WEATHER: Look out Houston

The Band wrote a great song in which they sang: “Look out, Houston, There’ll be thunder on the hill. Bye-bye, baby, don’t you lie so still.” I just spoke to my best friend who lives there. He’s on his way out to higher ground, but not until he catches the premiere of America’s Next Top Model. After all, a man has to have his priorities.

I hope everyone stays safe.

At the same time, I wonder, how can the country handle another major disaster? We’ve had three. Two off the Gulf of Mexico and one near the Tigris and Euphrates. Egad.

WRITING: 100 Words or Les Nessman

I have played the 100 words or less game with my writing students for years. I’ve been playing along on this site for weeks. It’s alright. I wish that there were more people commenting and that better stuff was coming out of it, but it’s a start. (By the way, the title is the link.)

FUNNY: Buy this guy’s pants

There was a great eBay post about a guy selling the Ark of the Covenant. I wonder if that’s still up there. This one isn’t that, but it’s good anyway. If you place a bid, keep it to yourself.

SOCIETY: The Next Thing on the Shopping List

I have an iPod mini that my family was nice enough to get me for my birthday. A week or so ago, Apple discontinued the mini and introduced the nano. I thought, “geez, I wish I had that instead.”

Then I thought about it. I want a machine that plays lots of music while I work out and while I drive the car. Did the mini do that for me in August? Yeah, it did. Does it still do that? Yes, it does. Do I need the nano in any way at all? No. No, I don’t.

I wonder what else I don’t need.

POLITICS: Perhaps He Needs Some Discipline

CNN is running this story about Jeb Bush’s son being arrested for having too much to drink and resisting arrest. Perhaps he should get together with an organization that would teach him some discipline and send him to a sunny spot out in the desert where he could do the country some good. All he needs to do is volunteer. It’s a good war over there. That’s what his uncle says anyway.

TECH: Googling "failure"

Just saw this on another blog (from which I’ve navigated away and don’t have a link, sorry). Do the following:

Go to Google, type in “failure”, and hit “I’m Feeling Lucky”.

Enjoy.

POLITICS: Alright, I’m Obsessed

I was listening to NPR’s Science Friday on the drive home yesterday and the talk was of a gamma ray burst that happened when the universe was only 900 million years old. The speaker then talked about the way the universe has unfolded. He didn’t say it, but I found myself using the phrase, “the evolution of the universe.”

An alarm went off.

Currently, the intelligent-design creationists are using their misguided (to put it kindly) notion to encroach on the teaching of science in Biology classes across the country. Isn’t it just a matter of time before they expand out of Biology and into Physics, Earth Science, and Chemistry? Isn’t the majesty of the hydrogen atom just too perfect not to have been created by the gods? And isn’t the universe only a couple thousand years old?

They will allow us to disagree but then likely require us to teach their mythology alongside science.

The speaker on the program addressed this by saying the following. The universe is thirty seconds old. Any thoughts that it is older than that are due to memories implanted in us, thirty seconds ago by the gods. Prove me wrong.

Well that sounds just like the intelligent-design creationists’ argument. Go figure.

POLITICS: Remembering September 11, 2001

I was teaching high school. That morning, I had driven past all the local primary signs and thought that I needed to remember to vote that afternoon. At school, we were outside on a fire drill. As we returned to the building, our secretary told me that someone had told her that a plane had flown into the Twin Towers. I figured it was a commuter plane and went to check the web. I couldn’t get CNN or any other major news site (and we didn’t yet have cable in the classroom), so I checked Slashdot and there it was.

A colleague said to me that nothing would ever be the same. I believed her, but then, in the months that followed, it seemed that everything was getting back to normal. What I didn’t realize then was that we were seeing something that, if it wasn’t the end of the government we had known, was certainly the final ascendency of the Executive branch and the catapulting of an inexperienced, rash, and dangerous President into an even more powerful position than he had been entrusted with originally.

Today, four years after the fact, after all the promises, and in the wake of Katrina, we see that the promises have nearly all been hollow. The compassion that was supposed to accompany this administrations compassion is an emotion reserved for other people than the average American. Today, I see that things will never be the same, but it isn’t the terrorists who have one. Rather, it is the Bush Administration who has reaped the rewards, stealing from all of us, to give to the very few who share their circles of power.

The legacy of 9/11, as written by the Bush Administration, is one of greed, hollow promises, false sympathy, and the desecration of those who have died and the documents on which our country is based. That’s what we have learned. So far.

POLITICS: Cindy Sheehan Thankfully Overshadowed

Cindy Sheehan is still on tour and still writing, but she has been overshadowed by the disaster on the Gulf Coast. And for that, I’m thankful. I was very supportive of her encampment in Crawford and I’m grateful to her for getting people to finally join a peace movement in this country. That said, I’ll be more grateful when she is almost completely off the political stage. Her letters are hosted on the web by Michael Moore’s site and she has gone the way of Michael Moore. Which is to say that what began as a good idea, a powerful movement, and a reasonable program has devolved into bitter foolishness.

In her latest letter, linked above, Sheehan’s prose is that of a high school student ranting about ending the war the way students write about legalizing pot or lowering the drinking age. All three are reasonable ideas, but most high school students argue the points poorly and often fall into the trap of whining and making themselves foolish. Reading their words, I’m left unsympathetic to their cause and often dismissive of their opinions.

In Crawford, Cindy Sheehan’s protest was the best thing that could have happened for Democrats and all those opposed to the war. On the road, writing frothing rants, she is the second best thing Republicans could ask for. (The first is Jane Fonda in a bus powered by vegetable oil.) Like Moore, Sheehan has gone past being useful. I sympathize with her pain and her anger. In Crawford, the story was her pain and her simple plea to question our President. Late in that stay and on the road now, it’s all about her anger. I’m not buying it.

Goodbye, Cindy. If you can get past spleen venting, stay on the bus and keep going. If not, go home. That behavior won’t get us anywhere.

SOCIETY: A Conservative Proposal

In light of the disaster in New Orleans and the rising prices of energy and aside from the obvious need to conserve our resources and preserve the environment, I offer this conservative, if not modest, proposal:

Every American should, for the sake of those suffering from the Katrina disaster and for their own sake, shut off one appliance, light, or other energy using device that they normally use and cut one car trip out of their day.

This is the sort of sacrifice our leaders should be calling on us to make. Actually, in such a time of crisis, wouldn’t it be refreshing if they called for much more?