Fiat Lux

I still can't seem to find anything I want to blog about. This is probably related to the fact that 1) I'm in the pre-finals end of semeter rush and 2) I have no idea what I am going to do this summer. I was really hoping I'd be able to land a job that was a little more useful to my long-term career plans than making Frappuccinos at Starbucks all summer but nothing has panned out.

In short, I'm tired, I'm overworked, and I'm bummed about my lack of a decent summer job. It's hard to find stuff to blog about when I'm in a mood like that. Bear with me.

80 years after he went on trial for teaching evolution, John Scopes' battle is being fought again in Kansas:

Eighty years after the first famed "Monkey Trial," a second one was under way Thursday in Kansas, giving critics of evolution a forum for attacking the theory.

A State Board of Education subcommittee began four days of trial-like hearings on evolution, and witnesses were advocates of intelligent design, critics of evolution or both.

The entire board plans to consider changes in June to standards that determine how Kansas students are tested on science.

By way of a dKos diary, I found this lovely story today about a North Carolina church that told its Democrat members to repent or leave. Some were kicked out. More resigned in protest over the minister's actions (and kudos to them for doing so).

Religion and Politics Clash Religion and politics clash over a local church's declaration that Democrats are not welcome.

East Waynesville Baptist asked nine members to leave. Now 40 more have left the church in protest. Former members say Pastor Chan Chandler gave them the ultimatum, saying if they didn't support George Bush, they should resign or repent. The minister declined an interview with News 13.

On the one hand, it's just a small Baptist congregation in the middle of the woods. On the other hand, the church's actions have threatening implications. Memes have a tendency to spread, and the "kick out the democrats" theme has been floated in other forums as well -- notably conservative columnist Larry Elder yesterday suggesting that it's unhealthy for corporations to hire Democrats.

This Us versus Them stuff is getting stronger and stronger. I don't like it.

As the semester draws to a close, I have had to spend a bunch of time playing with the printer. So has Tommy. Here he is.

Time to go write another paper!

UPDATE: I keep forgetting to use forward slashes in my img tag. Sorry, Firefox viewers. It's fixed now.

A few days late, but Legal Fiction has a good, solid post showing how class and culture and economic all interrelated to produce the 2004 election results. It's worth a read. Here's a snippet:

I think national security is, unfortunately, increasingly thought of as a cultural issue (and like the others, it has class undertones). Whether it’s because wealthier people have abandoned military service, or because of Vietnam, or because nationalism (like religion) grows weaker with higher education, I think that national security has become a subset of the culture wars in the minds of many Americans, red and blue alike.

I'd go into a long list of reasons why this article is completely full of sh*t, but I have a paper to write today. However, I can't resist this one appalling tidbit:

Were Jews true to their mission, they would stand alongside Christians who work to bring the Torah's values to the world

In other words, not helping the people who think you're doomed to hell because you don't believe in the divinity of Jesus is somehow against the mission of Judaism.

I call it self-preservation, thank you very much.

The European Parliament voted Wednesday in favor of an obligatory 48-hour maximum work week

Yes another reason I wish I was about 15 years younger and spoke more than one language. I can't imagine the US enacting something like this.

I've flown United Airlines quite a lot - as much as five times a year - for the past seven years. When it comes to providing the nonstop NYC - SFO flights that I want, at the times that I want, for a price I consider reasonable, they've consistantly met my requirements. Occasionally I've flown American or JetBlue, but they generally are less convenient and/or more expensive. United has been my airline of choice.

And now, United has dumped their employee pension plan as part of bankruptcy recovery plan. That's a six BILLION dollar committment to employees, dumped off onto an underfunded Federal bailout organization. So retired United employees are potentially screwed, and we the taxpayer get to pay the bill.

Well, United, you've gone from being my airline of choice to my airline of last resort. That's my response.

Right after Scott and I came back from New York, we attended a training class at the SF SPCA in order to become kitten foster parents. I've missed working at the SPCA. Although I don't really have the time to commit to doing the on-site socialization and adoption counseling regularly right now, I still love working with kittens and want to help out where I can. Fostering seemed like a good solution.

And today we got the call. Could I come down and pick up two kittens who needed a foster home for the next two weeks or so? Of course we could. So until they grow to be 2 pounds in weight, we're fostering two little tabby girls: Pansy and Marcy. Here they are!

Pansy is an outgoing, high-energy kitty:

Marcy is shyer but very, very cute:

The other kitties are adapting well to the newcomers. Gimi in particular is fascinated with them. It's amazing that this time last year, he was about that size too.

They're kept in a cage both for their own safety and for the safety of our cats; the kittens are still quite young (approximately six weeks), fragile, and have not completed their vaccinations. Also, they could potentially be carrying illnesses that can pass to our cats. In fact, we should be keeping them in a room away from the other cats here but need to shovel out some space in the office before we can do that.

Rest assured that we are taking the girls out of the cage for playtime and cuddling quite regularly.

I'm sure I'll be posting more pictures over the next 2 weeks!

He quotes Gilbert & Sullivan's Ruddigore!

SCOTUS gets one right!

Wine lovers may buy directly from out-of-state vineyards, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, striking down laws banning a practice that has flourished because of the Internet and growing popularity of winery tours.

The 5-4 decision overturns laws in New York and Michigan, which supporters said were aimed at protecting local wineries and limiting underage drinkers from purchasing wine without showing proof of age. In all, 24 states have laws barring interstate shipments.

The court said the state bans are discriminatory and anticompetitive.

"States have broad power to regulate liquor," Justice
Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. "This power, however, does not allow states to ban, or severely limit, the direct shipment of out-of-state wine while simultaneously authorizing direct shipment by in-state producers."

The AP reports:

Last month, animal rights extremists followed the wife of a pharmaceutical company executive to her job, rifled through her car and stole a credit card. They used it buy $20,000 in travelers checks, which they then donated to four charities.

It should be pretty obvious from my blog that the welfare of animals is important to me. But I have no idea in what twisted mindset it's OK to commit felonies against people in order to "protect" animals. The ALF likes to say that they have no intention of hurting people, but I wonder how long it will be before some sick freak decides to start killing Forest Pharmecutical executives.

Think that's too extreme? Tell that to the families of the doctors who have been murdered for providing abortions.

No More Mister Nice Guy decided it was more fun to slag off on Ann Coulter for being a dumb lying shill than to call attention to that fact that there's a disconcering trend behind Coulter's lies.

She's a liar. That's not news. Shouldn't it ring some alarm bells that over the past three years, two different Arab TV networks have broadcast a dramatized version of an antisemitic book that is widely recognized as a forgery?

As promised, more kitten photos. Gimi has been a big help in socializing the shyer of our two fosters, Marcy. She purrs like crazy every time she lays eyes on him. We've been using this to help her get more comfortable with being around humans. So here the two of the are together in a socializing session:

I don't know who was stupid enough to take or release those "Saddam in his underwear" photos, but it's bad for America. Saddam may not have had many friends in the Middle East, but I suspect plenty of people are going to be pissed off by those photos anyway.

About the only good thing that I see coming from this whole mess is at least it's driving the whole Newsweek Koran/flushing thing off the radar screen.

I just submitted my last paper for the Spring 05 semester. I'm done with classes until September!

Woohoo!

I'm not 100% sure about the ultimate provenance of these statistics, but if true, they're pretty interesting:

* About 92 percent of American own at least one copy of the Bible. * The average household has 3 copies. * About 67 percent of Americans say that the Bible holds the answers to the basic questions of life. * The Bible is the world's all-time best seller. * At least 20 million copies are sold each year. * Gideon International annually distributes more than 45 million copies.

Biblical knowledge (Biblical illiteracy is rampant):

* Perhaps 15 percent of Americans participate in Bible studies.
* The number of people who read the Bible, at least occasionally is 59 percent.
* Less than 50 percent of Americans can name the first book of the Bible (Genesis).
* Only 1/3 of Americans know who delivered the Sermon on the Mount (more people identified Billy Graham than Jesus).
* Twenty-five percent of Americans don't know what is celebrated on Easter (the Resurrection of Christ).
* Twelve percent of Christians think that Noah's wife is Joan of Arc.
* Eighty percent of born-again Christians (including George W. Bush) think it is the Bible that says "God helps them that help themselves." (Actually it was said by Benjamin Franklin.)

I finally got around to upgrading the photo gallery. I'll be adding more pix to it soon.

Per Reuters:

Syria has severed military and intelligence cooperation with the United States, its ambassador to Washington told The New York Times in an interview published on its Web site on Monday.

The ambassador, Imad Moustapha, told the newspaper in an interview given last Friday at the Syrian Embassy in Washington, that his country had, in the last 10 days, "severed all links" with the U.S. military and Central Intelligence Agency

Not that I am any kind of a fan of Syria, but that's not good news.

Given the power inequalities in the situation, and that fact that a number of right wingers seem to be extremely pissed off by the compromise, I think the Demcrats did about as well as could be expected in the Senate Showdown.

Josh Marshall has some good points on the matter:

[the] whole tenor of the Republican ultras on the Hill today is to demand unimpeded power, to push past conventions and limits, to go for everything. And here they got turned back. A sensible Republican party might be satisfied to have gotten three of its nominees -- numerically speaking, they did fairly well. But this whole enterprise was based on wanting it all, on not accepting limits, on rejecting government by even a modicum of consensus with a sizeable minority party. They got stopped short. And the senate Republican leadership is undermined.

So this isn't a pleasant compromise. But precisely because the Republicans -- or their leading players -- are absolutists in a way the Democrats are not, I think this compromise will batter them more than it will the minority party, which is after all a minority party which nonetheless managed to emerge from this having fought the stronger force to something like a draw.

No, I am not happy three unqualified judges get sent to the federal benches as part of the deal. But at least there is a compromise and there is still hope of more in the future.

Some big things are afoot in Europe. It seems likely that France will vote this week to reject the EU constitution. If they do vote to reject, the constitution will not be able to be implemented, causing a serious issue for the 25-member European Union. Bloomberg's been covering this because of the potential effect on the Euro exchange rate, but other than that I haven't found much US coverage.

Predictions that a 'no' vote from France will "kill" the EU may be premature, but it's a real possibility. It all depends on whether there's a willingness to do further work on the EU constitution. Getting 25 different countries to agree on anything is really, really, hard, so going back to the drawing table could mean years of additional negotiations and voting. Not an appealing prospect.

From what I've been able to glean in the English-language press, the anti-constitution opposition feels that

the charter enshrines an "ultra-liberal" economic model, putting market interests ahead of social concerns and does not protect workers enough.

Amazing. They'll vote the EU constitution down because it doesn't protect workers enough. I'm not sure if I'm impressed or annoyed, or both, by this. I'm impressed that the people of France feel so strongly about the issue that they're willing to bring the whole EU-nification process to a halt over it. Annoyed because I think the EU is generally a good idea and that the French acting to derail the process is short-sighted of them.

And a minor side-note, note the use of the word 'liberal' as being pro-business, not pro-worker, in the Reuters UK piece. No matter what side of the Pond you live on, 'liberal' seems to be a bad word.

The fosters are slowly getting bigger. Pansy, the bigger of the two, will probably only be with us for another week. Marcy is smaller and weighs less; we figure we'll have her another two weks before she's old enough to be adopted into a permanant home.

Becasue it is very hard to get Pansy to hold still long enough to be photographed, I give you more shots of Marcy this week!

Marcy visits Tommy in the office.

She is going to be one beautiful cat when she's all grown up!

"Nameless soldier" over at dKos is getting shipped out to Iraq this weekend. Godspeed and keep your head down, dude. I've added your blog to my blogroll.

A 2.5 quake doesn't harm much, but when the epicenter is only about 3 miles awy from you, you sit up from the couch you've collpased onto and take notice.

Gimi was parked next to me on the couch and it disturbed him. I think this may have been his first 'real' earthquake.

And an earthquake of another sort from Europe: As expected, France votes "No".

On this Memorial Day, Musing's Musings says it better than I could.

Yes, I think the War on Terra was a big fuckin' mistake, and that the people who started it are criminals who should be in the dock in the Hague. My bet is that quite a few of the guys and gals fighting in the war feel the same way I do. But because the people running the country into the ground are misguided Republican asshole extremists doesn't mean I don't think that our fighting men and women aren't worthy of support.

Our troops should get 100% of everything they need to do the jobs we give them to do. We shouldn't be sending them into harm's way unless there's absolutely nothing else for it, but when we do, no matter what the pretext or the evidence, they should absolutely go into combat with all the guns and ammunition and armor (body and otherwise) they need to do what they have to do with a minimum of casualties. Nobody who signs on the dotted line to put his or her body between us on the home front and the people who are trying their best to destroy us should not have to be worrying about whether his/her family back home is going to be able to make ends meet. No military family should ever have to take food stamps or go on welfare because one or more members is in the service. And when the war's over, no serviceman or -woman should have to wonder if there will be health care available to take care of his/her needs, support for easing back into a normal routine or into civilian life. For those that don't come home in one piece, or, God forbid, don't come back at all, there should be no question that their needs will be met and their loved ones cared for--justly and fairly.

Indeed.

So now we finally know for sure who Deep Throat was. It's about time.

UPDATE: I watched my DVD of "All The President's Men" tonight to celebrate. I know it's impossible to cram even a fraction of a full-length book into a 2 hour movie, but I always get really frustrated that the movie basically ends just when the story is starting to get good.

What was amusing was that in the DVD add-ons there's a list of possible suspects for "Who Is Deep Throat" and Mark Felt was the first name on the list. Heh.