nic basket.

All that is needed is to take out 15 minutes or maybe as much as an hour on November 2nd and vote for the Not-a-Republican.

I just got an email from a friend in Colorado who said, among other things:

Well, listening to the news here, it sounds like the east coast will be knocked off the side of the country.

I haven’t been paying attention to broadcast news, but I was reminded of how, when I lived in the Greater Philadelphia Co-Prosperity Sphere, any threat of a storm became Arma-OMG-geddon. I haven’t gotten a sense of that kind of coverage here, but the Philly local TV news market is sensationalist by any standard.

Here, such coverage would make a little more sense–this is a coastal area.

There, protected by the sixty-mile sandbar of New Jersey, I found it silly and stupid.

One of my favorite memories of broadcast news OMGness:

About a decade ago, there were reports that a storm might make landfall along the New Jersey Shore; I forget which one.

Local broadcast media were in full we-have-to-foment-panic mode.

The storm missed. They usually missed; in that part of the world, hurricanes come ashore at full strength maybe twice or three times a century.

Cut to the local news . . . .

“And now to Joe Hairgel, who is on location at Long Beach Island. Joe?”

(Picture of Joe, every hair in place in a fresh breeze, on the boardwalk under bright blue sky in front of a peaceful beach scene, the sunrise at his back. The surf is somewhat larger than average).

“Melvin, if the storm had come ashore, the scene behind me now would be quite different . . . .”

As my mother would have said, “The biggest nothing.”

Aside:

Had the storm hit, could anything have been much dumber than sending a news crew into harm’s way to stand on the boardwalk in 135 mph winds? Honestly, one huge wave does look a lot like any other huge wave.

“Hurricanes cause waves” is not news.

It’s disaster pr0n.

Have you noticed how all the folks who think social security must be cut seem to be independently wealthy?

A few weeks ago, we wrote about United States v. Maynard, a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit requiring the government to obtain a warrant when it uses a GPS tracking device to monitor someone’s movements.

Last Friday, Judge James Orenstein in the Eastern District of New York recognized that Maynard’s reasoning also applies when the government tries to retrace a person’s whereabouts using historical cell phone location information stored by cell phone carriers. Judge Orenstein rejected each possible factual difference between GPS vehicle tracking and historical cell phone tracking, and concluded that cell phone tracking is just as intrusive to Americans’ reasonable expectations of privacy in the details of their everyday lives as GPS tracking.

On second thought, possibly not.

Even given that members of the military have their rights somewhat limited during their service–it’s part of the job–television detective show writers don’t seem to pay much attention to actual law in any event. There’s not enough time in an hour to apply for a warrant.

Full Disclosure:

I enjoy NCIS. It’s a comic book brought to life.

Vivian Paige mentioned this yesterday: Philly is looking to collect the business privilege tax from Philly-based blogs that carry ads or sell products. I suspect that, even though bloggers are making the fuss, the policy probably extends to any website that meets its criteria.

But here’s the kicker, as reported by the Seattle Times (and Vivian Paige referred to this possibility yesterday):

The uproar began after the city Revenue Department recently sent out letters to Philadelphia residents who reported business revenue with the Internal Revenue Service but hadn’t gotten a city business license.

As a self-(un)employed type person, I know a little bit about business taxes.

You really can’t be a business, even a part-time sideline type business, for federal taxes and a hobby for state and local taxes. End of story.

I think that “based in Philly” could be made an issue if someone cares to make it and has money to burn.

For example, I’m in Virginia Beach, Virginia. My hosting company is based in Phoenix, Arizona (yes, I considered boycotting them but I was already paid through next year a). Where the server is physically located I have no idea.

So, where is this website based? Virginia or Arizona or on some server farm in east someplace or other? The mailing address on the check would probably be the determinant.

Aside:

The story also contains this statement:

Some bloggers are complaining that the fee would impinge on their free speech and would discourage dissent.

“Freedom of speech” is just as irrelevant here as it is to Call-Me-a-Dr. Laura. Freedom of speech is not freedom to be guaranteed an audience.

Full Disclosure:

I decided a long time ago not to get involved with ads for this site, not least because I couldn’t see much income potential from my two or three regular readers. The game could not possibly be worth the candle. I also find most sidebar ads unappealing; I think I’ve only clicked on one in five years of reading blogs and that was for Will Bunch’s new book because I wanted the link.

I don’t live in Philly, but I know a number of Philly-area bloggers, but only two or three of them actually live in the city. I have no idea of their positions on this issue and none of them were mentioned in the article linked above.

Timmie and Lassie: The Later Years

Timmie, taking advantage of his eerie ability to fall into the nearest well, moves to Phoenix and opens a dowsing franchise. . . .