My parents were kiddos too!

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One of the PROJECTS I took care of when I was visiting home was installing a new scanner for dad that had a slide attachment on it. Apparently at some point in the past, someone decided that slides were “the thing”, so dad now has a huge number of slide carousels down in the garage.

Mom and dad at age 20

Now that he has a scanner that can see them, he’s been going through and adding a lot of old photos to the family photo album. I love seeing these — it’s so fun to go through shots of my folks when they were around my age (or younger — as in this photo, taken at age 20 at their wedding rehearsal dinner).

I’m sure there are more coming, but right now, dad’s added pictures of mom and dad in college, dad in R.O.T.C., their wedding rehearsal dinner, and their wedding.

iTunes “Sheep” by Pink Floyd from the album Animals Trance Remixes (1995, 16:03).

What if…?

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This is really worth reading and thinking about: What if America were like Iraq?

What would America look like if it were in Iraq’s current situation? The population of the US is over 11 times that of Iraq, so a lot of statistics would have to be multiplied by that number.

Thus, violence killed 300 Iraqis last week, the equivalent proportionately of 3,300 Americans. What if 3,300 Americans had died in car bombings, grenade and rocket attacks, machine gun spray, and aerial bombardment in the last week? That is a number greater than the deaths on September 11, and if America were Iraq, it would be an ongoing, weekly or monthly toll.

And what if those deaths occurred all over the country, including in the capital of Washington, DC, but mainly above the Mason Dixon line, in Boston, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco?

What if the grounds of the White House and the government buildings near the Mall were constantly taking mortar fire? What if almost nobody in the State Department at Foggy Bottom, the White House, or the Pentagon dared venture out of their buildings, and considered it dangerous to go over to Crystal City or Alexandria?

It goes on from there, and it’s not a pretty picture. Might give some a better mental concept of just what the situation in Iraq is like right now.

(via Backup Brain)

iTunes “Thank You” by Duran Duran from the album Encomium: A Tribute to Led Zeppelin (1995, 4:33).

Politicizing Warfare

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The Washington Monthly is asking about the fantasyland that George Bush seems to be living in, when waging a war in which the strategy seems to be based not on any real situations, but on election-year political situations.

[Our upcoming] election, and the political considerations that go along with it, have been driving our military strategy for the past two years. Before the war, we passed up a chance to take out terrorist mastermind Abu Musab Zarqawi — for political reasons. We invaded with too few troops — for political reasons. We lowballed the cost of the war — for political reasons. We ignored the UN and then turned around and pleaded for their help — for political reasons. Then we installed Iyad Allawi as president behind the UN’s back — for political reasons.

And just recently we’ve learned that the Marines were yo-yoed in and out of Fallujah — for political reasons. The president has bizarrely dismissed his own intelligence agencies’ analysis of Iraq as “guessing” — for political reasons. He’s ignored the advice of his own generals about troop requirements for the upcoming [Iraqi] elections — for political reasons. And assaults on Baathist enclaves have been postponed until December — for fairly obvious political reasons.

And things just keep going downhill.

(via Atrios)

A look at the 2000 election

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From Tom Goldstein on the SCOTUSBlog:

Many of you will have heard of and read the lengthy October 2004 Vanity Fair article by David Margolick et al. on the 2000 election litigation, with a focus on never-before-reported details about what happened inside the Supreme Court. The piece has received a great deal of attention inside the Court because, as the article details, “[a] surprising number of [law] clerks [from that term] talked to Vanity Fair.” Tony Mauro did a short piece on the article (subscription required), but given the new details the article contains, it has received surprisingly little press attention otherwise. Vanity Fair does not have a web-site, but we’re grateful to have received permission to post the piece itself, as it appears in the magazine. So here you are, in two pieces: Part 1 and Part 2.

I’ll be perusing this as soon as I can.

(via Political Wire, via Scripting News)

Are you better off?

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Ontario Emperor pointed out a series of graphs from Buzzflash highlighting some of the numbers behind how our country is doing. Not that surprising if you’ve been paying attention, but certainly interesting to see.

Unemployment

Job Creation

Stock Market

Budget Surplus/Deficit

The question, of course, is whether a Kerry presidency would have numbers close to what Clinton’s produced, and there’s really no way of knowing that at this stage in the game. I’d hate to see where these graphs end up after four more years of Bush, however.

iTunes “Seedy Films” by Soft Cell from the album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret (1981, 5:04).

One week in

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I’ve made it to the end of my first week on “banking hours”, and you know…I think I just might be able to get used to this. While I’m still definitely no great morning person, it hasn’t been quite as difficult forcing myself out of bed when the alarm goes off at 6:30am as I was afraid it might, and I’m definitely enjoying both getting off work at 5pm and working this close to home. These days, I can walk out of work, hit the corner store on the way back to the apartment, and still be home by 5:15pm. Not bad at all.

The job’s been interesting this week, too. As my new position is primarily administrative and organizational — accepting jobs from the company I’m placed at, setting them up, and then sending them off to one of our main stores to be printed, after which they’re returned to me and I deliver them to the clients — I’ve been spending each day with a few hours at the new position and a few hours at one of the two stores I’ll be working most closely with, to give me some time to meet the people I’ll be working with when I send orders over for printing. Many of these people I’d spoken do on the phone at one time or another, but it’s been good to put faces to names, and to spend some time getting to know them a bit better than just over the phone.

Another benefit I’ve found to having evenings open — socialization! When I was getting off work at 9pm and not making it home until around 10:15pm on my old schedule, there just wasn’t a whole lot going on outside of the bar or club circuit (which I enjoy, but I’m not about to do every night). With real evenings free, though, there are a lot more opportunities. Wednesday evening I got together with some of the guys from work at the Elysian brewery up the street (though I’ve never been a beer drinker, the food and soda were just fine), and last night Rick came over and hung out for a while. Aside from my evenings out at the Vogue or Prairie coming in on the weekends, I’ve had something of a hermit life for the past few years since I moved down to Seattle — maybe it’s about time for that to change, huh?

All in all, while the mornings are still a little rough, I think this is definitely going to be a positive change.

iTunes “Candyman Collapse (Radio Version)” by Connelly, Chris from the album Afterburn: Wax Trax! Records ’94 and Beyond (1994, 3:55).

Derailing the Peace Train

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I saw this while flipping through the paper yesterday on lunch, and thought it was fairly ridiculous, and now the story is making it’s way across the ‘net: the United States is now safely protected from the evil Cat Stevens.

A London-to-Washington flight was diverted to Maine on Tuesday when it was discovered passenger Yusuf Islam – formerly known as singer Cat Stevens – was on a government watch list and barred from entering the country, federal officials said.

United Airlines Flight 919 was en route to Dulles International Airport when the match was made between a passenger and a name on the watch list, said Nico Melendez, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration. The plane was met by federal agents at Maine’s Bangor International Airport around 3 p.m., Melendez said.

Homeland Security Department spokesman Dennis Murphy identified the passenger as Islam. “He was interviewed and denied admission to the United States on national security grounds,” Murphy said, and would be put on the first available flight out of the country Wednesday.\”

I guess someone got tired of hearing Peace Train…

(Via Boing Boing and Len.)

Security issues driving PC users to the Mac

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It’s certainly not much of a surprise, given the ever-increasing number of attacks against Windows of late, but more and more people are moving to the Mac platform after getting hit by one too many Windows security problems.

USATODAY.com – Mac or PC? Windows’ security issues help some users choose: “Cultishness aside, though, people are switching because of the security issue. In Austin, computer consultant Brad Hudelson was once a high-level manager at Dell, the leading maker of Windows PCs. Hudelson says he”gave up after Sasser (virus attacks) last year and replaced all my machines with Apples and Mac OS X.\”

Physician Thomas Essman switched for the same reason. So did Bryan Crawford, a biology professor at the University of Alberta in Canada. “I’ve been in computer heaven ever since,” Crawford says.

Here’s a particularly good one: Daryl Forrest is a developer of software for Windows. “I have moved all non-work-related computing to a new Apple Power Mac G5,” he writes. “I like Windows XP, but the risks are too high these days. It’s sad that it has gotten to this.”

On and on it goes, one e-mail after another.\”

On a personal note, Prairie’s dad is one of these people (indirectly through me — I helped convince Prairie to switch, though she’d already been considering it, and her dad got hooked when he got to play with her iMac during a recent visit). Another one bites the dust…;)

(Via MacMinute.)

1000 millimeters in an inch

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Okay, I know that the US has, as a whole, been resisting switching over to the metric system (a real shame in my opinion). But still — you’d think that the Department of Homeland Security would be a little more informed than they appear to be…

Is there a particular type (brand) of duct tape that citizens should buy?

The Federal Emergency Management Agency recommends using duct tape with a minimum thickness of 10 millimeters (0.01 in).

What is the most effective type of plastic sheeting?

FEMA recommends using plastic sheeting with a thickness of 10 millimeters (0.01 in.).  For reference, commercially available sheeting is typically sold at 0.7, 1, 1.2, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, 4, 6 and 10 millimeters. But, keep in mind that any type of plastic sheeting, even heavy trash bags, can be better than nothing.

[…]

What is the science behind the recommendation to seal off rooms?

Duct tape was tested as part of a study on chemical protective clothing materials. In this study, it was concluded that duct tape provided at least a temporary seal against permeation by simulants of common chemical agents, including GB, VX, mustard and pesticides.  Depending on the chemical agent, duct tape resisted permeation for 3 ½ hours to more than 24 hours.  The study tested duct tape of 10 mil (0.01 in.) thickness.  Plastic sheeting was tested as part of a test using live chemical warfare agents conducted at the Chemical Defense Establishment in Porton Down, England in 1970.  Agents tested included H and VX.  Sheeting of various thickness was tested, including 2.5 millimeters (0.0025 in.), 4 millimeters (0.004 in.), 10 millimeters (0.01 in.) and 20 millimeters (0.02 in.).

For the curious, using Google‘s handy dandy little calculation function, here’s the real numbers:

Of course, maybe I’m working from the wrong assumption. Maybe the Government just needs to smack Google around and tell them to get their math right…

(via Rick)

iTunes “Disco Inferno (Soul Solution)” by Lauper, Cyndi from the album Disco Inferno (1999, 7:52).