No Indication of Terrorism at Fort Hood

You know, if that was a true statement - as I saw posted on CNN tonight while at the gym - that would mean that this is an ordinary week at Fort Hood. Soldiers getting ready to deploy, processing physicals, and watching the tearful families separate. That would mean no "terrorism" occurred. Instead, someone shot at people without noticeable provocation, injured a bunch, and killed about a dozen of them. However, it seems like terrorism got re-defined in the last decade to the acts of people working for organizations. If the OKC bombing happened now, would we breathe a sigh of relief that this wasn't "terrorism"?

E-mail written by [Bananaman]

Dictated to E*** Z****

I got this feelin' - R** C****** is near. Yes, November 19, 2009, on college campuses near you, the R** C****** Posse of Idiots will come knocking to tell you how great God is, how baaaad Hitler is, and how somehow, he was Darwins' gay lover? I read some of the piece - well, I skimmed part of it when we looked at at SANE - I would read it, but I've already had one brain injury, and they say that the next one will be worse.

Alternet had a post about R**'s celebrities, Kirk Cameron and Ben Stein, passing out this 50 page fairy-tale piece. I didn't read the article, but I saw some comments, including this one.

The real story here is the big cash behind making stuff up. We live in a world where all the scientists believe in man-made climate change but half the population doesn't. In general, if the science doesn't suit a big company we get a science-washing campaign. This goes back to the 1920s when doctors endorsed cigarettes to make women slim. Then Exxon/Mobil bought a climate change campaign, the nuclear industry bought a radiation is good for you campaign, coal became clean coal (use it like soap!). This evolution serves Jesus deal is just one more schtick.

50,000 copies, for free, and lots of money put into the product. Of course the public will buy it!

-Source

I find the highest moral offense of Martin Luther to be valuing faith over works, but how else to sell a lie?

More Like Project Funway

This year's season on Lifetime is much more melodramatic than the Bravo seasons. I don't root for any of the designers to win, and things seem less "real". Maybe it is their location in LA, maybe it is the new network. In the middle of the season it became clear that the design skill was split by gender, which is not normal for this show. Christopher needed to go, as did Logan. Nicholas was annoying sometimes, but he was more talented and creative than Logan and Christopher. Chris was one of my Minnesota boys, so I enjoyed watching him, but his dresses were all "play on volume" crap, emphasis on the crap. Logan was boring and no, I did not find him to be attractive, I don't know what everyone is so excited about. I was so happy to see him go, yet Christopher is still here. Here is how I think it should shake out.

Winner: Irena, but I will not be surprised if Carol Hannah wins.

Bryant Park, no win: Althea, possibly Gordiana (but unlikely), and Carol Hannah

Next off: Chris (retroactively enforced five episodes ago) and Gordiana

Spider Time

So, I pledged a whole blog section about spiders, but apparently, there is only ONE post tagged with spiders. This is wrong. I have seen some good ones lately, including this one on a stop sign near my place.



I saw another big one a month ago or so. A couple was looking at it. Can you see it?

Late Night BART

I just got home around 4 or so after riding the BART from Powell. My friend and I got to Powell, camped out on the floor, then consumed ourselves untangling his Mardi Gras beads. Some girls near us caught his attention too and one was dressed as the raisin lady. He only noticed that after staring at the raisin box she gave him for a while. At 4 minutes to the train for Con-cord, people stood up. My friend got up when it about one minute. The group convened near the black tabs and I worried that someone might fall off into the train. When the train neared, we cheered and then we began to pack the train. I was wedged around a bunch of guys, one bald-headed white guy was drunk and also seemed to have wandering hands twice. He also accidentally slapped me on the tunnel, which I found pretty amusing.

We stopped at Embarcadero, but we had been packed at Powell. The conductor was not very patient with us, but at the same time, the people in the middle of the cars could have gotten closer. I looked around and saw nothing but passed out heads with arms clinging to the bars. Halloween zombies hanging from the handrails on the train who were not moving. I made room where I could, and the conductor threatened to take the train out of service if the doors could not close. We started, stopped instantly, then started again. And we were on our way under the bay. That tunnel took forever this time, and we had to wait until 12th Oakland to stop.

People, including me and my friend, poured out of the Con-cord bound train and I followed my friend onto an almost empty car going up through Berkeley to Richmond. We had to wait for a second train from San Francisco, but then we were off on the Richmond bound train - well, El Cerrito del Norte bound. We were to stop at MacArthur, Downtown Berkeley and El Cerrito del Norte. I guess the BART thought, "screw Richmond."

A couple of times during the night I got to note on our being a part of SF history with our BART ride. The Halloween Party Commute, 2009.

Flower Time

I call this "Potential" or something like that, then I cut the flower part off.

Just kidding, lol.







Here was a purple flower as seen through our fall foliage.

How I'm Surviving the Second Bay Bridge Closure of 2009

I don't know if any of you watch the national news. I only see it at the gym, but I did get to see that the Bay Area made national news a couple times. The big one is big, and might just complete our trifecta of transportation issues this year. A few weeks before Labor Day, we had the threat of the BART strike. The night before it was due to start, the state and the union reached a deal and trains ran on schedule. Disaster averted. A couple of weeks later, the Bay Bridge was shut down and we all forgot about the BART issue.

It is an El Niño year this year, and this last week has been hella windy. Tuesday night must have been really incredible. I didn't hear the traffic reports that evening, but somehow, by the next morning, I knew full well that pieces of the new Bay Bridge had been blown apart during rush hour on Tuesday. A few cars were damaged, one person was insignificantly (I think) injured, and the Bay Bridge was shut down. Not for repairs - no. It was so the engineers could figure out how to fix it.

The San Francisco Bay Area lives and breathes by its bridges, and the Bay Bridge is like shutting down the aorta of our traffic flow, carrying most of the East Bay out of the MacArthur Maze and into the city. Since the bridge went out on Tuesday night, the BART has been running longer trains and they even added a second ferry across the bay. However the other bridges are packed.

Its nice because there is no back-up to the one east bound lane of the Caldecott tunnel, but the traffic on 680 negates any time saved. I run right into all the Martinez, Pittsburg, and Concord people that usually take 24 to the Bay Bridge all rushing down 680 to get to the San Mateo and Dumbarton bridges before... well, before nothing cuz those are clogged and we made national news.

I don't know how things were after the Loma Prieta quake, but the recent 20 year observances made it clear to me that all hell did break loose during that time. The traffic issues with the Bay Bridge were likely dwarfed by the chaos that engulfed the area. They may also have been just as bad, but people were probably so shell shocked by the 15 second nightmare that caused it to barely care.

I'm lucky that my only concerns with this shutdown are not knowing which ways are the best anymore and that I don't work in the city. Some of my co-workers live in the city and commute out to San Ramon, but I don't know what they are doing. If it was me, I might think about packing a bag and staying with a friend that lives near-by instead of trying that commute. I don't work tomorrow, but I am not sure if it is a Furlough Friday or not. I hope it is - or maybe the state should trade them. I can only imagine the money our state doesn't have that's being spent. I wonder if the money lost on those tolls is being made up on other bridges, ferry fees, and BART tickets. I also wonder if the BART will run 24 hours in order to have some kind of traffic along that vessel.

We Need a Miss Manners for the Internet

I have absolutely no sympathy for the person that sends an email to me, either as an individual or as part of a large mailing list, with a demand to be taken off an email list. I have some respect for the request if I happen to be in charge of that mailing list, but if I'm just a user, especially if the email is to me directly, that person can kiss my ass. This week, I got one sent directly to me, and rather than respond or forward, I hit the delete button. One of my co-workers suggested I send the person an email saying that I did remove them from the list, and while I like the way that guy thinks, I opted for deleting rather than causing more havoc.

I know that people get on lists that they later realize they don't want to be on, and I also know that many lists are on other lists - signing up for the Hmong Student Association got me on the hotline to all the major API groups at UC Berkeley - and there may even be people out there that sign up group email addresses on those mass sign-up sheets that groups have out during festivals. It happens and the best way to get off the list is to ask someone to remove your email unless you happen to be at a university with a university account and can remove yourself.

What bugs me are the demands and the comments along with the demands about how they don't care about the subject at hand or the group in general. I liken it to being in a room where a conversation begins, then loudly shouting how you dislike everyone there and can't find the door. There are more polite ways to extricate yourself from a situation without making an ass of yourself and without insulting everyone else.

Now, the email that I sent out was a response to two other people. The email that I got back stated that this person was not interested in this group and wanted to be removed from the list. I was just about as able to remove this person as any of my grandparents are and I happen to have a very high opinion of the group this person was talking about. I might have forwarded a message that read something like "Hello, I don't know how I got on this list, but I would like to be removed. I contacted the other two people in this thread as well but they have not responded. If you cannot remove me, could you forward this message to someone who can? Thank you."

My mother always says that I'm constantly complaining that people do not say things correctly, and its true that I hold people to a high standard of decorum. Being as emotional as I am, I react strongly to rudeness. I have thin skin (metaphorically and literally - well, its transparent and burns easily), but I'm a human so I problem-solve and try to figure out how someone could achieve the same ends without acting like an ass. So if you're on a distribution list that you don't want to be on, do as Urs says, use please and thank you and your request might actually work.

Now, I could have been nice myself and forwarded the message, no matter how rude, but the person insulted my group, so &*#$ them. I mean, hell, I'm not a computer.