Monday, Monday

Citizen Carrie's favorite eleven cartoons, with links to the cartoons (with an exception, noted), because we can all use a laugh.  One of them I hadn't seen since childhood.

Play Ball!

In Memoriam

Ilyka has deleted Off Our Pedestals.

I don't know why.

It's like losing the voice and presence of a friend you never expected to find.  I have to hope that she now has the peace she needs, if that's what she needed to get it.

Good luck to you, Ilyka.

Is That a Flaw?

The curriculum on the perfectionism seminar.

Republic of T, faculty.

Seasonal Irreverence

Moses is leaving Egypt:  A Facebook Haggadah.  (In the style of Facebook.  Not actual FB.)

Swallow any liquid and set down any drink.

Via Starcat_Jewel on Live Journal.

Oh, And...

Iowa court threw out prohibition of same-sex marriage.

Iowa and Sweden in the same week.  And yet...we're all still breathing oxygen and unable to fly without being surrounded by an airplane.  The opponents to gay marriage are still trying to convince proponents with arguments that almost invariably boil down to 1) religion and 2) this is the way it has always been.  John Scalzi's comment thread is a perfect example.  

Oddly enough, conservative thinkers want the fruits and benefits of modernity, like fast and easy communication and transportation, but they don't like the concurrent social changes.  It would be a kindness to return them to their stone knives and bearskins.

Here, There, and Everywhere

I'm not much of a hockey fan (as in not at all), but Shark-fu is, and her team, the St. Louis Blues, are fighting for a playoff spot.  (Mind you, I know stuff about hockey simply by osmosis, and I've actually seen the Stanley Cup [it toured in 1993], but the only time it's interesting to me is during the playoffs, which go on for about five months and occasionally cross the basketball playoffs and March Madness.)  

I'm also not a fan of country music, but Charley Pride is a mensch.  And what is it with all this on-line ticket scalping, even by allegedly legitimate companies?  

University of Massachusetts/Amherst will put the papers of W.E.B. Du Bois on line.  Ooooh, RESEARCH!  

Decluttering proceeds.

Type Casting

Reflections on masculinity, from Republic of T.   

Next Week

1. Baseball season begins!  
2. Passover starts.  (Gluten-free Kosher for Passover recipes.)
3. I engage in non-Net personal journaling.

Get Some Sleep

Long-term sleep deprivation can mess you up.

Europe Not Engulfed in Flames

Via Politics After 50:  Same-sex marriages legal in Sweden next month.

(No, I didn't do an April Fool's post.  No, this is not a stealth April Fool's post.  In fact the Lutheran Church in Sweden, while individual pastors can opt out, has been ready to bless gay partnerships [although still not calling it 'marriage'] since 2007.)

Indoor Horticulture

Step by step guide to gardening.< /BusterKeaton >

Oh, all right:  One step.

27. Berate yourself for having spent valuable cash money on plant murder and mountain erosion, you sociopath.

Scott Horton, National Treasure

Five Fixes for the Justice Department.

Summary:  

Eric Holder faces a daunting task. If he operates on autopilot, he will be a tragic failure. The current dire situation calls for energetic leadership. Much of the work to be done involves restoring a commitment to justice that disappeared in a sea of partisan political intrigue over the last eight years, in which three different men served nominally as attorney general while the department was run in fact out of the office of Karl Rove in the White House. Bush left behind a vast panorama of wreckage. Holder’s work must start with a clean up.

From Harper's, to which I subscribe for the crossword puzzle.  The article mentions WPA murals at the headquarters of the Department of Justice.  These and their purpose are described here.

Additionally, Avedon Carol refers to this post from 2005 pointing out that the myth of liberal journalism is in fact a myth and more like a psychological experiment result.

Dose of Serious News Analysis

Sy Hersh article in The New Yorker on Middle East peace negotiations.

The United States has been involved in negotiations over the Golan Heights before, notably those brokered by Bill Clinton in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, in 2000. Those talks, despite their last-minute collapse over border disputes, among other issues, provided the backbone for the recent indirect negotiations. Martin Indyk, who advised Clinton at Shepherdstown, said that those talks were about “territory for peace.” Now, he said, “it’s about territory for peace and strategic realignment.”

Musical accopaniment by Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr.

Next Week

So, as I've said, I click on things at random, and today I clicked on the Live Journal link of a Total Stranger, which led me to the Serial Sensation community (Victorian Sensational Serial Novels, in the way they were meant to be read), which is serializing East Lynne.  East Lynne was turned into a play and is known these days, if at all, as the ne plus ultra of melodrama, produced theatrically in every nook and cranny of the U.S. and Britain in the late 19th, early 20th centuries.  (There are references to this in '30s movies set in the theatre/vaudeville.)

So I'm looking forward to reading this at my leisure, particularly since I won't have to identify with any of the characters.  I don't much like the Victorian period; it took a sizable swath of the 20th century to escape that mummification, and I note that certain politicians would much prefer a return to it.

Another Voice Heard

Assessment of current situation by a current expatriate, OMYWORD.

Not the money quote but just above it:

So now, as I read the news about AIG and Wall Street crashing, I have to laugh, actually. Nothing at all surprises me. There they go again, those well-he[e]led, over-paid Captains of Industry.

Subway System Maps

I know people who know people, and so I bounced from a post about eating out to this map of the Montréal Métro, which has expanded greatly since I was last in town.  I had heard that Atwater was no longer the terminus of -- I suppose you'd call it the Green Line -- but all the lines except the little one that goes to Longueuil have been extended, and that blue line is altogether new.

Damn, that would almost be an excuse to go to Worldcon.

Thanks to (I think) Hobbitbabe.

Nota Bene

All the big kids have gone out to play, and I'm still here, staring at the screen with a Warren Zevon song on the radio.

Think I'll go enjoy the day.

Omens and Meditations

So yesterday we were doing a walking meditation (my mind was vacillating between "We look like a line of zombies" and "As a New Yorker, this pace is too slow!" neither of which I would have felt comfortable voicing in that setting), and at one point I saw a turtle.  The turtle was ambling toward one of the corners of the quadrangle and disappeared into the shrubbery.

The Vietnamese consider seeing a turtle as good luck.  (When we gave feedback on our thoughts, I mentioned the turtle to my neighbor, who told me this and who turned out to be half Vietnamese.)

La Ronde

Via Arthur Hlavaty, security person vs. disabled man.  I read further and liked this post, so I'm linking to it as well.  This post of Ilyka's riffs off this post of Anna's, which is a continuation of the post mentioned in this post's first paragraph.

And now I'm sleepy.  Tomorrow is a busy day.  

Your Hierarchy Kills

"Bottom-up" advice works better to curb MRSA in hospitals.

Not!

Skippy links to someone who lavishes sympathy on AIG executive:

so when we hear about gazillionaires angry because they can't continue to scam money out of the very system they themselves broke, pardon us if we don't cry.

I'd Just Beat It, Anyway.

Have I mentioned that I have a fondness for Rube Goldberg devices?

(Found via Making Light.)

In Memoriam

John Hope Franklin, historian.

By The Pricking of My Thumbs

I read and comment at Shakesville, and a large part of the reason is the multiplicity of voices [sorry]; Melissa McEwan explains the reason for those voices.  (ETA, 3/26/09:  This was Melissa's extended response to Anna of Trouble is a State of Mind; see this posting by Ilyka of Off Our Pedestals for a different response.)

Here, I'm just one sentient being, aging at the rate of one second per second, with a computer, some friends and family, and an itch to blather in the form of pixels.

Sometimes.

So my voice is largely "Lookatthis!" instead of "This is an insight cobbled up by a cerebrum in desperate need of exercise."  Not that coming up with stuff isn't exercise, but it's using grocery shopping  instead of defined weights to do arm curls.  I suppose my dislike of authoritarianism/totalitarianism has oozed forth, but any sane person shares that dislike.  (A person may be clinically sane but power-hungry; that, for me, tips the scale.)  Theodore Sturgeon writes in his introduction to The Stars Are the Styx:

"He [Horace Gold, editor of Galaxy] said, 'Well, I'll tell you what to do. Write me a story about a guy who goes to the bus station to pick up his wife; she's been away for the weekend. And the bus comes in and the place is suddenly full of people. And across the crowd he sees his wife, talking avidly to a young man. ... She walks across, meets her husband, gives him a kiss hello.

'Write me that, Sturgeon, and everybody in the country will know how you feel about that meathead senator!'

... It was this: that if you have real convictions...it's going to come through, no matter what you're writing about."

(It is instructive that when I dug out the actual quote, I discovered that I'd misremembered almost everything.)  So I don't think I need to explain my political beliefs.

As for my personal beliefs:  That line in Bull Durham about kisses that go on for three days was scripted.  Although Costner does deliver it well.

Also, ants will have parades and shivarees if there's chicken broth in the sink.  Yeeuuuuccccchh!

400

This is the 400th post here.  (That would be Thermopylae plus Cain's Hundred.)

We're two weeks from the baseball season, 2.5 and a half weeks from Passover, three weeks from Easter.  

I am not carrying on about spring training because one year my team did Really Spectacularly Well in spring matches and then proceeded to compile a losing record for April/May (I don't think that was a playoff year).  My attitude is that since it doesn't count, spring training and exhibition games (unless for local bragging rights) should be occasions to Get The Losing Out Of Their Systems.  Not to say they should contrive to lose, but the Grapefruit/Cactus League standings don't really correlate with the end-of-regular season standings.  Better a team lose every game in pre-season and study their losses than win every preseason game and stink up the meaningful 162.

There does not seem to be a matzo shortage this year; I'm thinking of getting a box.

Easter will be special this year.  I'm setting feet firmly on the Journey to God path (I'll still be less than reverent.  I'm not becoming a creationist or intelligent design advocate.  And I'm not interested in arguing; I don't do it well, I don't have that kind of time, and most people are only in it for the gotcha.  Those folks can play with themselves).

I avoided the RaceFail09 discussions (except for a couple pieces of meta), but Rydra Wong's collection of links supplies the source materials in (more or less) one place in approximate chronological order.

When I started this, I wasn't going to get into politics.  Odd how that worked out, eh?

There was something else, but I don't remember what. Besides, if I talk up Trader Joe's broccoli slaw, they'll discontinue it.  So much for statements of purpose.  Where's my super-suit?

The Précis

Driftglass summarizes authoritarianism.

Speaking of Newspapers

Jon Carroll on retention bonuses:

But real retention bonuses: What an idea! You get a job, and then your boss comes around and says, "Do you still want that job?" and you say "Yes" and he says, "Great, here's $100 million."

What a sweet idea. Plus, as I understand it, you could order an extra ficus for your office if you wanted one.

During those years, and I want to make this clear, I never received a retention bonus as such. There were no ficuses slipped under the table.

And the Ink Gets All Over My Hands

What newspapers are learning after 20 years.

Money quote:

The curious thing about the various plans hatched in the ’90s is that they were, at base, all the same plan: “Here’s how we’re going to preserve the old forms of organization in a world of cheap perfect copies!” The details differed, but the core assumption behind all imagined outcomes (save the unthinkable one) was that the organizational form of the newspaper, as a general-purpose vehicle for publishing a variety of news and opinion, was basically sound, and only needed a digital facelift. As a result, the conversation has degenerated into the enthusiastic grasping at straws, pursued by skeptical responses.

From Media Alliance, which I'd forgotten I'd bookmarked.

Childhood Resurrection

So I fell across myspace.com/4squareeastbay this afternoon.  That is, they had chalked a quadranted square in the park and were playing.  They invited me to play, but I was carrying a sack of groceries, a book, and a white robe and it was cold and windy out.

I last played 4 square in 1962 at the playground in front of the school.  I haven't thought about the game probably since the mid-'60s.  (I wasn't very good at it.)

They might make this weekly (it's not now on their schedule).

ETA:  No, I don't believe in MySpace either.