Fuming Mucker

Live-fire pistol practice ~ February 25, 2006

No. I didn't hit anything (but the targets were at 35 yards. I did much better with live-firing the musket.

The center cannot hold ~ February 22, 2006

Today..., for now..., it's all about me. Despite the whirlwind of world history and collapse of foundations upon which I've naively built my edifice, I'm free. ...horrible, horrible freedom.

The résumé is up. Alas, I have already seen some areas for improvement. But that's okay. And some "fish" have already wriggled off the hook. That's to be expected. But there's work to do next week as I already have appointments to help with my ..."transition" to new employment.

It is a good time to be fuming.

Well, it's now twelve weeks of breathing room.... Wish me luck.

So long and thanks for all the fish... ~ February 22, 2006

Time to look for work... as I was laid off today.

However, my employer gave me twelve weeks, two days breathing room.... Wish me luck.

Contemplations on the nation's health... ~ February 20, 2006

“If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful, but instead is applied as a matter of policy, it alters the fundamental relationship of man to government. It destroys the whole notion of individual rights. The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in America—even those designated as ‘unlawful enemy combatants.’ If you make this exception, the whole Constitution crumbles. It’s a transformative issue.”

So said the former general counsel of the Navy, Alberto Mora.

Devil is in the details ~ February 19, 2006

One of the problems with trolling across the internet(s) and finding those particular pundits who confirm my biases and prejudices is that the trees of opinions obscure the forest of the simple truth (whatever that might be). Digby at Hullabaloo writes about somebody writing about something Digby wrote about earlier. And the whole situation is confused because their software has been losing posts over the last few days....

Websites I visit have links to other websites, news sources, stories and discussions they're discussing. There's not a lot of quiet contemplation of what might be, could be, should be, would be the truth (that hard-to-handle three-edged sword).

God help me but I've got to quote Ronald Reagan: "There are no easy answers. But they are simple answers."

~ ~ ~

In a surprise discovery..., a complete original print of Dreyer’s original cut was found in a Norwegian mental hospital closet in 1981. The print had apparently been ordered by a doctor there in the 1930s; after an unknown number of screenings, it was stuck in the closet and forgotten for perhaps five decades.

And now, you can see this treasure.

You can tell by my drawing... ~ February 18, 2006

...that I am a Simpson's character:

Why don't you get a drawing, and be a Simpson's character too?
~

Rise up ~ February 17, 2006

Michael Ventura writes from Texas: "It is the signature of our era that we live in a world so unstable that its limits may be tested merely by a bumper sticker – or, as in Europe and Islam right now, by a cartoon."

Your freedom may be backed by law, but your freedom can't be given you by law. You give it to yourself by how far you're willing to go. You give it to yourself by what stakes you're willing to play for. Do your loved ones – or your town, or your country – limit how free you are by what they can and cannot tolerate? How much of that are you willing to take? Is your freedom limited by your own fear? In this case, the freedom we're talking about is basic: the freedom to be oneself. That's what these women were putting to the test – testing themselves, testing their society. And risking all kinds of hell to do it. East and West Coast writers pontificating about "the red states" don't imagine that those very states are also places of the purest rebellions, where rebels walk their talk on tightropes.

Go read the whole thing.
~

The Clashing Rocks ~ February 16, 2006

The wilderness:

American troops still are battling insurgents in Samarra. Bloodshed is destroying the city and driving a wedge between the Iraqis who live there and the U.S. troops who are trying to keep order.

Violence, police corruption and the blurry lines of guerrilla warfare are clouding any hopes of victory.
-- -- --
"Samarra is one example of many towns in Iraq that are barely functioning," said Capt. Ryan Edwards, 31, of Plain City, Ohio, who majored in Middle Eastern studies at West Point. "What the insurgents know is that we lack the will to go after them. It's not the American Army that lacks the will; it's the American people and their leadership."

"The textbook answer is to build infrastructure," said Capt. Scott Brannon, who commands Bravo Company, which oversees Samarra. "But what happens with the contracts is that we're funding the AIF," or anti-Iraqi forces - the insurgency.

Brannon, a soft-spoken 34-year-old from Boaz, Ala., continued: "Every new unit that comes in has these tribal sheik meetings where all these sheiks say, yeah, we want to help clean up Samarra; and the new unit is dazed and confused and doesn't know who the bad guys are, and by the time they figure it out it's time to leave."

Now, I seem to remember that the current administration, Dubya and his neo-con possé, want to show the world that the United States has the fortitude and "will" to carry through the hard tasks of building a democracy in the Middle East (for the reason of establishing safety within the United States) -- but with new folks cycling in and out of an area, the administration makes the mistake that motion equals action.
~ ~ ~

L. Sprague de Camp wrote in his book Great Cities of the Ancient World:

Sometimes people say "civilized" when they mean kind, honest, or polite. But civilized men are not necessarily kinder, more honest, or more courteous than uncivilized men. In fact, many civilizations (Sumeria, Egypt, Carthage, China, Mexico, and Dahoey) went through an early stage of development wherein they practiced human sacrifice on a huge and gory scale. But civilized men do have cities, metals, writing, and arithmetic. They are organized in larger masses and possess technical skills beyond those of uncivilized men. They therefore have power that uncivilized men lack. They are not necessarily more or less virtuous than uncivilized men; men of both kinds have their own laws and customs, their vices and virtues, and each has the problem of coping with individuals who flout the rules. In short, civilization is a matter, not of virtue, but of power.

~ ~ ~
Back to the wilderness:

...[Lieutenant] Call's commander asked him to take pictures of the entrails left by the man Pena had shot, identified as Wissam Abbas, age 31, to document that Abbas was inside the sign warning of deadly force.

McHenry, who was driving, told him, "There's not going to be much left, sir. The dogs will have eaten all of it."

Pena was up on the schoolhouse roof manning the same .50-caliber machine gun. He didn't say a word about the man he'd killed. As he stared at a patch of earth in front of him, at Samarra and its wreckage, he couldn't contain his frustration.

"No one told me why I'm putting my life on the line in Samarra, and you know why they didn't?" Pena asked. "Because there is no fucking reason."

Big guy! ~ February 15, 2006

Jonathan Schwarz, of a Tiny Revolution, cross-posts on Tom Tomorrow's This Modern World site:

...it’s possible for America to do things to other countries that they [the other countries] consider “the most humiliating moment” in their [the other countries'] history…and even anti-American America-haters like myself can’t be bothered simply to know it happened. This is one of the true perks of power: being able to get away with complete ignorance about other people. Generally speaking, for countries as well as individuals, the more power you have the stupider you are.

Schwarz is talking about this story from Knight-Ridder:

"There is a noticeable shift in attitudes since the start of the war in Iraq," he said. "But I wouldn't call it anti-Americanism as much as a reflection of a great deal of anxiety about what the United States is doing in the region." Others agree, noting that attitudes aren't so much anti-American as they are anti-Bush administration or even anti-Western. Several people pointed to the protests throughout the Islamic world over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that were first printed in a Danish newspaper as further evidence of poor relations between traditional Western and Eastern cultures.

Being "politically correct" or having "multiculturalism" awareness should not diminish one's own identity. Still, "pride" is one of the seven deadly sins we learned about as children. But... one thing can be said about Americans: we're certainly scrutable.

~ ~ ~
No one's been like Gaston / A king pin like Gaston No one's got a swell cleft in his chin like Gaston As a specimen, yes, I'm intimidating! My what a guy, that Gaston! Give five "hurrahs!" Give twelve "hip-hips!" Gaston is the best And the rest is all drips No one fights like Gaston / Douses lights like Gaston In a wrestling match nobody bites like Gaston! For there's no one as burly and brawny As you see I've got biceps to spare Not a bit of him's scraggly or scrawny That's right! And ev'ry last inch of me's covered with hair No one hits like Gaston / Matches wits like Gaston In a spitting match nobody spits like Gaston I'm espcially good at expectorating! Ptoooie! Ten points for Gaston! When I was a lad I ate four dozen eggs Ev'ry morning to help me get large And now that I'm grown I eat five dozen eggs So I'm roughly the size of a barge! Oh, ahhh, wow! My what a guy, that Gaston! No one shoots like Gaston / Makes those beauts like Gaston Then goes tromping around wearing boots like Gaston ...

Sweet hearts ~ February 14, 2006

At times, duty has held up what love could not. There was no straight and narrow path... merely the wanderings of those lost in the wilderness.

My plan from years before was: first, get a job; second, get a car; third, get a house; fourth, get a wife; fifth, have children.

Any plan is the first casualty if putting that plan into place. I got the car first; then got married; then had children; then got the job; and finally got the house....

...Twenty-five years, eight months ago I met the person who would be my wife to the present day. Both my sons are in their twenties now and both are taller than I am.

There is no straight and narrow path... merely a wilderness into which we are lost. My companions on this journey...: thanks for keeping me in your hearts.

Lest darkness fall...? ~ February 13, 2006

The moral shall be presented first:

...take note of this: objectivity is not neutrality. The fact that there are two sides to a story does not make both sides equally valid.

Kevin Drum tells the story:

Congress used to have an agency called the Office of Technology Assessment, famed for producing sharp analysis of technical topics using only a tiny staff and a tiny budget. Unfortunately, science being what it is, sometimes serious research leads scientists to conclusions that conservative politicians don't like. So Newt Gingrich killed the OTA.

As Beth Daly of the Project on Government Oversight says, it's more like a Republican "campaign against expertise," and its latest target is the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

There's more (with links). As they say, go read the whole thing.

A motto ~ February 12, 2006

A ship at sea is like what in outer space?
~ ~ ~

Hot French Chicks! ~ February 11, 2006

In this BBC story we learn:

...the northern hemisphere experienced its most widespread warmth.... As we get more and more evidence in, it is looking as if the current period is the warmest for over 1,000 years."

In November, Science published a paper showing atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane are higher now than at any time in the past 650,000 years.

As of today, we're up to about six billion, six hundred million (6,600,000,000) people on the planet.

And each one the center of their perception of the universe with their own ideas on how the world should run....

According to our religion, the first generation out from the Garden of Eden, there was murder. Law & Order: Cain and Abel ~

Pay Attention (but not too much attention) ~ February 10, 2006

Obscure words? A pretext is an ostensible purpose, effort or strategy used to conceal alternative actions or reasons. Magicians, illusionist, sleight-of-hand artists are familiar with misdirection of attention... and are even able to fool those who know they are going to be duped:

It is vital that when the audience realises they have been had, they cannot properly recall the fine details in the series of events which led up to the effect, and so deconstruct it.

--oh! I should have included some other people with the group above: politicians, of course. I'd like to be an equal-opportunity cynic but I am astounded at how quickly the current administration and its far-too-right conservative toadies fog an issue... to the point directly contradicting logical points they made... oh, in the last minute. They do it on purpose, of course. Back to magicians:

"We have a limited processing capacity and can only perceive what we attend to," said UCL psychologist Dr Nilli Lavie. "If the information we are paying attention to is taking all of our capacity, it doesn't leave capacity to perceive anything else." Dr Lavie specialises in inattention blindness. "The skill of a good magician is to make a very interesting, dramatic act with complex actions and interesting verbal utterances," she said. "He loads your attention with all this information, but it's irrelevant to the act that he presents. It is so you don't notice the deception." However, humans being natural sceptics go to magic shows knowing they are going to be deceived so they pay special attention to everything. But being overly focused can also be turned to the illusionist's advantage.

Same can be said of efficient politicians whose only concern is to acquire power and whose only expression of that power is abuse.
~

Speak Up for yourself! ~ February 9, 2006

"To be nobody but yourself, in a world which is doing its best to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting." --e.e.cummings

Lance Mannion is on:

Why is the debate over Bush's wanton and illegal spy games a loser for Democrats? Because the Bush Leaguers say it is. Why are Democrats perceieved as weak on National Security? Because the Republicans have spent 60 years saying they are. Why was a filibuster against Alito a bad move politically? Because the Republicans said so.
-- -- --
But why weren't there enough votes? The trouble with process answers is that they are perceived as cowardly because they are cowardly. ...Democrats need to show they are strong on national security, (they) should say things that show how they are. That would commit (them) to a position that might be unpopular, though. (Their) goal is to get (their) face on TV associated with the words "National Security" without tying (themselves) down. This is a strategy based on the hope that nobody watching television is paying close attention.
-- -- --
Because a whole bunch of Democrats were too scared to risk a filibuster. Why were they scared? Because it was a political loser. How did they know this? The Republicans told them so.
-- -- --
What the Republicans have is a better idea about how to shape that reality, and part of their strategy is to make Democrats accept their talking points.
-- -- --
Here's a thought, what if Democrats tried to set the terms of the debate? What if instead of talking about what Democrats ought to do, Democrats talked about what they were in fact doing or going to do? Leave the process talk to wonks, consultants, and crochety bloggers...

~ ~ ~ There's all kinds of advice out there for people to work towards who they were meant to be. Amongst some of the nuggets:

• Take a fresh look at the rules and norms of the culture • Develope a long-term perspective • Define yourself beyond the culture's definition of you • Write out your own definition of success • Make decisions based on your vision •

Hmm, defining your own success according to your own rules? Perhaps a little schizophrenia is a good thing, yes? ~ ~ ~ "Know first who you are. Then dress accordingly." --Epictetus ~

Thinking while old ~ February 8, 2006

Oh, that explains it!

...this is the first time investigators have used fMRI on normal, healthy middle-aged adults, as well as young and old adults, to understand how brains are changing in the in-between years. Investigators administered a series of memory tasks to the three age groups to assess if age-related changes in brain function are task-specific, or generalized across a number of regions during memory tasks. The findings add to the growing body of science that implicates two regions in the frontal lobes that gradually shift into a seesaw imbalance -- causing older adults to become less efficient in inhibiting distracting information. . . . ...starting in middle age (40-60 years), Dr. Grady's team noted that this seesaw pattern begins to break down during performance of memory tasks. Activity in the medial frontal and parietal regions stays turned on while activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex decreases. The imbalance becomes more pronounced in older adults (65+), which could explain their reduced ability to ignore distracting or irrelevant information.

So, maybe there's a scientific reason I've gotten so pissed about the state of politics in this country. Of course, the previous sentence reads dangerously close to the "bartering" stage of grief. Good grief!
~

Unbottling the Genie ~ February 7, 2006
	If Americans excel in anything, it's their ability to sell. If they do anything better than selling, it's not considering the consequences of their actions. ~

Old Thoughts ~ February 6, 2006

Twenty-four centuries ago, Aristotle wrote: "The people at the extremes push the intermediate man each over to the other, and the brave man is called rash by the coward, cowardly by the rash."
~

"Bootstrap Learning" ~ February 6, 2006

Sometimes, you just have to jump in and thrash about. So here's my first attempt at actually putting up my own web page. Yeah, I'm miles and miles behind a lot of folks but you've got to start someplace.