H.M.S. Surprise
A hearty welcome to the rather unexpected but very appreciated torrent of visitors from Murph’s Place. The Crowe post you are looking for is here.
Hey, Look! Sainted Wife and I made the funny papers!
One of the reasons I bought the Ibook was that Sainted Wife was tired of sitting alone in the living most nights while I dashed upstairs to “check my e-mail” for thirty minutes at a time. So, in the interest of familial togetherness, I set up a wireless network and bought a new laptop.
The sacrifices I make for my family. I’m a saint, I tell you. Why, she’ll probably appreciate this act of selflessness for years to come.
I wonder if she feels indebted enough to get up and get me a beer.
Update: No.
This week’s Carnival of the Vanities is at Wylie Blog.
Upcoming Carnival stops include;
March 26th Dancing with Dogs
April 2nd Go Fish
April 9th Solonor’s Ink Well
April 16th Billegible
April 23th The Kitchen Cabinet
April 30th Clubbeaux
May 7th Common Sense and Wonder
May 14th The Inscrutable American
May 21st Cut On The Bias
May 28th Dean’s World
If you’d like to host the Carnival, drop us a line. Information on how to join the Carnival can be found here.
24 Hour, Cross Your Heart Support
Dennis Roger’s column was the first thing I ever remember reading in the News and Observer. For better or worse, he and editorial cartoonist Jody Powell are what I judge other papers by. Neither are national heavyweights, but they’re both solid regional pros. And maybe Dennis at least deserves a wider audience.
He published this column today today on on supporting the troops.
Don’t bother telling me or them that the best way to support soldiers and their families is to bring the troops home. That won’t happen. Rightly or wrongly, the troops know that despite of the protests, diplomatic maneuvers and jokes about France, the road home to Fayetteville, Jacksonville, Havelock and Goldsboro most likely runs through Baghdad.
And don’t bother telling me, as some of you did in your angry e-mail, that you do support the soldiers even as you rail against the commander in chief who sent them to war.
I’m sure you believe that, and good for you, but that is not the way it looks out where our soldiers are locked and cocked. What I’m afraid sticks in their hearts is that they are being asked to protect fellow Americans who in return cheapen their sacrifice by saying it is about oil, the president’s father, Texas macho or an illegal president too stupid to know better.
So they wait in the awful desert, hearing how the world is worried about Iraqi civilians, but nobody mentions little North Carolina girls holding up pictures of their absent daddies.
All jokes aside, as much as I respect some protesters and even share some of their doubts, I cannot stand with them. I was a soldier for eight years. I know how it hurts to be abandoned by your countrymen. I will not do that to these Americans.
So I stand beside a little girl and tell her that her country is as proud of her daddy as she is.
I stand beside lonely military spouses who must ease the midnight fears and kiss away the tears and find the courage to face their uncertain futures.
And I stand beside our soldiers so they’ll know that if they must die, some of us believe it will be for something more worthy than presidential pique.
N.C. blogger Cold Fury and another little military girl have put together a site listing some ot the companies that believe the same thing, companies that are not only holding the jobs of their Reservist and Guardsmen employees open as long as they’re deployed, but have gone the extra mile to make sure the deployment doesn’t hurt that soldier’s family financially, either by making up the difference between their employee’s military pay and civilian salary, or by simply paying the reservist his or her full civilian salary.
In a time when American companies register in Bermuda to avoid paying the taxes that support these soldiers, the companies listed at The Home Front deserve more than your applause. They deserve your business.
Wow
SETI@Home identifies possible candidate signals.
Update Okay, so now that I’ve actually read the article, it’s still cool, but not nearly as “Wow”.
How Toxic is your City
Check out the pollution locator service put out by the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups (PIRG). You can access carcinogen, dioxin, neurological, reproductive, developmental and respirator toxin maps. The maps don’t give a lot of details, but the downloadable Excel spreadsheets give the amount of toxins in tons released in any given zip code or county, or by industrial facility. I, thankfully, happen to live in a city that seems to be a watering hole for various toxins. No wonder I have those weird scabs all over my body. And I think I might be developing a second evil head.
Do some good
CNN reports that the U.S. Senate is within one vote of passing a measure that would allow oil companies to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The article states that there are four Senators that are key to the vote: Democratic Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, both of Arkansas, Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Oregon, and freshman Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minnesota.
Interior Secretary and a GOP memo both spoke of the importance of letting these “fence sitting” Senators hear from constituents about this issue. With that thought in mind, here’s how you can contact the aforementioned Senators to let them know how you feel about developing the oil resources of the ANWR.
Sen. Blanche Lincoln
lincoln.senate.gov/webform.html
(202) 224-4843
Sen. Mark Pryor
senator@pryor.senate.gov
(202) 224-2353
Sen. Gordon Smith
gsmith.senate.gov/webform.htm
(202)224-3753
Sen. Norm Coleman
opinion@coleman.senate.gov
202-224-5641
Additional contact information such as fax numbers and snail mail addresses can be found on the Web site of each Senator.
Whether you are for or against drilling in the ANWR, I hope you will take the time to make your voice heard.
I myself am against drilling in the ANWR. I think it’s questionable as to whether there is enough oil in the ANWR to justify the risk to a fragile and rare ecosystem. Depending on who you believe, the ANWR holds between 1.9 and 10 billion barrels of developable oil resources. And it’s a “Wildlife Refuge”. Why did they set that land aside in the first place, if not to protect it from corporate development? I’ve already emailed the Senators above, and I signed the anti-drilling petition at EnvironmentalDefense.org. I’ll let you educate yourself on the issue by following the links below. Sorry, but there are a lot more groups against than for, apparently.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Artic Refuge: Oil and Gas Issues (Governmental and Informational. Less likely to be biased towards one side of the argument, maybe.)
Artic Power (pro-drilling)
ANWR News (anti-drilling, pro-oil workers. Interesting site. Outlines some BP miscues in another Alaskan drilling area.)
Save The Artic Refuge (anti-drilling)
National Resources Defense Council (anti-drilling)
Alaska Wilderness League (anti-drilling)
Defenders of Wildlife (Take a stab at it. I think you can guess.)
Sierra Club (pro-drilling. Okay, just kidding. They’re anti-drilling.)
U.S. Department of the Interior (pro-drilling.)
There are plenty more, but that should be more than enough to help you educate yourself about the issue. Now go and make your voice heard.
Anchors Aweigh
Beer of the Night – Original Flag Porter, brewed with yeast from 1825, salvaged from a sunken vessel in the English Channel. I tell you, if that doesn’t make your tongue tingle…..then you must find the idea of beer brewed with salty, ancient and waterlogged yeast unappetizing.
I, on the other hand, find that immensely appealing, so I guess I’m the target market, though I fail to understand how a beer brewed for Horatio Hornblower and Jack Aubrey fans is going to make any profit whatsoever. Certainly we’ll buy whatever trinkets and crap are thrown our way, but there’s just not that many of us. Very few posses the requisite appetite needed to consume 30 odd books set in the early 19th century British Navy. Very few will….well, read this first, from Master and Commander
The weather had freshened almost to coldness, for the wind was coming more easterly, from the chilly currents between Tristan and the Cape; the sloth was amazed by the change; it shunned the deck and spent its time below. Jack was in his cabin, pricking the chart with less satisfaction than he could have wished: progress, slow, serious trouble with the mainmast– unaccountable headwinds by night– and sipping a glass of grog; Stephen was in the mizentop, teaching Bonden to write and scanning the sea for his first albatross. The sloth sneezed, and looking up, Jack caught its gaze fixed upon him; its inverted face had an expression of anxiety and concern. ‘Try a piece of this, old cock,’ he said, dipping his cake in the grog and proffering the sop. ‘It might put a little heart into you.’ The sloth sighed, closed its eyes, but gently absorbed the piece, and sighed again.
Some minutes later he felt a touch upon his knee: the sloth had silently climbed down and it was standing there, its beady eyes looking up into his face, bright with expectation. More cake, more grog: growing confidence and esteem. After this, as soon as the drum had beat the retreat, the sloth would meet him, hurrying toward the door on its uneven legs: it was given its own bowl, and it would grip it with its claws, lowering its round face into it and pursing its lips to drink (its tongue was too short to lap). Sometimes it went to sleep in this position, bowed over the emptiness.
‘In this bucket,’ said Stephen, walking into the cabin, ‘in this small half-bucket, now, I have the population of Dublin, London, and Paris combined: these animalculae– what is the matter with the sloth?’ It was curled on Jack’s knee, breathing heavily: its bowl and Jack’s glass stood empty on the table. Stephen picked it up, peered into its affable bleary face, shook it, and hung it upon its rope. It seized hold with one fore and one hind foot, letting the others dangle limp, and went to sleep.
Stephen looked sharply round, saw the decanter, smelt to the sloth, and cried, ‘Jack, you have debauched my sloth.’
Very few will laugh out loud at that, I was going to say, but I could be wrong. For one, I’d be arguing with Russell Crowe and Peter Weir, who obviously think people will like it just fine.
This started out about beer, didn’t it? That’s the problem with blogging under the influence. All sorts of extraneous themes creep in. Why, in a moment, I’ll start blathering on about the Ibook I bought today, and my transformation in a pale, tiny and bitter shadow of Lileks will be complete.
Except that I didn’t buy it because I’m a mac freak. I bought it to further my quest to own or work on every OS,and it was either that or XP. Since XP boxes have been regularly crashing the UNC campus wide network since the beginning of the fall semester, I figured I’d go with the Mac.
And it shor is purty.
Beer. Must. wrench. helm. back. to. original. theme.
I’ve always thought of porter as one of the more complex beer types. I could be completely wrong; it’s based on a gut feeling rather than actual knowledge. My rule of thumb is that the harder it is to see through a beer, the more you can bullshit about it to your friends.
Wait, that’s not right.
Ahem. The harder it is to see through a beer, the more complexity it offers, and porters are surpassed only by stouts in that category. The Flag Porter does contain a variety of flavors, ranging from an initial bitter coffee bite to smooth black currant finish. I can’t tell you much of about the bouquet, I’ve been moving books into the attic all night, and dust has clogged my olfactory receptors.*
That’s my review. Here’s a real one. In case you’re wondering, I don’t read them before I write mine. That would be cheating, and I’m all about rules all of a sudden.
*Thanks to an intensive and imaginative reorganization of the attic, I have managed to save most of my collection, including the ones I thought were gone for sure.