JA;

"Grey goo" is the scenario where nanobots of some stripe or another start replicating themselves out of any material they can find, resulting in a world of nothing but nanobots.

You're welcome.

:-)

It's gray goo if they're American nanobots and grey goo if they're English nanobots, correct?

Or check out Eugene Robinson:

Maybe the discovery of the airliner plot will bring us back to the real world. There are deadly enemies out there, and one way to fight them, as the British demonstrated yesterday, is through intelligence. One way not to fight them, as the Bush administration continues to demonstrate, is through reckless military action that may kill terrorists but also kills innocent civilians and thus creates a new generation of terrorists -- doubtless including some bright young man or woman who will come up with a new idea for downing civilian airliners.

We will end up boarding our flights barefoot, barehanded and buck naked except for a hospital gown they'll make us put on at the airport. And, at this rate, Osama bin Laden will be watching CNN from his cave, smiling contentedly.

I'm outta here for the day. A swim sounds nice, reading, too. Fetal positions are just too tough for me to discuss.

Maybe this "infinite amount of 'subjective' time during the remaining finite life of the universe" is what we experience when we have those long, complicated epic dreams and then wake up to discover that only a few minutes have passed.

(That *is* pretty weird, don't you think? Perhaps even fetal-position worthy.)

I do like the idea of being able to manipulate the subjective perception of time. I wonder if there is a virtual reality scenario in which you not only can project yourself into a hologram-like space but slow down time such that you can (picking a G-rated scenario) play an entire game of chess in just 2 seconds.

"My advice is [sic] to you is to start drinking heavily."

I guess you took his advice . . . :) ;) :-)

[hic]

JA;

I think it'd be gray goo for American nanobots and grey mush for English nanodroids.

:-)

Joel writes: "I recall, fondly, growing up in a simple age in which air travel was considered classy, everyone tried to dress his or her best, you could ask the stewardess for a pack of cards with the airline's logo, and the big danger was wind shear."

Ha Joel, remember the days when the stewardesses would take us kids up to the cockpit for a look around (in transit!) and pin some plastic pilot's wings on our jackets?

As far as the End of Everything, I've been researching it for awhile now as part of That Epic Tome I've been working on in my spare time, and I'm familiar with what's on those Wiki pages, and on a lot of the fiction that's been written about the various scenarios. And yeah, the Kardashev scale, too.

Ultimately, the End will come, no matter what we or anyone else do.

All the scrambling beforehand will simply be a matter of determining who we manage to pin the blame on.

And who gets to clean up the mess.

bc

Oh, and hi, A-fan! *wave*

:-)

Loved the concept of "Fetal Position Friday." We need to add that to Global-Warming Tuesday, and pretty soon we'll be like the Mickey Mouse Club--Wednesday will be Frontier Day, and Monday can be ASnything-Can-Happen Day, or whatever (one of you guys will no doubt correct me on which day was which, and also name all five days correctly. Me, all I remember about the Mickey Mouse Club was Annete's chest. And Spin and Marty.) (In that order.)

Global Warming Tuesday
Fetal Position Friday
2 down, 3 (or 5, but I suggest we omit weekends) to go.

Regarding Shriek's question from the previous kit, whenever I carry highly flammable 52-percent/104-proof duty-free rum on aboard an aircraft, I do so by carrying it internally, not in my carry-on luggage. It makes for a MUCH smoother ride that way, and I just giggle when they frisk me.

We cannot win a military victory in Iraq. This is not fatalism, this is arithmetic. Let's take a look, shall we?

According to the CIA World Fact Book, the population of Iraq is 26.7 million (somewhat less by now, but we need not obsess over petty details). Let us assume that a mere 1% of the population decides that they are so angry and frustrated that they choose to lash out through violence.

(Is this a reasonable estimate? The Bureau of Justice Statistics web site indicates that about 0.5% of the US population is under criminal supervision at this time. They also indicate that roughly 40% of violent crimes are reported to police. Let's assume a whopping half of those violent crimes get solved. Then it is likely that the number of criminals is 0.5%/0.4/0.5 = 2.5% of U.S. population. Even assuming that Iraqis are about as peaceable as our Canadian neighbors (!), who incarcerate a fifth as many of their population as the U.S., that implies that 0.5-1% of the population choose a life of crime. In Iraq, it is apparent that you can get away with a life of crime if you call it "insurgency," so the U.S. criminal rate is not a terrible guideline.)

So, if 1% of Iraqis choose violence, that makes for a guerrilla army of 267,000. The U.S. has about 140,000 troops in Iraq. We face a force almost twice as big as ours, that is willing to fight to the last man, which we are not. If each Iraqi suicide bomber takes out just one of our guys, they will win and still have a huge army afterwards. Admittedly, the insurgent "army" that we face is not unified, except in one thing -- they want to kill U.S. troops and personnel.

Joel, IIRC, we managed to do a lot of manipulating the subjective perception of time back in the 1960s. There were a couple of times we could make that bad boy stop dead in its tracks. Or so it seemed at the time. I think. (I'm still not real clear on what happened to January 1968.)

SciTim;

Actually, many of the violent ones want to kill the violent ones (ok, nonviolent too) who have a slightly different take on Allah. They could care less if an infidel makes it into the mix... *SIGH*

My vote for today's comment that can be seriously misunderstood:

>Me, all I remember about the Mickey Mouse Club was Annete's chest.

Joel, some of those "subjective time" scenarios involve getting (and holding) oneself just inside the event horizon of a black hole or that Final Singularity, where subjective time is unimaginably slow relative (ahem) to "normal" spacetime (double ahem).

Poul Anderson used a plot device in Tau Zero to accelerate a spaceship to .999999whatever of c so that the Big Crunch/Bang came within the subjective lifetimes of the astronauts. They simply wait for the Next Universe to evolve to a point where they can locate inhabitable planets (there's some quantum physics and cosmology I'm going to avoid here in the interest of Space), and simply choose a likely (Earthlike) one as their destination.

Interesting ideas, anyway.

bc

Hey, Joel must have gotten my dreams last night.
I was literally in a fetal position last night-- some recurring health crisis that the specialists can't figure out yet. I went dream-free last night, though.

I still want to hide under the covers today, though. Some days it sucks to be a grown-up.

If there is already a grey/gray controversey, we have already proven that the new universe will not be without its issues. I am quite sure that if we retain our humanity, we will screw it up somehow.

SoC;

Why that comment? Surely Annette had to have a place to store her costumes...

:-)

Zackly, scotty. I fail to see the ambiguity.

SoC, you are *not* misunderstanding Mudge on that.

"Misunderstanding Mudge" would be a great title for his autobiography, come to think of it.

bc

sigh: http://www.mousestars.com/steve/annette/afbeach1.htm

This is a sad day. I'm apparently so used to obfuscation and PCism I don't even recognize a direct reference to tatas anymore. Now I'M depressed.

[bc slapping his head]

Naturally, Joel's associating "gray" with "bad".

I read "Captured by Aliens"; he's got it in for 'em.

bc

Are the Greys the good aliens or the mean ones? Now I have to go read CBA again. Curse you.

SoC, please get your mind out of the gutter. This is a high-minded, literate forum here.

Speaking of obsessive-compulsive disorders, here's the list. *sigh*

Monday: Fun with Music Day
Tuesday: Guest Star Day
Wednesday: Anything Can Happen Day
Thursday: Circus Day
Friday: Talent Round-up Day

On a far lighter note (more fitting to Fetal Position Friday, referencing Curmudgeon's 11:11, I am going to Weyburn next week, that 1950's scintillating centre of medical research into LSD.

http://www.cpa-apc.org/publications/archives/CJP/2005/june/InRevDyck.asp

I have no idea what else is there, besides a my brother. It kind of feels like I am 'goin' to Winnipeg' or something.

Also, in the Commonwealth it's "ninnyboots", not "nanobots", and not "Grey/Gray Goo" but rather "Lunch"

I'm with Kung Fu Monkey on this one [see his post today at http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com.] We've become a nation of high-strung scaredy-cats who flinch or run screaming at the slightest hint of perceived risk. Whatever happened to staring into the face of danger and defying those who threaten us?

As for creating a new universe -- Michio Kaku speculates about this at the end of PARALLEL WORLDS. The idea is that a highly advanced (Type III or higher) civilization would have the technology to be able to create a baby universe in the lab. We could then inject the "seed" of our civilization through the connecting wormhole just before our own universe blips out of existence, and over the course of billions of years, life would evolve again in the new universe. No word on whether this would include fear. Or terror. Or evil. Or a blogosphere.

The bad news is, we're not even a Type I civilization -- at best, we're maybe 0.5. Our most powerful particle accelerators, including the upcoming LHC, aren't expected to be able to generate sufficient energies to create a baby universe.

We are stuck in (with?) this universe, alas...

And so, we have to ask: WHY do people in Iraq want to kill our guys? It's simple: it's because life in Iraq sucks. We provide a convenient scapegoat for the crumminess of daily life, and we have brilliantly/ineptly crafted our image to make the case more convincing. We were supposed to remove Saddam and make everything better. Instead, we removed Saddam and made everything worse. We used Saddam's prisons to incarcerate people arbitrarily -- some guilty, some not, it turns out that we don't care too much -- and then we abused them in Saddam-like ways, even though we did it more informally and on a lesser scale than Saddam. It's easy to see how they could draw the equation between us and Saddam, with one big difference -- Saddam would have viciously repressed the insurgency with indiscriminate killing. Since we are evidently Saddam-like but we haven't repressed the insurgency, the only reasonable conclusion is that we are too weak to do it. Therefore, we can be defeated. (Please note that I'm talking about our image -- we are not actually Saddam-like, but we have made ourselves look that way.)

So long as the lives of ordinary Iraqis continue to suck, we will be the scapegoats. Who is actually making life worse in Iraq? The insurgents. Who gets blamed for it? Us, because we were supposed to make the insurgents go away.

How do the insurgents make life bad? By killing people, obviously. But more widespread than that, by sabotaging all efforts to improve the infrastructure. Thus, the people of Iraq have little access to gasoline, which is very expensive. They have crummy old gas-guzzling and polluting cars, which use up the gas too fast, anyway. They get only a few hours of electricity per day, so they get little electric lighting, no refrigeration, no A/C, no electric pumps for wells and water transport, poor water supply, poor sewage management. If you could fix all those infrastructural things, people's lives would take a sharp up-turn, it would be obvious who provided that upturn (us), and the recruitment rate for the insurgency would drop, making the rate of improvement even greater.

So. Now we have an engineering problem. How do we make the infrastructure better, when the insurgents destroy it as fast as we fix it?

Jennifer, does this mean we are more closely related to Gray Goo than a real civilisation?

Its worse than I thought.

dr;

Actually, I think we'd need to be higher on the advanced civilization scale to be worried about grey goo.

And are you all set with Boston sights/eateries?

:-)

Good morning, all. Not 100% sure we have actually become a nation of scaredy cats, if the passengers of Flight 93 -- who after all were a bunch of ordinary Americans and at least one of whom (Todd Beamer) was nursing a hangover -- are any indication.

pj, if you're around, check previous boodle for answer re. princess phone (plus other bonus phone-related observations, since I am sure this is all very fascinating for you) :-)

Am leaving today for a week at the beach! Puts me in mind of that Seinfeld episode where Kramer announces he's moving to California. "Up here? (pointing to head) I'm already there."

Will miss all my imaginary friends, however, and will check the boodles if anyone brings a laptop (am leaving mine for my housesitter, a condition of him taking the gig).

Tim writes, "it's because life in Iraq sucks. We provide a convenient scapegoat for the crumminess of daily life..."

Not to be argumentative, Tim, but couldn't it be because we invaded their country, and now refuse to leave? I don't think the convenience factor of our scapegoatitude is very significant. Life in Iraq has pretty much sucked for the last couple thousand years.

What I haven't been able to figure out from Day One is, by what right do we decide to run around imposing democracy on other folks? Yeah, it's a swell concept, but ...at the point of a gun? I don't even like evangelism when the evangelists are unarmed, and evangelical democratization seems to me as objectionable as any other kind.

And this crapola about "the terrorists hate us because of our freedom" not only makes me want to puke, I think it is also sufficiently wrong-headed that it actually gets in the way of proper Pentagon and White House decision-making. That ain't why they hate us. (We might not be able to do anything much about the real reasons--such as that they want to go back to a 10th-century caliphate and murder all the infidels--but that doesn't mean it helps the situation to make stuff up.)

I like Kung Fu Monkey's paraphrasing of the famous leaders' reactions. Kung Fu monkey said it very well.

I've been talking about how, in comparsion to WWII, we are acting like we have no cojones, and why people at the lowest risk are all too ready to surrender civil rights for "safety."

Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little security deserve neither."

This is the guy who flew a kite in a T-storm, and acted as a diplomat and spy in his retirement. You don't get any more gutsy in an spectacled package than ol' Ben.

Scottynuke, mea culpa. Yes. I copied and gave her the information you and others sent. She says a big Thank You to all.

She works here in my office in full time reception but she also is also a full time student and she has been earning practicum hours in our court and justice system as a child advocate. She hears some of the most terrible things in that work, and as summer wears on, her natural glow is just sowly dimming. I told her to get the heck out of here and wise young thing that she is, she paid attention to her old aunt, looked at the cheap flights list, closed her eyes and picked Boston.

Anyway she arrives later today, and will be following closely the recommendations on food in particular. For a tiny thing, she sure loves food. So if you see a lovely young redhead with sneakers, eating her heart out in a nice little Italian or seafood place, she might just be my niece.

dr;

She'll fit right in amongst Beantown's Irish contingent.

:-)

Yes, Kung Fu Monkey did say it pretty well. This is the paraphrasing section of great leaders Wilbrod referenced:

"Maybe it's just, I cast my eyes back on the last century ...

"FDR: Oh, I'm sorry, was wiping out our entire Pacific fleet supposed to intimidate us? We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and right now we're coming to kick your ass with brand new destroyers riveted by waitresses. How's that going to feel?

"CHURCHILL: Yeah, you keep bombing us. We'll be in the pub, flipping you off. I'm slapping Rolls-Royce engines into untested flying coffins to knock you out of the skies, and then I'm sending angry Welshmen to burn your country from the Rhine to the Polish border.

"US. NOW: BE AFRAID!! Oh God, the Brown Bad people could strike any moment! They could strike ... NOW!! AHHHH. Okay, how about .. NOW!! AAGAGAHAHAHHAG! Quick, do whatever we tell you, and believe whatever we tell you, or YOU WILL BE KILLED BY BROWN PEOPLE!! PUT DOWN THAT SIPPY CUP!!

"... and I'm just a little tired of being on the wrong side of that historical arc.

"This is it, folks. This is the world, from now on. Even assuming the War on Terror is a not just a bad metaphor and there is an actual measurable winning point*, the short 4GW struggles last fifty years or so. We're going to be stopping one or two of these bastard mass-murder plots a year, minimum, for the rest of our lives. Hell, the way terror tactics and tech evolve, five years from now we're going to be pining for the dudes with the flammable juice boxes."

Well, I'm not sure I'd agree to the phrase "refuse to leave." I think the Bush Administration figured out what Colin Powell meant by "you break it, you bought it" too late for it to do any good. Now, they're afraid to leave and admit that (a) we screwed up, and (b) it will get even worse when we leave. I suppose the distinction from "refuse to leave" is nuanced. Iraq joined the "they" who hate us, on account of us invading their country, but there's still plenty of "they" out there, besides Iraq, even if we hadn't invaded their country.

Life in Iraq hasn't sucked more than elsewhere until maybe the last 50-100 years, I bet.

The thing is, even if we leave right now, life still will suck, and suck even more. We'll still be good scapegoats -- all you have to do is claim that a sectarian civil war is exactly what we wanted, and that makes it still our fault in the minds of those who want it to be so. U.S. deaths in Iraq, obviously, will evaporate, but we'll still have attempted terrorist actions against us. Some will succeed.

I don't think "they" hate us or our freedoms. I think what they hate is that we are evidently very successful in life, while flouting practically every restriction on life that fundamentalists of all stripes would like to impose. We even manage to successfully avoid the routine ravishing of our women in the street, even though they dress like harlots and strumpets. Clearly, we are weak and unmanly.

Did anybody see Non Sequitor today? It had me in the floor laughing. Give up everything liberal, and what do you get? Ha!

The thing that amazes me the most about the Eastern cultures (trying to be PC here) is that they don't see that progress can't be had by repressing half the population and keeping themselves in isolation. When you automatically dismiss half the brainpower you have, the results won't be good.

Hey all...

Andrew Cohen's "Bench Conference" is getting into the act. And we thought the Mommy Blog was bad!! *L*

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/benchconference/2006/08/why_not_just_ban_carryons.html

Well, seems I'm not the only curmudgeon; here's a guy who also wants to ban almost all carry-ons: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/benchconference/2006/08/why_not_just_ban_carryons.html

Just read Krauthammer's column; he has his head firmly lodged up where the sun don't shine, per usual.

Oh, in the Kung Fu Mokey quoite, the phrase 4GW is military shorthand for "fourth-generation warfare," which is itself military jargon for "assymetrical," warfare, which is even-more impenetrable military jargon meaning big, organized, uniformed armies like ours versus small, guerrila-like groups of insurgents, terrorists, non-uniformed types, etc. Us versus Osama and Zarqawi types, 'nother words.

Hey slyness!

Yeah, I saw that and thought it was great! *L*

And hey, your post snuck in between SciTim's and mine AFTER I posted!! *checking the browser for wormholes*

Yeah, Snuke, I noticed that. My computer clock said 12:46 and your 12:48 was already posted. Cue the Twilight Zone...

To heck with terror already. Thunderstorms are a more immediate concern in my life. Last night a lightning strike took out the uninterruptible power source in our communications center and knocked out our computer aided dispatching system for 3 hours. During a thunderstorm, when we're always slammed. And there's 100 percent chance of thunderstorms tonight.

Loomis, you folks getting any rain?

Jeez, scotty beat me by three minutes. i think there may be a rent in the space-time continuum, however. Now if I had my durn gorilla glue and some duct tape...

So, here's my brilliant engineering solution for Iraq that will make everyone love us again and make all fundamentalists get tired and go sulk in their caves:

Solar power, rechargeable batteries, LED flashlights, and the Toyota Prius.

A centralized infrastructure is easy to screw up. A decentralized infrastructure is not. That's why denial-of-service attacks shut down individual websites, not the whole internet. My four-part strategy is absurdly cost-ineffective compared to centralized infrastructure in the U.S. Compared to the cost of perennially rebuilding a centralized infrastructure that works only 3-4 hours a day, it starts to look pretty good.

(1) Every building is equipped with solar panels. Vacant lots are rented out for power-generation. Power-production becomes decentralized. You can make me miserable by destroying my solar panels, but my neighbors sail through without a problem. I can even pay them to recharge my batteries for me while I fix my solar panels.

(2) The solar cells probably aren't enough. What infrastructure there is, can be used to charge batteries, which can be delivered to individuals and used to power a lot of other stuff.

(3) A white-light LED flashlight can generate about the same usable photon density as a 100W light bulb, but cost only about 1 W. A factor of 50-100 improvement in energy efficiency (in lighting only, unfortunately) will stretch your infrastructure a lot farther.

(4) The Toyota Prius (and other vehicles that use the same hybrid technology). We need to make these available at ridiculously low prices, by subsidizing a massive construction effort by Toyota. Lean on Toyota to formally engineer what hobbyists already have done -- refit them to be precharged. Those people who have access to working electrical infrastructure may be able to make many of their drives without ever burning any gas, by precharging the batteries. Even when they do burn fuel, they stretch the available gas supply by a lot.

The standard of living in Iraq has been pushed so low that these actions could actually make for a gigantic relative improvement. If you can push the insurgent recruitment rate down to 0.1%, then we win. The insurgents become marginalized, and eventually disappear.

By the way -- make sure to sell Priuses with GPS units. The kind that transmit the car's location. Who can afford the first generation of good cars? Terrorists. We can track them.

I envision a future in which bright young Iraqis see that they have a future in materials science and electrical engineering. Iraq becomes the birthplace of the truly practical all-electric car and decentralized power-generation. You want high-quality solar panels? Talk to an Iraqi. You want the best in rechargeable battery technology? That's at Baghdad Batteries.

Science Tim, Slyness, are you not making the cultural assumption that they view success and progress as inherently good as we do.

I think fundamental errors in how we begin thinking about non-western cultures gets us into trouble more than we could possibly beleive.

If you have a fundamentalist whose entire focus in life is sublimation to his religion, not to progress, success, or stuff, then what do we need to consider?

I slipped into the fetal position a few weeks ago without even realizing it until the other day. Usually I am a news junkie and read a lot of left of center material. Maybe it was the heat, maybe the war in Lebanon, or the embarassing scenes from the G8 summit, but I dialed down my reading and surfing intensity. I just can't let myself get so upset at currrent events. We've traveled down the wrong path so far, since that day that no one here wants to name because it's a number, and I don't see any solutions suggested by anyone in power that would truly help change the way things are going. I keep thinking about the "if onlys." If only we'd caught Osama at Tora Bora, if only we'd stayed in Afganistan and truly made a difference there. If only we hadn't gone to Iraq. If only Gore was the president...yep, I know.
America is deep in debt to the Chinese, it's citizens are fatter than ever, and most of them seem more interested in TomKate's baby's pics then there are in helping to pull this country together and win back it's (formerly) good name. There are some who still don't believe in global warming. How many thousands of years do people have to kill each other in the name of religion/culture before they learn that there are better ways to work out differences?
Going to babysit the granddaughters, I'll be back in the fetal position tonight for certain.

Slyness,
Back from a moderately refreshing swim--pool water like bath water.

Rain? What's rain? After a 16-month drought, I think I've forgotten the meaning of the word.

Fridays on the Boodle? Not Fetal Position Friday. No, we have ample evidence from several y-chromosome, testesterone-laden members here and their numerous previous posts that the day should be recast to:

If It's Friday, I Must Be Horn EEE (respelled to avoid the filter).

Call's 'em as I sees 'em.

Nice, but do they have the metallurgy resources for that? Japanese made big money by importing raw materials and then selling them as finished products, but it took a certain level of economic strength & the ability to trade with neighboring countries with the resources-- and not quite skyhigh transport costs. Oil helps, but water transport is better.

India has its own auto industry, and I do agree that the Middle East could use one as well.

Water supply and sewage removal remain problems.

Water can be delivered by truck, unfiltered and polluted, to individual buildings, where private osmotic de-ionizers and filtration systems clean it for use. Or, maybe use solar-powered stills. This is something that the U.S. can subsidize, to make people's lives better.

Sewage may have to be tanked and removed. Septic systems don't work well in cities. You can build composting toilets, or toilets that incinerate the waste. Composting means relatively low usage, incineration costs power. This is a tricky part.

So.... Honest Error in '98
and SciTim as Secretary of Iraq Renovation?

Hey whatever happened to Science Thursday? We missed Science Thursday unless of course yesterday's dissucssions of liquid bomb making materials counts.

SciTim;

All that talk of sewage and you don't bring up the methane possibilities???

:-)

Dr, still thirsty for Science Thursday?

Apparently dogs can contract cancer from other dogs. Confirmed. Which raises questions about people, since some cancers are caused by various viruses, including herpes papilloma virus (cervical cancer).

Turns out this is a doggy STD most common in strays.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060811075902.htm

Giving a new twist to the term "he's a babe hound."

Actually the interesting thing is this is not a virus transitted, but the cancer cells themselves. A cancer that outlives its host and travels around.... It was bound to happen by the laws of evolution, but BRRR.

NYT op-eds cut right to the chase, no mincing of words:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/11/opinion/11fri1.html

On Wednesday, when the administration already knew that British agents were rounding up suspects in what they believed was a plot to blow up planes en route to the United States, Vice President Dick Cheney had a telephone interview with reporters to discuss the defeat of Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut in a Democratic primary. Mr. Cheney went off on a rather rambling disquisition, but its main point was clear: In rejecting Mr. Lieberman, who supported the war in Iraq, the Democrats were encouraging "the Al Qaeda types." Within the Democratic ranks, the vice president added, "there's a significant body of opinion that wants to go back -- I guess the way I would describe it is sort of the pre-9/11 mind-set, in terms of how we deal with the world we live in."

The man who beat Mr. Lieberman, Ned Lamont, lives in Greenwich, a suburb full of commuters who work in New York high-rise buildings. They are completely aware of the way international terrorism can come crashing down on an ordinary family, leaving the survivors stunned and bereft. A dozen of their neighbors died at the World Trade Center. They will never be able to go back to a "pre-9/11 mind-set."

But that did not seem to deter Mr. Lieberman from scoring a cheap sound bite yesterday. Leaving Iraq, as Mr. Lamont advocates, "will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England," he said. "It will strengthen them and they will strike again."

With access to oil, Iraq has access to the raw material of a large fraction of the world's most popular industrial chemistry. Hydrogen for fuel cells will be derived from oil, until it runs low. Plastics are made from oil. Fertilizer is made from oil. And so on. Iraq has access to lots of sand = SiO2 = granulated glass. So they could have a healthy auto industry with fiberglass-bodied vehicles and composite-frame construction.

My vision of a bright future is for 20-30 years from now. We get them the Priuses etc., now. Somebody needs to maintain them. They have plenty of oil wealth available. They need to stop destroying themselves long enough to exploit it. My plan is designed to help them do that, by making life less miserable, so that insurgency looks less appealing.

dr, my plan is not to make them be like us. My plan is to make them less miserable. What they do with that situation is up to them. They won't get to stay less miserable unless they choose the path of technology, however, because we will be long gone by the time those Toyotas start to break down.

Annette's tatas
Pirate wenches in Canada
Shakira jiggly dancing videos
*sigh*

dr, things to do in Weyburn other than LSD:

http://www.weyburnchamber.com/weyburn/tourist.html

I note there is the W.O. Mitchell residence and the Turner Curling Museum. Also, Weyburn's connection to Iraq:

Powell Residence
Sarah Powell is the daughter of the late H.O. Powell, former general manager of the Weyburn Security Bank when it was chartered in 1911. Sarah was born in 1908 to a family of six children and educated at the Weyburn Collegiate before going to university. Sarah married Dr. Mohammed Fadhil Jamali an Iraqi, Arab, Moslem teacher, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, twice Prime Minister and the man who signed the United Nations charter on behalf of Iraq in 1933. Mrs. Jamali met her husband at the University of Chicago where both were attending. They were married after she had accepted a position in Bagdad, teaching English, and later went on to head the English Department at Queen Alia College in Bagdad.

mudge,

Your 12:09 post is really all that needs to be said. Not that that has ever stopped anybody before. The invader is NEVER the good guy. I've been wanting to translate "Red Dawn" into Arabic and hire the Iraqi version of Patrick Swayze to star in it. I would make more money than all of Bollywood.

We are the bad guys for invading a country that did nothing overt to us.

We are the bad guy for for imprisoning, torturing, and killing random strangers who each have dozens of irritable relatives.

I don't like being the bad guy. We are always the good guys, even when committing genocide. The John Wayne movies say so.

The infrastructure sabotage baffles me as an American, but is completely logical as an insurgent. They would obviously prefer a broken country without us than a working country under our benevolent supervision. I think that's their choice. We can hold as many phony purple thumb elections as we want, but all the winners are immediately branded as collaborators and nobody makes movies about proud Vichy stooges.

Although, they must mean the League of Nations if the 1933 reference is correct.

From Wiki, Jamali sounded pretty interesting until this (sigh):
Because he believed from the Qur'an that Jews and Christians were misbelievers in their religions, he wrote: "There is no doubt that the existence of Israel is the greatest defiance to all the Moslems" and urged its demise as a state.

I think they secretly like being miserable SciTim, which of course they would never admit to. If all I had was religion, I'd be grumpier too.

I really like your idea on getting solar panels everywhere including empty lots. Now if only governments would take their head out of their patooties and subsidise alternative energy the way they can subsidise everything else...

They have a curling museum? Hot diggity. Now you're talking.

I always find it amazing that even the tiniest towns in Saskatchewan have these connections to international issues. Truly sad about Jamali's belief.

You know I bet I now know more Weyburn history than my brother.

Shuffle the genes
Something weird always comes up
Statistically

Our health is our care
Who cries for the parasites
Gone all kaput?

Evolution's law
Murphy always finds a way
to either side

Thus this balance:
With thousands of diseases
We yet survive

and..

Dog-hopping cancers
Eat up dogs who can't smell 'em
Or do lust, anyway.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060106002944.htm

I must be speed-reading the boodle too fast, Loomis; where were those pirate wenches and Shakira vids again?

dr, I agree that the angry fundamentalists want themselves and others to be miserable. I'm interested in the other 99%, who just want their kids to grow up healthy and happy. I remain convinced that if that desire can start to be satisfied, then the 99% will expand to 99.9%, which is all we need to reduce the insurgency down to cranky dangerous nutcases who need to be, and can be, rounded up and locked away -- by a healthy Iraqi government. I have no proof, yet, that my plan will work -- but then, we haven't tried the experiment yet. We have proof that the plan doesn't work in which we try to shoot every insurgent.

With those haikus
Friday becomes Scientific
Doggerel Day

(Woof).

1-888-327-4236

Heck with Iraq, they'll only throw rocks at the solar panels and use the Toyotas as IED's. Give me some free photoelectrics and a fuel cell Prius. I'll put it to good use. At a much higher economic benefit to the world economy.

Let's do a cost benefit analysis of all the money we've spent in Iraq versus plunging it into some random developing nation that would appreciate some infrastructure.

You can't drag people into the 21st century kicking and screaming that are perfectly content in the 14th.

Like, maybe, Afghanistan? We oughta have focused on the job there.

But no, W had to do the fancy pincers movement around Iran...

Iraq joined the League of Nations on Oct. 3, 1932, (not 1933), but yes, it was the League of Nations and not the UN (which they joined in 1945).

Grey Goo Theory was probably at least partly inspired by the concept of Ice 9 from Kurt Vonnegut's book Cat's Cradle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_9

It's a terrific read. Especially if you subscribe to "Not with a bang but a whimper" philosophy.

Chug that cup of joe
Let your gut jitter all day
Soothing diabetes

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/06/060628091738.htm

Drink tea daily
Don't forget and develop
Ovarian cancer

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060103085358.htm

Haikus arouse
A strange feeling of writing
Burma shave ads.

Oh! Don't wail at this
It's indeed true that hippos
Are kin to whales

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050205103109.htm

Mudge, I posted the Shakira video link a few boodles back (last week I think), and a link to a picture of a canadian bartender very scantily clad several boodles back. And today you mention Annette's 'costume locker', and I post a link to some pictures of her.

I am a dog.

ABS problems?
A recall is in effect
Call number below

http://www.r1200gs.info/misc/recalls.html

Daily chocolate
Lowers your blood pressure
Keeps you breathin'

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/02/060228090619.htm

(or hackin')
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060102123255.htm

Keep up the good work, omni. We need more pervs^h^h^h^h^h boodlers like you.

The British version of grey goo would likely be curry-flavored.

During the Yuppie Period of the 1980s, shopping center owners in Jacksonville repainted their buildings grey, which at the time was considered sophisticated. I guess the current need is to look Tuscan. Earlier on, brick had been fashionable because it looked permanent or dignified, or something. By now, I think 99% of the bricks in Florida have been painted or slathered with stucco frosting.

Sentence runs on, like
a Saskatchewan skyline
Also, poor search, friend

King George Hotel
Formerly the Waverly Hotel, was built in 1899 by John Henning. One afternoon in 1903, the ceiling of this building was riddled with bullets by the Idaho Kid with his Colt 44 revolver shortly after being locked up by the local mountie, Bill, the "Kid's" real name, apparently realizing crime does not pay, settled down with his wife in the Weyburn district.

http://www.weyburnchamber.com/weyburn/tourist.html

Back when I lived in South Florida, pink was the official color of Boca Raton. Even the Mickey Dee's had to be pink.

Searched and found the pirate wench link was posted on June 23, a Friday.

BBBUUUT, the Shakira link came on August 1, which was a Tuesday.

Which I supppose means it's not just horneee Fridays, it's also horneee Tuesdays.

Yep, horndog, that's me...

Um, maybe it's time for a walk...back in twenty.

Three forgetful mice
Eaten by cats sharing toxo
With some mothers-to-be

Cause schizophrenia
Altering host's behavior
...Not science fiction.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060125082853.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060118092503.htm

yellojkt writes:
You can't drag people into the 21st century kicking and screaming that are perfectly content in the 14th.

Especially when you're using bunker buster bombs and precision-(not)-guided missiles to take their infrastructure back to the 8th century--coupled with tactics to win the battle absent strategies to win the war.

When it comes to Iraqi's and their attitude towards the US I follow my own pattend pended Eurotrashes 10 - 80 - 10 rule.
It's not scientific but I do believe it's a good rule to keep in mind when it comes to societies in turmoil.

10 procent participates in one extreme way.
10 procent in the total opposite way.
And 80 procent try to live their lives and hope that the turmoil ends asap without involving them.

So 10 procent are against the US, 10 procent hope the US can make Iraq a better place and 80 procent wish that it would all get sorted out one way or another and that life would become quiet again.

Booze stops T-cells
From autoimmune disease
Vodka beats doctors?

Booze stops T-cells
From autoimmune disease
Vodka beats doctors?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/08/060810085941.htm

Omni is definitely a member of the "Life Affirming Club", as several of us (and I do mean "us") on here are.

His heart's beating, his blood's flowing, he's enjoying the blessings of being human.

omni, today You're the Man! Good on ya mate!

bc

Trying to stop this
Writing in Haikus, I can't
So farewell, for now.

Jennifer Ouellette: "We are stuck in (with?) this universe, alas..."
Given the sterling success we've achieved here, I think it's probably best that the next universe will have a chance to try without us.

Eurotrash, I like that rule. You'd best copyright that.

[bc slapping his head again]

Dr. Seuss references "blue goo" in his opus, "Fox in Socks".

If, sir, you, sir,
choose to chew
apocalyptic blue goo
you, sir, too, sir,
should clone new
blue goo geese
to chew you through.
New goo, blue goo
chewy, chewy,
now you chew
with goo geese too
phooey, phooey.

Then comes the Beetle Paddle Battle in the Bottle in the Puddle at the End of the World.

bc

earlier a brilliant analyst said "I don't follow the information being fed, just what is actually going on. From the data stream of actions, one may arrive at an understanding of the totality of actions working together. To understand what is going on."

actually, that was me, and I didn't say it, I've been implying it for several months......

DHS, was a cover to remove people from the CIA and other offices that might implicate the president. The lack of it's effectiveness, and certain positions being unmanned is proof of my words.

National Guard being sent overseas, is in effect proof of a coup, the National Guard was originally formed to retake the Federal Office of the government in the event a single group gained control of the government..........such as now

Negropontes' ability, given by congress, to _revoke_pensions_ if CIA or other intelligence agency employees leak information, is further proof of that.....destruction of the CIA and FBI, as well as their credibility to cover_up complicity in the WTC bombing

The fact that Negroponte is being put in charge of the "Green Zone," and that his role in Honduras was to put a good face on our clandestine, terrorists activities in Central America, while muffling truth, is proof that it was planned from the beginning.....that there was an operative that could be trusted to tailor information coming from the middle east....because he had done it before in Honduras for Poppy, George H.Walker Bush.

Again, 12 to 20 MILLION _ILLEGAL_ ALIENS. Borders protected? right and my name is albert schwietzer....

orange, yellow, blue, pavlovian response, after a while the dogs just salivate

jingoism, hate as a family value, smells like Springtime For Hitler.....that's a funny reference to a show called "The Producers," that originally starred Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, that made fun of horror

Zero was black_listed during the McCarthyism jingoist era, and the world was denied a comic genius for a time

He put up with being manipulated because he didn't have a choice

I suggest you exercise your rights,

Newt is pointing to wards WWIII and saying, "I want that." give it to him

take him down, hurt him by arresting him

he is clearly referring to PNAC in his article.....that make s him a conspirator against the United States of America

hope you understan d the truth of that

.

shad ows lifted smiles pressed

What's in a name? That which we call a Grey Goo
By any other word would smell as sweet

As an asside: Some asked me where I have been the since my last Boodlebinge.

I can only tell you that I was in Lurkistan on a secret mission for Dick Cheney.

Speaking of grey goo suddenly popping up...

*RME*

Oh, and WB Euro! *wave*

:-)

Eurotrash, How is the press over there dealing with Mr. Castro's illness? I know Canada and the US have distinctly different views on the matter, but what the about European press?

Oh yeah bc, but how fast can you say that?

Infrastructure upgrades
Destroyed by rebels that like
Fifteenth century

situations of interesting rivalry

disguising themselves as a boundar y issue

frells of frillig quastanostres

abrogating the swarthy towels of beauty

Is there a Turing Test going on that I am unaware of?

It's a failed test, yellojkt...

:-)

Hi Dr,

Castro's illness isn't realy news here in Belgium.
But I can tell you that in general Castro is and was painted in a favorable light.
But I think that's because a lot of news editors used to be what we call "May 68ers". People who, as students, used to be left wing and they still have a rosy picture of Castro.
(May 68 refers to the student riots in France and in Belgium in 1968)

My view is that Castro, when it comes to dicators, isn't the worst of the bunch. But he is a dictator and even the best one is worth less than the worst democraticly elected official.

I do believe that the US should have made peace with him a long time ago. His regime wouldn't have survived as long if there was a continuous influx of American money (creating a middle class) and American ideas.

Hi Scotty. Thanks for wellcoming me back.

fritenghend monstrostiy

dr, I can say that pretty quickly, I think.

I've been reading Fox in Socks aloud to my kids for 15 years now, I can slip into the Dr. Seuss Zone pretty quickly and get through it without stumbling. I do need to be careful with the chicks and clocks, though.

bc

rigid behaviours dished out as nicieties

bv, do you do the 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins?

Fetal Position Friday - what a wonderful idea.

I actually was considering practicing "duck and cover" boomer baby that I am.

As for the grey/gray controversy, we'd have to solve the colour/color controversy first.

Thanks for a wonderful entry today.

I say don't even worry about the threat of the Big Crunch, Big Stretch, or the Grey-Goo scenario (never heard of that one before, an infinite amount of self-replicating nanos eh?)- humanity will surely destroy itself well before then.

Either by means of a horrifying war involving the use of incredibly destructive weapons or through our countining widespread rape and pillage of our planet, I am absolutely confident that the end of our species will be due in large part to ourselves and not to some far off doomsday scenario a million plus years away.

With every day that passes, I become more and more certain that humanity's existence will amount to little more than a few chapters in the history of this world. In fact, given the inherent stupidity, arrogance, and irrationality of humanity, its amazing that we haven't nuked ourselves already over some intangible principle. However, with each passing day I feel that the current situation in the mid-east in bringing humanity closer and closer to our ultimate fate. Its so absurd - almost everyone who is aware of this situation knows the potential danger that it holds but no one seems able or willing to stop it. Its seems as if our whole species is on a sort of self-destructive bender of late.

Still in spite of this rather gloomy prediction, I say don't worry about the inevitable end of our species - stop trying to polish the brass of a sinking Titanic and just enjoy the ride!

Hey, look on the bright-side, at least we won't be around along enough to witness a politician declare a War on the Grey-Goo Sceanario!

Hey, Joel's kit is not only featured in the WaPo Opinions box, they even put his mugshot up. Joel rules!

(But then, we've always known that.)

Mike Douglas died--not sure how I feel about that. I was never a fan, though he seemed relatively harmless enough, compared to some others.

troll, troll, go away
don't come back another day

Have a great weekend everyone else

Having gone through the Go-Go scenario, I'm currently living the Goo-Goo scenario, soon to be followed by the Go-Grey scenario. I'm worried about the the possibility of a Ga-Ga scenario.

Kind of my personal take on it too. My hubby saw a remarkably evenhanded documentary on him. Castro seems to be very very intelligent person.

Thanks. I wonder if this isn't going to be the next big thing, and I wonder what the Cuban Americans will do when he dies. Its one of those we are not out of it yet areas.

I liked Mike Douglas because he seem so much less of a suck-up than rival Merv Griffin. He always had funny skits and banter. At least that is what I remember of him from when I was ten years old, which was the last time he was on my pop culture radar.

Oh, I saw the headlines and went "Mike Douglas? I must know a Mike Douglas, I know so many Mikes, didn't I work with one?"

But I can guarantee you that singing and banter wasn't on my list of reasons to vaguely know the name. Was he on 60 Minutes?

I have to respectfully disagree with you Curmudgeon. My parents grew up in Iraq in the 50s/60s, and by all accounts it didn't suck under the king. Oil money meant free Education (my mom and her brother went all the way through med school without paying a dime) so there was upward mobility, and there was pretty free exchange with the West (literature, movies, music). It wasn't until the Baath party came to power that it became a totalitarian state. When the US got rid of Sadaam there was hope that things could return to that, and that makes the current situation seem that much worse.

by my interesting detonations of impinging truth eh?

Dr,

I think that after Castro dies nothing much will happen at first. A new guy, maybe his brother, maybe someone else, will take over. That person will not have his charisma though. So after about 10 years there will be a kind of "orange revolution" leading to elections.

Mudge, it's just another memory of youth that you say farewell to, when you see another period piece die. I'm getting used to it, so I guess you might be "okay... yeah I remember that guy..."

fleeting contact with the real world, his heavy handedness walks away freeing them from self examination....pertinent quips isolated snip synthetic ips...shelters of cliches' mixed in with soylent plibs

ipso facto prestidigitarium!

Or as the Godfather said "You can be a man!". I think I will do that rather than being a sniveling little twerp as the writer has chosen.

"Without hate."
It's easy just create one...

Without Religion.

Without Politics.

my friend? mwah?

mirm, I probably do owe you an apology; I vastly overstated the case, for effect. And you're probably right--it was probably no worse than anyplace else in the mideast for some periods of time. Whether it was "better" under a monarch I don't know; I imagine it had its critics. On the other hand, I generally don't have a very favorable view of the entire region and the overall Islamic culture in general, so that factors into my characterization. But yeah, I won't dispute you. I'd have to agree with you nobody was running around murdering each other willy-nilly.

SofC, I would say you are currently living the Ga-Ga scenario. It's that Go-gray scenario that really is goo-goo.

Mike Douglas spawned a bunch of game shows and was the Original Regis Philbun...

interestingly enough he had James Brown on before it was fashionable, Mr. Browns performance was amazing, including the ending where he collapse weeping and shaking on the stage and they cover him with a robe and attempt to lead him off...

he musta been about 32, strong as abull

e.e. boodler, welcome back. I'm pretty sure Patrick was referring to Joel's kit.

well im certainly not going to try to defend the state of islamic culture, but its my personal belief that people turn to religion when their lives suck, or when trying to make sense of insane events. iraq was pretty secular (read: mini-skirts) until 1979, when sadaam came to power and the islamic revolution happened next door in iran. anyway sorry i called you out, i was aiming the post more at whoever was talking about iraq being in the wrong century - you could just poke around on the internet to see how it really was. oh well forty minutes 'til my summer job is over and you wont have to hear from me 'til winter break when im back in a cubicle :)

Would reason suffice? LEAVE THE MIDDLE EAST ALONE. Leave it to the Middle EAsterners, as we would like to be left alone. Too late for the best, but what the h were we doing with planes in Saudi Arabia? Don't mention Iraq! If we are content to get oil from Russia without invading it (probably not) why not the same for the Midlle East? This would mean, of course, tearing the bloody rampaging nation of Israel out by the roots (maybe float some leaflets down first) but that would be right, just, in any case. And Israel could stop eviscerating America. There is commerce, there are computers, there is television. Let the Middfle East alone, let them catch up.

..above, after leaflets...add: The whole world would help or approve if not cheer.

Mirm,

I think you should stay boodling. It's nice to hear your point of view.
And of course there are other subjects beside religion and the war we can talk about.

mirm, you don't have to wait until winter break; you're always welcome here. You're down to about 6 or 8 minutes, now, though... so good luck this semester. (Where ya going back to, anyway?)

I agree Mirm, check in once in a while, we are a 24 hour boodle. New perspectives can only enhance.

Suffice, I don't think its so easy. To leave now would be to allow the US to be open to 'left when they should have stayed'. It is I fear a no win situation not just for the US but for all western nations. We stay or we go, someone out there will still make it into a fault.

Oh, jeez. The first bullet link under the main WaPo story says, "Bullet Link Text Goes Here." Somebody over there better get on the stick.

Cur,

It must have been Mirm, who's summer job was to add bulletpoints, slacking off in the last minutes.

Never mind; they got it.

haha. thanks for friendly words though, im heading back to UVA, and my homepage is always the Post, so I probably will be back. have good weekends, i'm going to sleep :)

Running for the bus...still no computer at home, so chat witcha all on Monday. (My boat will supposedly be running for the first time tomorrow...keeping my fingers crossed.)

Have a great weekend all. Get your critical Windows updates. Way out here in Boondockia we are getting a DHS warning, passed on through our systems manager, about a major worm attack just days away.

"Sufffice?" refers to eliminating the bloody rampaging nation of Israel. Also, he notes that "The whole world would help or approve if not cheer." It appears that the elimination of Israel is what he believes the "whole world" would cheer. And, he claims that Israel is eviscerating America.

Just so you know, my silence in response to anything else that "Sufffice?" might say is not complicit agreement with any future atrocities he might post. It is an expression of disgust as I let him paint himself as an ignorant lunatic. He doesn't need any help from me to make that clear.

Not that I agree with Sufffice, SciTim, but there is a grain of a valid point in his/her post, though it's somewhat buried.

How's the saying go? "If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging."

Nearly every policy tried in the MidEast has resulted in digging the hole deeper, yet we continue to dig. There were some promising moments -- Egypt and Israel making peace, for example. Otherwise, it just seems like we're either throwing bombs or supplying the bombs to be thrown, then scratching our heads when the results don't turn out as expected.

Another saying that comes to mind: "You don't put out a fire with gasoline." (I know you *can* put a fire out with gasoline, but it takes a lot of gasoline -- then you got all that gas laying around waiting for another spark to start an even bigger fire)

I think we've supplied military equipment, training and other support (directly or indirectly) to every side of every dispute at some point or another in the region over the years and still do. And nearly every one of our "beneficiaries" has turned on us. Have we learned nothing?

Another applicable cliche: "Herding cats"

I dunno... the whole thing justs makes my head spin. War is a hard thing for hippies to wrap their long-haired heads around, especially this hippie.

Now to combine all of my cliches into one:

"If you find yourself in a hole filled with crazed flaming cats, digging deeper and throwing gas on them is probably not the best idea."

It has been interesting today. Fetal position Friday. Gray goo, and all. The end of the world, and other scenarios. And new people. Welcome.

Religion has always been given a bad name by those that abuse religion. I consider myself a Christian. It is part of me, and I consider it the good part. For me it is loving my brothers and sisters in the world. And my belief that God loves me, and not just me, but all, and He sent His Son Jesus in the world because He loved us so much. For me, that means that I love, and not hate. It saddens me much when religion is used by those that want to kill, maim, and do harm to others. The Christian faith is based on love, and I am fully aware that we lack in that arena, yet Christ is our example. I will continue to try with all that is in me to follow that example.

Have a good weekend, my friends. Get some rest, kiss your families, and tell them you love them, and give God some of your time. Dmd, jack, prayers for you and family.

Bad sneakers you sound like our friend Nani that used to visit. I wish she would come back. Have a good weekend Nani, and love to you Error, wherever you are.

Back to science...

I believe crown gall, a cancer in plants, is caused by a plasmid that is introduced into a plant when it is infected by a particular bacterium (Agrobacterium, IIRC?). Plants infected with the bacterium can spread the cancer to other plants. Seems that I heard about this something like 20 years ago, so the dogs shouldn't have come as TOO big a shock.

Regardless of the Fear Mongering by the Reds in the White House, the reality is you're STILL safer flying to someplace (except maybe Iraq or Afghanistan) on a plane than driving.

You can either live in Fear, or you can refuse to live in Fear. I'm an American, I REFUSE to live in Fear, no matter how many times Rove et al send out fear-mongering fundraising letters they were given a week to work on before they pulled the Red Fear Alert.

annie,

I saw your comments about the phones. I like phones such as you have with an actual bell that could raise the dead. My comment about your pink phone was suggesting that it might have an effect on your love life. Okay, it was a weak joke.

On another subject you raised, we have an IBM Selectric in our office that we use about once a month or so. We also have a staff assistant who graduated from college about a year ago. She needed to use the typewriter and was confused about where to put the paper. She was looking for the paper tray. This is a very smart and capable woman with great common sense and we like her a lot. She had just never used a typewriter before.

A similar generational story concerns another young woman. She was surprised to learn that you could make popcorn on the stove by heating oil in a frying pan and adding popcorn. She had only made popcorn in a microwave.

Regardless of all this, annie, I still don't feel old. And I know that you don't.

Science Tim -- I am right there with you. Like yours, my silence is in no way to be interpreted as assent.

I was proud of the boodle's refusal to be baited by the earlier "let Lieberman run for mayor of Haifa" hatespew. And I am proud that no one has responded to Suffice (except to say essentially that there's no sane response, pace martooni).

A lot of other cultures view a refusal to shout and spew as lack of conviction. I remember living in Miami in the early 1990s, and listening to debates about who was more antidialogista than the other, and being struck forcefully by the realization that el exilio really believed that the Anglo (*hated* that term) refusal to raise one's voice during debates was proof positive of not really caring.

This viewpoint can be a grave mistake. When you really know a given society, say, the South, where I was raised (by a Southern belle mom and an Irish immigrant dad, bit of a long story), you learn to read the code. You learn that a raised eyebrow, which to more, shall we say, demonstrative cultures appears to be nothing, is quite serious. You learn that people who would never dream of dropping the f-bomb, that if they say "I believe you are gravely mistaken" they are prepared to go nuclear.

Suffice -- spew away. Just don't interpret silence as assent, still less as softness. Our tradition is that everyone is free to speak, but not everyone is worth listening to. And the instant that hatred changes from words to murderous actions . . . well, Flight 93 springs to mind.

Nice post, Joel. I especially like:

>Things have nowhere to go but up when you make the courageous decision to abandon all hope. (Surely you remember the sage words of Bluto: "My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.")

Thank you, annie, that was extremely well put.

Dooley, agrobacterium, viruses etc. can trigger cancer.

What is unusual about this is that the tumor itself spreads through contact. Literally, the tumor cells go from one body to another.

It's like one of those tumor cell lines that are immortal and just scraped from one petri dish to another, only this tumor does it by itself, using dogs as petri dishes.

The tumor cell line apparently arose 250-1000 years ago, and it's still out there, no significant immunity yet in dogs.

This raises many questions-- could there be zoonotic tumor cell lines that jump species that we simply have been overlooking all along?

We don't usually autopsy tumors to be sure they actually are genetically derived from their host-- we just assume they are genetic because we have learned that cancer arises from mutant cells that go rogue and is intrinsic to the patient. Then we have learned that viruses etc. can mutate such cells to be cancerous.

Now we're learning that cancer can in fact hitchhike from outside the body. This is going to be forcing a lot of oncology research to look for evidence of any infectious cancers.

The increasing existence of lung cancer in nonsmoking women-- could that be one instance of a new infectious cancer strain?

We may need to redraw our picture of cancer risks if such infectious cancer strains are found in people too.

But it's good... we've been "fighting cancer" for over 50 years and right now we are licking a few cancers at a time and studying hard how cancer succeeds in the body... but a lot of cancers are nearly impossible to detect or cure before the patient is this close to death.

I read the Andrew Cohen blog and comments about the carry on restrictions at work - wow, there are a bunch of not-very-tactful types there!

I'm still wondering if chapstick is ok to have. And I read that the Brits banned books! InconCEIVable! Why? Are they afraid we'll start a fire on the plane? Well, what else are we going to do to amuse ourselves if we can't bring BOOKS?!?

dr, I know we'll survive without all our stuff, but honestly, my small carry on bag contained books, CD player and CD's, 2 water bottles (cuz sometimes you're in the plane a long time before the cart gets to you), food, chapstick, chewing gum, female supplies (just in case). I hope they come to their senses before I have to endure a bookless, dry-lipped, cotton-mouthed, white-knuckle flight across the US.

The Brits have it a bit tougher, mostlylurking. No carry-ons, and now insurance companies are balking at covering valuables placed in luggage carried in the hold of the planes:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2309322,00.html

Insurers refuse to cover iPods and phones in airline luggage
By Valerie Elliott

Companies have decided to take a hard line, fearing that some travellers will try to exploit policies


MILLIONS of British air passengers were told last night that they will be travelling without insurance cover for valuable items such as jewellery, laptops, mobile phones and MP3 players that must now be packed in the aircraft hold.

After the emergency ban on cabin luggage as part of tough new air security controls, most insurance companies said that they would treat passengers sympathetically. But within 24 hours of the terror alert The Times has learnt that companies have decided to harden their position.

Insurance industry insiders say that companies are reluctant to announce blanket payouts for loss of valuables in these special circumstances because they think that passengers will exploit any relaxation of policy and have a field day with claims. Consumer groups predict scores of complaints from passengers about insurance companies failing to meet claims for losses.

And you have to wonder about the hit the airlines will take. Hopefully they'll step up and find ways to amuse the passengers, but that's another expense for them. Maybe they'll just hand out Ambien. I'm hoping that these restrictions are temporary - I hate flying as it is.

Dooley, is this where you are?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/08/AR2006080800983.html

annie, your post of August 11, 2006 08:30 PM was well thought out and well written -- I liked it a lot.

Call me a silly old capitalist, but if airlines can't provide the services that customers require, then isn't going out of business the most rational and inevitable result? And if governments impose restrictions which voters decide are inacceptable, isn't mass disobeyance and loss of elections the rational and inevitable result?

Airlines don't actually have any money (you know this, right?) which isn't either recouped through sales or begged from the government. So it's silly to talk about "costs to airlines". Airlines (just like McDonald's or Walmart) are just middlemen helping facilitate the transfer of money from consumers to producers (airplane manufacturers & oil companies, among others, in this case) and adding some added value in between. Either their expenses + profit are affordable & acceptable to their intended customers, or they're not, no big deal. In the long run, it all works out one way or another.

(THEY [you know, THEM] just better not make ME miss a flight, dammit!)

Mostlylurking, I'm further north, near Shell, WY. But I start heading home tomorrow :-)

a. mandating telecommuting
b. mandating limits of gasoline/family at normal rates, over 30 gallons 1.5 times normal price
c. bringing home customer service jobs from out of country so our out-of-work country cousins don't have to commute.
d. start replacing incadescent with the spiral flourescent bulbs
e. start planning our garbage systems so that our garbage dumps are usable as arable land in the future
f. realize that oil is going away and plan for it........additionally realize that the people that are so concerned about oil want youto be too, because _they_ control it.........BRAZIL _IS_ energy independent, and they have less resources than we do

listen closely, bush and co. want you to be worried about oil, and they want to keep you addicted to it like heroin dealers until you have cooked down your last spoon.......

then they'll let the United States focus on alternatives.......unless you have them arrested and liquidate their properties and eat their pets

le them work at WalMart as they would have you do!

prefer liberty to agreeing with gluttony

Actually, the U.S. economy is (and has been for decades) investing in alternative fuels technologies, producing ever-more efficient vehicles & home appliances, and making more re-use out of our trash (both the mass of junk and the land).

It's just that laziness & capitalist wisdom militate against spending gigantic amounts of money on infrastructure & product change in return for little or no gain when there are cheaper alternatives.

Despite what you or I happen to think, gasoline is not considered to be particularly expensive (or has only been so for a very short time) when a significant number of the vehicles on the road are large trucks & their derivatives, carrying single occupants on perfectly drivable roads in mild climates.

Hybrids-schmeibrids! There are half a dozen gasoline-only car models that get gas mileage rivalling that of the hybrids, without the significant new-technology price penalty. The streets aren't full of them because fuel prices aren't high enough yet for consumers to consider fuel efficiency to be a particularly valuable commodity. Let's do a little math:
---
200 miles per week @ $ 1.50/gal @ 15mpg = $1040/year. Even the longer-haul commuter or very active soccer mom (around 500 miles/week) was still paying under $2500/year for gas at those $1.50/gal. prices.

Doubling gas prices means an increase of maybe $100-$250 per month. These are typically not frightening sums to folks who've already paid $25,000-60,000 for vehicles that they already knew were amazingly fuel hoggy.

It's also woth pointing out that there's nothingly inherently wrong with big gas-hoggers. If our soccer mom (in her 12/mpg Hummer) made half her trips alone and half her trips with five energetic kids, her mileage would be (hmmm, let's see,
[(1+6) * 12] / 2 = 48 passenger miles/gallon. Not too bad!
---

Solar panels are somewhat more efficient and about half the price that they were 10-15 years ago. But 28VDC appliances are thin on the ground because consumers don't see (until the price differential between your power and the utility company's power is pretty substantial) the opportunity cost as being worthwhile, and much of country has meteorological conditions that would limit that source to auxilliary status under even the best of conditions for most of the year.

It will all change, not to worry. But it's silly to say that consumers are being particularly short-sighted or stupid. People just make the decisions that make sense to them, given the circumstances that they confront. It's the job of us visionaries, and the wonderful, crazy financial backers, to keep hacking away at providing potential alternatives until the day that they actually do make sense to consumers.

Anti-SCC:

You know, I was going to correct myself on the "... woth pointing out that there's nothingly inherently wrong ..." part, but the more I look at it, the more I like it, as is!

Wow, I can't believe a actually read right past this part....

Actually: did you actually suggest mandated gasoline surcharges on private individuals as your suggestion "b."? In what possible way could that possibly help ease or speed the transition away from petroleum? And if your theoretical goal was to help the poor, why not just give them cash awards to buy gas at whatever the market price happens to be (even though that will, of course, drive up the market price of gasoline)?

TBG mentioned the other day going to the museum where the scopes trial took place, this article is a study conducted by the U. of Michigan. It shows that 39 percent of Americans do not believe in darwinism.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060811.wevolution0811/BNStory/Science/home

Good morning, friends. Raining, raining, can't walk. Well can walk, but don't want to walk in the rain, although it does sound like a refreshing idea. Do hope your weekend is starting off just right, like sleeping late. Suffice to say, mine is not. G-girl up early, real early. And I feel a headache coming on, already here.

During my childhood years after we got our first television, I remember the news part of the programs and they were always talking about fighting in the Middle East. Of course, my interest then was cartoons and Lone Ranger. But I remember the talk of fighting in that part of the world. Not much has changed.

My first experience of riding in anything was a mule and wagon. Not many folks had cars back then, so gas was not an issue. People did a lot of walking during those times. And the food was so different. There were gardens and smoked meats, mostly hogs. Very little beef for us. We didn't raise cows, we had hogs. The walking and the gardens were good, not the hog meat. And the walking was good also, yet we had diseases, and people died. Not much medical care, and we didn't go to the hospital, not to stay anyway unless one was dying. Doctors made house calls, but those calls were a last resort much of the time. Oh, it was a different time, but along the way, one always finds that one that wants to take civilization back in time even further. Progress does have its enemies.

I guess the rain has brought on this mood of days past. Have a good weekend folks. At least try. It has been a downer of week, but let us not allow circumstances to dictate our behavior. The world was here with all its problems when we arrived, hopefully it will be here when we leave. Perhaps not as we know it, but here just the same. I love you all.

Morning, Cassandra. Dreary and rainy here too. If this keeps up, I'll wish our excess on Loomis. She needs it, for heavens sake. But I'm not complaining yet. We have a ways to go before we've had too much.

Good morning, Cassandra, Slyness.

Don't know who else is here early on a Saturday.

Yesterday was definitely fetal position Friday for me. On Thursday I was told I wouldn't get a promotion, despite being the most qualified applicant, because there are no suitable replacements for me in my current position. Add to "Cemeteries are full of indispensible people." So are Foreign Language classrooms. We'll never be librarians, curriculum coordinators, assistant principals, or, in my case, educational technology resource teachers. Does anyone know an unemployed Spanish teacher who wants to move to Central VA? Maybe if I recruit my own replacement...

Not that the news this week didn't help. I can't stop thinking about the ocean separating me from my sister. Getting her here, or getting me there is a bit stressful, and there are no signs that things will get better anytime soon.

Loved the haiku. That did make me laugh.

Annie, loved your post about silence in response to rants. It is better to be known for subtlety than ranting, IMHO. Unfortunately, I don't think those are behaviors you can learn later in life. I wish I could act more like my grandmother, who could control all her grandchildren with the lift of *half* her right eyebrow. I don't know how she did it. She never raised her voice, just her eyebrow, and we all behaved.

Yes, yes, yes--please send us your excess rain. Front-page story below the banner this morning (just to show you the seriousness of it all):

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA20060812.01A.NZ.Metro.droughtlosses.2256ecf.html

Dry times have cost the state $4.1 billion

William Pack, Express-News Business Writer

The ongoing drought in Texas has set a modern-day record of $4.1 billion in economic losses, according to economists with the Texas Cooperative Extension service, and the final tab has yet to be tallied.

The current drought, which started 16 months ago, has surpassed the $2.1 billion in losses set by the 1998 drought and is comparable to the damage sustained in the six-year drought of the 1950s, economists at the agricultural outreach division at Texas A&M University said.

Without substantial rainfall by the end of 2006, it could be the worst ever, they said.

"It's hard to compare (time periods), but clearly this is a 1950s-type drought," said Extension agronomist Travis Miller. "We haven't seen anything like this since the 1950s."

The mounting losses include $2.5 billion in crop losses, with more than $1 billion in losses from Texas' No. 1 cash crop, cotton. The state's livestock sector has sustained $1.6 billion in losses.
***

We stay in the fetal position to conserve energy and to suppress thirst...

Loomis, if you stay in fetal position, do you reduce your surface area enough to decrease evaporation? Sorry. I shouldn't make light of the drought. At least you are concerned for the crops and cattle. I heard a man complaining about the lack of rain yesterday. He was upset his favorite golf course was not as green as usual.

Sneaked a peek at Joel's Rough Draft this morning:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/08/AR2006080800981.html

He writes of Toulouse-Lautrec. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He writes of French women being temptresses. A compare-contrast of French culture vs. American culture--full of trite cliches. Merde!?!

I just don't know how far we are pulling down on the aquifer. But during my bath a week ago, I noticed a small guppy and a filament-type worm, about as long as the nail on my little finger, in my bath water. I love biology, so rather than be disgusted and jump out o the water, my impulse was to look at these critters far more closely.

This past week, we had to fill our rain barrels with tap water for the first time since we bought them about three years ago. If the staves aren't kept moist, the barrells will leak if and when the real rain comes.

Since my world is small, I'm most concerned for all the plants in the yard, trees included, that are so visibly heat-stressed. Since we are on water restrictions, as I wrote last Sunday, every thing with roots suffers. Since I'm not particularly rooted to this place, I simply would like to leave.

A vacation would be nice. But last night, the stove top gave out. Not one burner works. It'll be about $300 to $400 to replace it. Always sum'thun.

Dearest Annie,
I dunno, doesn't a self ascribed "southern belle" who dominates with her eyebrows sound a little pretentious?
And since you pretend to gentility, perhaps some could tell you that commenting on others personal behavior isn't done, is sooo middle class. I mean, a hard worded argument, a divorce, a law suit, maybe, but never comments on personal behavior. I'll bet you're fat.

Oh, and in defense of "suffice",seven responses, so far, hardly seems like 'silence'. Seems like that post made quite a ripple. From the spark of it, however, I doubt that poster wanted attention or needed approbation, rather wanted to make a point. Things are pretty serious out there. The hole point of the fetal position slug....

a bea c, sorry to hear about your disappointment with the job. That sucks, to put it plainly. Hope you can find a way to get around the bureaucracy. This was a depressing week...

We haven't had rain here in months either. This is typically the dry season, but it's even drier than usual. No water restrictions yet, because the winter and spring was quite wet. Ever since I lived in VA with a well that would run dry, I have not taken water for granted! Hope you get rain soon, LL (and how's your eye?).

New Kit!

Oh, and in defense of "Suffice", seven responses hardly seems like 'silence'. Not that the notice or approbation from the little ladies who
wabble here was the point, I think.