America Getting Results The Easy Way

Some good points have been made regarding two recent "wins" against terrorism that made me stop and think.

First, the "death by drone" of this American guy, Al-Awlaki, in Yemen: What we DO know is that the guy was very vocal about fighting against America, hating America, jihad, and all that stuff. What we do NOT know is whether he ever got involved in what the intelligence community calls "operational actions" (e.g. plots, attacks, material aid) against America. What we may have witnessed was the American government assassinating an American citizen (no trial) for rhetoric that was, more or less, on the same level as the "God Hates Fags" people out of Kansas.

Glen Greenwald:

What's most striking about this is not that the U.S. Government has seized and exercised exactly the power the Fifth Amendment was designed to bar ("No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law"), and did so in a way that almost certainly violates core First Amendment protections (questions that will now never be decided in a court of law). What's most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. Government's new power to assassinate their fellow citizens, far from any battlefield, literally without a shred of due process from the U.S. Government.

Remember: Before you say "he had it coming", "he was a traitor", or he was "helping the terrorists with his words", consider the following scenario: A white supremecist leader in Appalachia is saying the same anti-American, take-up-arms, kill-kill-kill things to a crowd of angry white hillbillies as Al-Awlaki was saying to Muslims in Yemen. As the white supremecist finishes speaking, an army sniper from a building across the street shoots him through the head. That is the same thing — an assassination by the government of an American — with only a degree of jurisdiction as the difference.

Second, the arrest of the guy with the model airplanes wanting to load them with explosives and crash them into the capitol building. What we DO know is that pretty much every step the guy took was on a paving stone laid down by the FBI. What we do NOT know is whether this "would be terrorist" would have ever made it past the "contemplative" stage without FBI guidance.

"All for the best," is my thought: Anybody who will "step that far down the road" — whether that road is paved by the FBI or not — is, in my mind, a potential terrorist and a threat. But here is something I had not considered:

Julian Sanchez:

One possible motive for these elaborate and highly publicized stings is that, whether or not the particular people they indict would have moved from rage to action without prompting, the steady stream of news reports will eventually force any candidate for jihad to assume that an “Al Qaeda recruiter” who approaches them is much more likely to be an FBI informant or undercover agent than a genuine operative. That’s likely to make it much harder for any real recruiters who’ve gone undetected to rope in anyone savvy enough to be truly dangerous. In a haystack of 300 million people—or even 2.5 million Muslims—the government can’t possibly be confident it will be able to identify in advance all the particular needles who are really prepared to carry out an attack, rather than simply ranting online. They may have concluded that the next best thing is to create a climate of suspicion in which such people are unwilling to risk collaborating with others. That means that the scale and destructiveness of any attacks that do occur are more likely to be limited to what a lone individual can achieve.

Indeed. The FBI goes fishing for gullible-but-earnest zealots, lures them in, then splashes their spoiled "evil-genius plot" all over the news, and the really dangerous people who are smart enough not to talk to FBI agents about their plans, may slink back down under their rocks and stay there.

The Most Helpful Kitchen Hint I've Ever Seen

How to peel an entire head of garlic in under 10 seconds.



This works so well I almost think they are playing a joke on us. I'm making chicken soup tomorrow, and I'll give it a try.

How To Succeed In Life

Find one thing to do, and do it better than anybody else.

Daily Report: Looking Forward

Blogger redesigned the entire appearance of its blog publishing software. I suspect my mother will have a fit trying to get used to it. Best of luck, Mom.

It's a gray, rainy day here in Florida again. It was actually nice for about a week, but now it's gone wrong again.

Epril's visa was approved on September 22, approximately 8 months after first mailing it in. Now the government has put Epril's visa application in the mail (where they had previously lost it for 2 months, June and July — fingers crossed this time) to send it to the American Embassy in Manila, who will then contact Epril with the date of her interview.  Epril will go to the interview, then she will wait a couple of weeks for her green card, and then she will be getting on a plane to come to America.

But wait; there's more.

This coming week is the real, official beginning of my company's sales efforts, where hands shake hands, samples are tested, presentations are made, and promises are delivered. Over the next 5 days, people from PeGreSol will be scattered to 4 different locations in 3 different countries in Southeast Asia talking with oil companies about setting up contracts to sell them the product that will provide them wax-free oil wells.

Assuming that we get just one contract out of the four (though I am certain we will get all of them, and we are expecting hundreds, if not thousands, of additional contracts), I'll be buying a plane ticket as soon as possible to The Philippines and going to pick up Epril.  Then we will be flying to Thailand, where we will be renting a house  in Pattaya (Maid Go is even available to clean and cook). There, we will stay and wait for Epril's embassy interview in Manila, having fun with all of our old friends, and working hard at getting PeGreSol moving to supersonic speeds. Then we will return to The Philippines for Epril's embassy interview. After that, we will have a couple of weeks to wait around in Cagayan De Oro until Epril's green card is received, getting Epril packed, and again having fun with all of our old friends. Then we will throw the biggest despidida (going away) party The Philippines has ever seen for Epril once the green card is received. Then Epril and I will finally fly to America together. We will be renting a nice house in Sarasota: So we'll have houses in both Pattaya and Sarasota, and we'll spend part of the year in each place.

So over the next 5 days especially, I wish good luck to my business partners and our global sales crew. Hopefully by the end of this week, I'll be able to give my beloved wife the second-best anniversary present I could give her: The date of my impending arrival.

Possibly The Most Important News In Years

Seriously. It is not often that one of the fundamental laws of the universe as we know it is broken.

While studying neutrino oscillations — where particles shift from one type of subatomic particle (muon-neutrinos) to another (tau-neutrinos) — scientists clocked a beam of muon-neutrinos outpacing the aforesaid ray of light by 60 nanoseconds.

In other words, scientists at CERN think (think, mind you) that they just witnessed something moving faster than the speed of light, which everybody believed (most notably Einstein) was simply not possible.

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Oh. A month later and... never mind.

An Interesting Chart

How To Improve The Educational System

Surprisingly, spending more money on education is not the most important thing, according to the Economist. The main conclusion of the article seems to be "diversity of approach": Try as many different educational formats as possible and build upon what works best. Oh... and of course, the obvious: Good teachers. Oh... and of course, the also obvious: Good parents.

Here are the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) educational rankings by country for 2008.

Define Irony

How about the man who literally defines himself by his take-no-prisoners, budge-not-an-inch, stick-to-the-guns approach to policy making writing this?

Republicans Corner "Creepy Political Party" Vibe

It's true, ya know.

In the first September 6th Republican Presidential Primary Debate, the crowd of Republican supporters gave the biggest cheers of the night (the biggest cheers, not just "cheers", but the biggest cheers of the night) with regard to the fact that Candidate Governor Rick Perry had "executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times."

I support the death penalty, but I certainly do not get politically orgasmic over it, and it just surprises me that there are people who not just DO get politically orgasmic over it, but it is literally their biggest political erogenous zone.

In the second September 12th Republican Presidential Primary Debate, the crowd of Republican supporters gave further cheers for the concept of letting people without health insurance die.

While I don't believe that people with emergency medical situations should be refused care because of inability to pay "up front", I do believe that people with chronic medical conditions who do not have insurance should not be treated until they get insurance (yes: even government-provided insurance if/when possible). But again: Cheering and clapping about the prospect of somebody dying in America due to being denied medical assistance? Again: What kind of angry, heartless people do that?

I just could not be a part of a political organization that thinks in those terms. I fully condone the necessary evils that the American version of freedom, responsibility, and citizenship require, but I sure as shit don't clap about those necessary evils and I sure as shit wouldn't support any political movement that actually celebrates them... especially when they think they are God's Greatest Christians (cheer for killing, clap for death) at the same time.

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UPDATE:

Andrew Sullivan says more or less the same thing:

Of course, even if such libertarian purity does make sense, that cannot excuse the emotional response to the issue in the crowd last night. Maybe a tragedy like the death of a feckless twentysomething is inevitable if we are to restrain healthcare costs. But it is still a tragedy. It is not something a decent person cheers. Similarly the execution of hundreds, while perhaps defensible politically and even morally (although I differ), is nonetheless a brutal, awful business. You don't delight in it. And the same is true of torture. Even if you want to defend its use in limited circumstances, it remains an absolute evil, no humane person would want to do it, and no civilized person would brag of it or dismiss any moral issue with it at all. And yet that is what Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney have repeatedly done. They are positively proud of their torture record. The fish rotted from the head down. Last night, we got a whiff of the smell.

When I Can Afford It, I'll Get One

I just adore the look of this car, the Fisker Karma, a hybrid sedan (similar to the Nissan Leaf in that the only thing the gasoline engine powers is an electric generator while the only thing powering the wheels are electric engines) designed and built in America. Close to 100 miles per gallon equivalent, they say.



It really is the prettiest 4-door car I've ever seen: A blend of American muscle car and European sedan. A true design triumph that takes the standard sedan shape in a beautiful new direction. No wonder too: Mr. Fisker, according to the article in Car And Driver, "designed the BMW Z8 and the Aston Martin DB9 and V-8 Vantage", which are among the world's most beautiful cars.

What's next? I hear from Autoblog that a bit of a redesign is taking place, where the back end is going to get lifted up a bit to form more of a "flying brake" shape (think "station wagon") similar to the new 4-seater Ferarri FF.

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UPDATE:

Here is the updated version, called the "Fisker Surf Shooting Brake"... even nicer! Well, I think I would have liked a bit more of a "hatchback", rounded rear than this (again, like the Ferrari FF), but it is still just a gorgeous piece of automotive art.



P.S. Since I've mentioned the Ferrari FF a couple of times, and not many people are familiar with Ferrari's new 4-seater coupé, here is a photo:

Best Thing I've Watched In A While

Watch in order. These kids take a while to get their trick right... but when they do...

No, Really I Can

I promised you video of me playing piano, and here it is.



Sorry about the sound quality. First generation electronic piano, little microphone on my netbook, and fingers that haven't touched a piano in 17 years combine for a suboptimal listening experience.

And no... nobody is calling you on Skype. That is my Skype ringing while I'm playing.

"The Self-Fulfilling Crisis Is On"

When a nobel-prize winning economist comes on and says, in effect, "There it is. That was the bad sign that we've been waiting for. It just happened today." Then you know we're in deep.

Did the euro just enter its death throes?

By resigning from the ECB, Juergen Stark has conveyed, deliberately or not, the message that there will be no ... lender of last resort, that there isn’t enough political cohesion in the eurozone to stand behind countries under market attack. And this translates directly into soaring spreads for Spain and Italy; the self-fulfilling crisis is on.

My Wife Is Beautiful

Daily Report: Waiting

It's been terrible weather here in Florida: Rain and clouds almost all day, every day, since I got back from New York. Uncle Bob says this happens this time every year.

I quit smoking 4 months ago (and I was only smoking 1 or 2 cigarettes a day for a year leading up to that), but since stopping I've developed a bad cough... a big tickle in the back of my throat. Due to the times I cough (especially upon going outside), I've figured that somehow having stopped smoking made me more sensitive to breathing in stuff in the air. I bought some allergy medicine and that seems to control the cough.

Epril's visa is once again momentarily tripped up: The visa people didn't seem to care for the "official copy" of the marriage certificate I sent in, or the quality of the copy of the police clearance certificate either. Per instructions I got from the help line at the National Visa Center, I sent a "pretty please, look at it again" e-mail to the People Who Look At Things, and hopefully that will settle the issue. If not, I'll have to have new copies of the documents sent from Epril.

I've been practicing piano. I'm working on the 17th Chopin Prelude, Beethoven's Sonata Pathetique, and Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C# Minor (my old pieces that I was best known for playing). Hopefully I'll put up some videos of my playing on YouTube soon.

I'm now (along with my business partners) waiting on the first PeGreSol meetings with prospective clients, which are scheduled to start about 10 days from now. I'm so excited. FloWell is going to change the oil industry overnight... and certainly drastically change my life: Income from selling FloWell to only 2 (two!) oil wells on a regular basis would provide me enough to allow me to finally quit my transcription job. Mike is fully expecting us to supply FloWell to 20,000 oil wells in a very short period of time! Having my income increase by a factor of 10,000? I really just can't imagine it... but my fingers are so totally crossed, and I've even offered up a prayer or two.

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By the way, here is why FloWell is so special (a description for the lay person): Imagine an oil well as a car. Every 45 days or so, your car's performance gets so bad that you have to take your car in to the repair shop, take the engine apart, clean out all the gunk that the dirty motor oil has left behind, put the engine back together, and put in new motor oil. If you don't do this, your car will eventually grind to a halt.

FloWell basically is a fluid that — while you are driving down the road — constantly drips into your car's engine, and stops any gunk from building up, and makes it so that your car never works less efficiently due to that gunk building up, and totally eliminates the cost associated with taking the car off the road and putting it in the repair shop to clean out that gunk.

So, in conclusion, FloWell is, as of now, the only product in the world that stops "gunk buildup" on oil wells as they are actively pumping oil.

Signs Amended With Amusing Graffiti

This will provide you with half a dozen smiles at least.

Daily Report: Encounter

I was out at the beach, wading back to shore in about navel-deep water. About 20 feet in front of me closer to the beach was a dark patch of underwater seaweed — of which there is not much on Florida beaches. Then I noticed that the patch of seaweed was being dragged towards me on the undertow, which was strange. In an instant, the dark patch was next to my hip, 8 feet long and as wide as the trunk of an oak tree... brown speckled skin: A manatee. He was past me before I could really react, and had swum on to visit a couple of people standing 20 feet further out. (I had just enough time to shout, "Hey, a manatee is heading for you!") His big snout came up in front of them for a few seconds, then submerged again, and his big rear flipper made a splash out out of the water, and he was gone.

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Because I have a lot of readers from other countries who might not know what a manatee is, here is a video below. A manatee is a water mammal, sort of like a gentle walrus. They are vegetarians and hang out normally in canals and inlets where there is underwater vegetation and the water is a bit warmer. Cousin Paul says that they are friendly and curious, and will come up and visit with humans who venture into their habitat (or vice versa, as happened wtih me). However, they are a protected species in Florida, and messing around with them (or chasing after them, especially in water craft) is strictly prohibited.

Another Anti-Gay Gay Republican

The vocally anti-gay Republican Senator from Puerto Rico just resigned from office after he put a photo of his culo (his actual culo... not his culo generally, but his culo proctologically) on a gay dating website.

As Dan Savage said, "Shouldn't homophobic politicians and anti-gay bullies be presumed to be gay until they get caught up in a straight sex scandal?"

So true: As I've documented before, the louder a politician/preacher speaks out against homosexuality, the more likely it is that he is secretly speaking out against his own personal demons.

And just because it bears repeating: I don't have a problem with closeted gay politicians/preachers, only the hypocritical anti-gay closeted gay politicians/preachers.

Daily Report: The Biggest News

It's been a hectic 2 months, to put it mildly. Then I threw in a trip to New York to visit my family on top of it.

About the biggest news, I can't go into much detail at the moment but here is a general overview: I own 25% of a company that is the sales arm of a parent company that has created a product that is going to be purchased and used regularly for maintenance on every oil well on the planet.

Literally: If the sales of this product turn out to be only one percent of what my partners and I are expecting, my share of the commission from that one percent alone would still be 10 times more than the most I've ever earned before. It's that big.

That's it for now: Have to get back to work.

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UPDATE:

My business partner in the comments section says to go ahead and spread the word.

So: If you own or manage an oil well and want to eliminate your paraffin buildup (and want to avoid it in the future), contact PeGreSol and we'll be happy to introduce you to FloWell, the newest in wax remediation technology: Not only is it the first nontoxic and nonflammable such treatment, but it works remarkably better than any previous wax remediation products.

Love This Photo

I'm back in Florida now, having flown right past the hurricane as it was making landfall in North Carolina. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this hurricane's threat to Manhattan is a bit overstated. I doubt that the storm surge will reach street level in the financial district. We'll see.

Photo credit to Talking Points Memo... and whoever they are giving credit to.

Daily Report: Mostly Baby Photos

My sister and her son Vincent and daughter Evie enjoying the pool at Watkins Glen State Park.


Evie having fun out on the grass in the back yard.


Evie is always exploring.


Campfire time in the great woods out behind the house.


Marshmallows for everybody.

Parents Hood

Youngun

25 years ago...


... and I haven't changed a bit.

Food For Thought

For some reason, this chart does not include the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit that President Bush added on as well, which was $1.2 trillion.

Daily Report: Random Photos Posted

With life being as slow and uneventful (yet hectic — but not worth writing about) as it is, little moments in time don't get written about on this blog and instead get set on the shelf where they accumulate until they create a large enough conglomeration of "unmentioned things" to warrant a mention here as a whole. (Or at least, that's what seems to have happened, since you are reading this.)

ANGRY BIRDS: These huge menacing turkey buzzards were hanging around outside on my patio waiting to hurt somebody, I think.


OLD FOLKS SWIMMING: My community's pool on a not-so-clear-and-bright day. There is a very pretty lake behind it, and a nice hot tub for soaking before taking a dip in the cool water.


KING KONG MUTT: My cousin Jonathan's giant dog (look at my toes for size comparison), Tank, came for a visit. He's a big ol' galoot who, as my uncle describes him is "friend to all, enemy to none." My cousin Paul describes him as "an oversized gerbil."


FREE POOL TABLES: The bar where I go to play pool. Like I mentioned: It is free to play as long as you buy a beer... and beer is always $2 (80 pisos, 60 baht) a pint... except for happy hour when it is 50 cents (20 pisos, 15 baht) a pint.


MY PRECIOUS(ES): I got my pool cues shipped from The Philippines, where I had left them. My prized possessions. The McDermott on the left has barely held it's value since I bought it in 1998. The Longoni, not so much, but it is still my favorite of the two.


YOUNG FOLKS SWIMMING: The local beach by my house: The water is always a beautiful temperature, it's quiet without any boats or cars nearby to make noise. There is not a speck of refuse anywhere. I wade out up to my chest, and then jog in the water down the length of the beach and back — easier on my joints, more strenuous my my muscles.

An Idea I Can Get Behind

About time:

If you publish a blatant lie about a candidate during a political campaign, that candidate should be able to sue you for slander and defamation.

This should happen far more often:

A federal judge in Ohio said Monday that the Affordable Care Act does not provide for taxpayer funding for abortion. The statement was the cornerstone of the judge’s ruling to allow a defamation lawsuit brought against the Susan B. Anthony List by a former congressman to move forward.

Former Ohio Representative Steve Driehaus sued the SBA List for defamation of character during the 2010 election cycle, when the anti-abortion group ran an ad campaign on the premise that Driehaus had voted for a bill "that includes taxpayer funding for abortion," in reference to Driehaus’s vote in favor of the ACA.

Dreihaus, an anti-abortion Democrat, had initially filed a complaint with the Ohio Election Commission over a billboard that said he’d voted for "taxpayer funding for abortion." The OEC found probable cause that the statement was false, and the SBA List filed a complaint in federal court that its ads were based on the group's own interpretation of the law. The billboard was taken down but radio ads and flyers against Driehaus continued, according to court documents. Driehaus then countersued SBA List for defamation.

SBA List is ready to go to trial, stands by its statements and said the ruling "chills free speech."

Driehaus lost the election but Judge Timothy Black stated in a decision that the defamation lawsuit could move forward because "the express language of the PPACA does not provide for taxpayer funded abortion. That is a fact and it is clear on its face." SBA List’s request for summary judgment on the case was denied.

"It is a very big deal when a court says you can move forward against the 'malice' standard," said Paul DeMarco, Driehaus’s attoney. “This ruling allows us to go ahead with the next phase — discovery — where we believe we will find the SBA List either ignored the truth or purposely did not seek it out when making these claims."

"Free speech," my ass. The average person is not allowed to go around publishing blatant lies about other average people in this country; I hardly see how or why that rule should change when applied to political candidates.

You Can't Have Democracy And Freedom...

... if you don't yet have a mastery of how to be human:

This month, a group of men spotted the couple riding together in a car, yanked them into the road and began to interrogate the boy and girl. Why were they together? What right had they? An angry crowd of 300 surged around them, calling them adulterers and demanding that they be stoned to death or hanged.

When security forces swooped in and rescued the couple, the mob’s anger exploded. They overwhelmed the local police, set fire to cars and stormed a police station six miles from the center of Herat, raising questions about the strength of law in a corner of western Afghanistan and in one of the first cities that has made the formal transition to Afghan-led security.

The riot, which lasted for hours, ended with one man dead, a police station charred and the two teenagers, Halima Mohammedi and her boyfriend, Rafi Mohammed, confined to juvenile prison. Officially, their fates lie in the hands of an unsteady legal system. But they face harsher judgments of family and community.

Ms. Mohammedi’s uncle visited her in jail to say she had shamed the family, and promised that they would kill her once she was released. Her father, an illiterate laborer who works in Iran, sorrowfully concurred. He cried during two visits to the jail, saying almost nothing to his daughter. Blood, he said, was perhaps the only way out.

“What we would ask is that the government should kill both of them,” said the father, Kher Mohammed.

Too many places in this world are not populated by people whose values qualify them for membership in humanity; why are we even wasting our time and resources trying?

Deal

It looks as if the Congress may have finally reached a deal with the White House (I knew that Biden would be a good Vice President, as long as he didn't go out in public) to raise the debt limit and cut the budget.

I'm not happy with the precedent it set: The Republicans acted like a spoiled toddler, and treated this legislation like a bucket of toy blocks, grabbed it, and walked over to their side of the room and wouldn't consider letting anybody else play. Then the Democrats, playing the part of the wimpy kid, managed to cajole two or three single blocks from the Republicans to play with and somehow think to themselves... what?; that this is compromise?; reasonable?; success?; a recipe for future negotiations?

I'll be happy to tell the Democrats what this was: a tiny handful of hidebound Tea Party Republicans managing to strong-arm the rest of the federal government over a hugely important piece of legislation. Terrible.

Having said that, I'm generally happy with the spending cuts: Only $900 billion cut now (which hopefully will be of a sensible nature), then the next $1.5 trillion will be worked out carefully with a bit of study in a bipartisan congressional panel (snort!). As I said yesterday: careful and studious cuts are the more important thing. I also like the built-in concept of "if you don't make the cuts, the cuts will make themselves" included in the draft as well. I finally like the concept that raising taxes in the future is considered to be possible as well.

Now all we have to do is get the Democrats out of their diapers for the next round of debt-reduction negotiations, and hopefully a little bit more moderate cutting of the federal bloat can take place soon.

Whatever The Deal, This Isn't The Time

So the Congressional Republicans are steadfastly holding the economy hostage against raising taxes on people earning over half a million dollars a year. In two days, the Congress will refuse to release the money to pay for the same budget it passed earlier in the year. (As Bill Clinton described it: Essentially voting on the same budget twice.)

(Of course, this will give the President a veritable line-item veto, another unforeseen bonus. One reason I'll never be president: Suddenly given a choice to spend limited Federal money where I choose, the first places to get fucked would be Federal offices, contracts, and activity within the districts of those Congresspeople who were such a pain in my ass.)

In their senseless battle, Republicans have endangered the U.S. credit rating. A cut in credit rating could mean an increase in interest rates for everybody. (And every tenth of a percent that the interest rate on federal debt payments go up, it tacks on an additional $13 billion a year to the budget deficit... not to mention an estimated $1000 annual "tax" on the average American family via increased interest rates on mortgages, car loans, and credit cards.

But really and most importantly, now is simply not the time to be engaging in massive cuts in government spending: During the recovery from a recession. Conservatives like to cry that "raising taxes will cause businesses to contract, not expand." I've got another point of view: 22% of all government contracts go to small businesses, and most of those contracts are in the "discretionary spending" category where Republicans are focusing the vast majority of their cuts.

Even Herbert Hoover recognized that you don't cut government spending, and that you instead raise taxes on millionaires when the economy is in the pits.

I'm all for smaller government and lower taxes, but you can't just start mindlessly, drastically slashing and gouging at the bloated federal government like it's some independent, separated entity that is not completely insinuated into every facet of life in this country, especially not when every facet of life in this country is in a straitened economic situation. Spending cuts have to be done slowly and with forethought and impact studies. I cannot imagine that any several trillion dollars of spending cuts hastily dreamed up in the last 3 or 4 weeks have had any kind of real impact studies done on them. Instead, this package of cuts will be passed and then a few weeks later several hundred people working on government project 1175 (whatever that may be) will hear that they are unexpectedly being laid off from work. Repeat that for however many number of government contracts have been cancelled all around the country. Start paying all of those people unemployment, and what has really been gained? Certainly the economy has not gained anything.

Our federal government is like a really jury-rigged electrical system in a big old house built in 1789, with hundreds of miles of wires running willy-nilly everywhere. Not at all a good thing: It's pervasive, it's a problem, it's dangerous, but it currently works. God only knows why it works, how it works, for how much longer it will work, or how much electricity is being wasted while it works.

Now imagine our current poor economic situation as that house in the middle of a stormy winter night when we need all the electricity for lights and heat and cooking and generally staying alive.

The current plan in the Congress is, on this particular night, to go up in the attic and just arbitrarily start ripping out the most "useless looking" wires from the rats' nest they see up there.

In other words, it is not that ripping those wires out and putting in a modern, efficient electrical system does not need to be done; but when the lights and stove and electric heater suddenly go pffft on this particular night, the poor timing will become immediately and horribly obvious.

I honestly would love to see a balanced budget and a government surplus. I think that the survival of America and its position as a world leader depends on having a government savings account. The Chinese certainly do. Nothing would make me happier and more optimistic about America's future than a tiny federal government that spends less, provides less, and impacts less on this country, and a debt burden that does not eat up massive quantities of our resources every year that could be spent on American social stability and economic strength. It's necessary, it's healthy, and it's inevitable.

But tonight it's cold, and waiting the short amount of time necessary for the sun to come up and the temperature to rise is the safer course of action in my opinion.

Daily Report: Update

Both of Epril's approved visa petitions, after being "lost in the mail" for nearly 2 months (from May 27 to July 20), finally showed up in New Hampshire and were entered into the system. Epril's Choice of Agent form and my Affidavit of Support have now been submitted. Although timelines seem to be sketchy as hell, we are looking at approximately 100 more days until Epril's interview in Manila — November 7th. Sigh. I guess we'll miss our hoped-for anniversary reunion on September 27th. Well, one can always hope against performance to date that things will speed up now and exceed stated statistics.

I had my pool cues sent back from The Philippines and I've been practicing. I found that the local bar that I went to a few weeks ago for 50-cent beers, that has the nice full-sized pool tables will, any time of the day, let you play pool for free as long as you buy a beer. That's an awesome deal. There is a pool hall also in the area, but they charge anywhere from $5 to $7 per hour depending on the time of day. Anyway, I've managed to get my game back to about 50% of what it used to be back circa 1998 so far.

I have had yet another opportunity fall in my lap, and this one seemed atypically providential... and also a bit deja vu: There was a certain point in my life where I was having a very tough time, and out of the blue I received a phone call... on a phone that never rang... in a place in which I never spent much time... but happened to be in front of that phone at my most needy moment. It was an old friend from college who offered to have me come back to New York City to work... and the rest is (my) history.

Fast forward to now, and my phone rings again, and there is the same old friend, whom I had lost contact with for more than a decade, who contacted me again with yet another opportunity. Actually, this opportunity requires a major amount of effort on my part, but it's an enjoyable effort. I've been getting up at 7 every morning, studying this stuff straight through until 5 in the afternoon, having my quick cocktail hour with my Uncle, having a nap from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., and then working from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. at my regular job. I haven't been this exhausted since college... and it feels good.

That's about it from here in Cougar Town. (I haven't even had time to watch an episode of Cougar Town in almost 2 weeks; maybe I'll enjoy one before going to bed tonight.) I'm seriously up to my eyeballs in stuff to do. It was only Epril asking me to write in my blog that had me dedicate this time before going to bed to write here instead of reading my book. But I'm afraid that really is all the time I have now.

Classic John Stewart

John Stewart does one thing undeniably well: He finds people making hypocritical remarks, and then strings together a bunch of examples of their hypocrisy in a long, fun to watch, stream of "gotchas", accompanied by some of his classic self-deprecating Woody-Allenesque me-too-ism humor and a bit of overacting thrown in for good measure. This clip below is a classic example of that.

American Geniuses

It's uplifting to see some American teenagers that are so far beyond normal levels of genius that they enter the realm of "awe-inspiring".

Shree Bose is a high school Junior from Texas. After losing 2 grandfathers to cancer, Shree simply decided to start working on a cure for cancer.

I don't know how she did it precisely, but she started off studying the fairly-common chemotherapy drug, cisplatin. First, she figured out how it worked on cancer cells. Second, she DISCOVERED (yes, discovered) how an intercellular protein commonly found in cancer cells eventually helped those cancer cells develop resistance to the drug. Third, and most importantly, she DEVELOPED (a junior in high school!) a method to manipulate that protein, stopping the cancer cells from developing resistance to cisplatin.

To put it simply: Shree Bose accomplished by herself what would normally require a team of university MD/PhD researchers to accomplish.

Amazing.

Food For Thought

A New "Worlds Best Break Dancing Video"

When I'm inclined to add the disclaimer, "no special effects used", you know you're going to see some pretty frickin' good moves.

Perfect Paragraphs

Andrew Sullivan strings a bunch of them together:

The Republican refusal to countenance any way to raise revenues to tackle the massive debt incurred largely on their watch and from a recession which started under Obama's predecessor makes one thing clear. They are not a political party in government; they are a radical faction that refuses to participate meaningfully in the give and take the Founders firmly believed should be at the center of American government. They are not conservatives in this sense. They are anarchists.

Their fiscal anarchism has now led to their threat to destabilize and possibly upend the American and global economy because they refuse to compromise an inch. They control only one part of the government, and yet they hold all of it hostage. I cannot believe they are prepared to allow the US to default rather than give an inch toward responsibility. Except I should believe it by now. Everything I have written about them leads inexorably to this moment. Opposing overwhelming public opinion on the need for a mixed package of tax hikes and spending cuts, drawing the president into a position far to the right of the right of his party, and posturing absurdly as fiscal conservatives, they are in fact anti-tax and anti-government fanatics, and this is their moment of maximal destruction.

Boehner and McConnell have one goal and it is has nothing to do with the economy. It is destroying this president and this presidency. They are clearly calculating that the economic devastation their vandalism could create will so hurt the economy that it could bring them back to power through the wreckage. And they will use every smear, every lie, every canard possible to advance this goal.

My New Toy

Mom was wondering if I bought a Kindle. Actually no...

Daily Report: House Guest

I have a house guest: Uncle Bob's friend from Canada, a fellow named Mark, is staying in my house for a couple of weeks.

I like Mark because he's exactly like the kind of person you (hope to) find sitting next to you at a bar in Pattaya: In his mid-60s and tall; an old, globe-trotting adventurer, well-spoken and rakish, amusing and easy to laugh, and chock-a-block with stories: Trips through the mountains of Turkey, time on a ranch in the Outback, exploring fishing villages in Micronesia, or buying black market cohibas in Havana... and obviously lots and lots of stories about his time in Bangkok.

I enjoy his stories, and try and toss in my own paltry adventures when opportunity presents itself, but mostly I find myself saying, "Oh yeah... I saw that on the National Geographic Channel" as if somehow being aware of the existence of the places Mark has visited should justify my own membership status in Mark's Super Adventure Club.

And of course, as one would guess, Mark is full of the energy I haven't seen since I was 14: After we sat up till 3 a.m. drinking, Mark was up at 7 to ride his bike 7 miles to the beach, then came back and played a round of golf... and was half finished with his day before I had even woken up.

So yes, Mark is cool in a dozen ways that I'm not.

Oh... it looks like Mark is done writing an e-mail to his blonde model girlfriend back up North. So I'll have to go see if I can get some more stories out of him. Talk to you later.

Leonard Nimoy Does Bruno Mars Video

He does creepy old guy every bit as well as he does Mr. Spock.

The Most Illegal Website Ever

Letmewatchthis.ch.

Every movie and TV show ever, from the in-theater-/-on-TV-now variety to the classics, right in your browser, YouTube-style, free of charge.

Only hideous criminals should click on the link.

Cool Land

I was chatting on the phone with a friend and, while doing so, idly gliding around the United States from a satellite's vantage when I noticed hundreds of square miles of curiously-plowed fields over Western Washington... quite cool. I'll have to find out what crops they are... or if somebody knows, leave a comment.

Daily Report: The Diligent Flaneur

Epril's visa application got lost being sent from the USCIS in California to the National Visa Center in New Hampshire. I had to wait 3 weeks before I could officially file a request for somebody to look into what happened. As best I can figure, Epril's via application was just sitting around in California on somebody's desk, forgotten. Tack on another month I'm apart from my wife because some stupid fucker couldn't figure out how to drop something in the mail properly.

I went and saw "Super 8" yesterday, which should have had the subtitle "No More Mr. Nice ET". I think that action movies are starting to be written by computers now: they are so formulaic. Super 8 was simply a mashup of every government-alien-conspiracy / group-of-kids-adventuring summer blockbuster since Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and The Goonies. (But yes, it was a fine movie, all things considered... just not clever; movies need not be clever to be good.)

I was going to see Cars 2 until I saw that the summary/average of reviews on RottenTomatoes.com was even worse than the recent Pirates Of The Caribbean, which was so bad that after watching I almost stopped to bitch at the theater employees on my way out the door about it... something I had never been inclined to do before.

I've recorded about 200 of my favorite songs from Grooveshark, and now have them on my Walkman for... well, walks. However, it has been raining every day lately and I have used that as an excuse to sit at home and record more music instead of actually walking. Yes, okay... I'll go today as soon as the rain stops.

New direction in life: I'm going to start studying to be a court reporter! I found this article ("Surprising Six-Figure Jobs") and court reporter was listed. Considering I type well above 100 words per minute, used to play classical piano, and have learned several foreign languages, I figure (hope!) that I will be a natural at court reporting. Nice thing is that since the medical transcription job has me working evenings, I'll be able to do both jobs for as long as I can handle it.

The medical transcription has surprisingly picked back up for me as well. I'm not sure what has changed... probably just me. I went from struggling to do 1,000 lines in a day up to 1,500 without a problem. My daily production has not been this high in years. Of course, with all the expenses associated with getting Epril here, a vacation to New York coming up this summer, the thousands needed for Court Reporter training, and saving up to move into an apartment when Epril gets here, I need to have that extra output.

I've been out to shoot pool a couple of times lately. My game is slowly returning. It's now at about 33% of what it was at my peak. (When I break and run out in 8-ball 50% of the time, then I'll consider my game fully recovered.) Oh, another expense: I left my pool cues in The Philippines. I need to get those shipped back. They are actually the most valuable things I currently own... quite pricey when I bought them 12 years ago, and only appreciated in price since then. Yeah, I'm thinking it too: Thousands of dollars entrusted to the mail service that has served me so poorly of late. Good idea.

I'm about halfway through the fourth book of the "Tale Of Fire And Ice" series (also known as "Game of Thrones series"). What a let-down this book is. In the third book, the author killed off half of the 20 principal protagonists at the end. Now in the fourth book, he has simply stopped writing about half of the remaining protagonists and those protagonists that are being written about are either (literally) stuck somewhere when it is obvious they need to be someplace else to move the story forward, or they are wandering around aimlessly, not sure where to go.

Well the fifth book of the series is going to be hitting the shelves at about the time I finish the fourth book, so we will see whether or not the author has any idea how to kick this tale back into gear.

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Just finished my walk after the rain finished. I won't do that again — at least here in Florida. After rain time comes gnat time, and apparently my bald white head is the handsomest thing your average gnat has ever seen. I must have killed 1000 of them during my 20-minute walk.

Another Beautiful Piece Of Music

I've been listening to and recording music like crazy for the last few days. I stumbled upon this gorgeous piece that I heard in (of all places) an episode of Battlestar Galactica.



Now, the question is what is the time signature for this music? I'm pretty sure it is a 3/4, but maybe a 6/4 or 12/4. I've ruled out 6/8 because that is "one-and-a, two-and-a, three-and-a, four-and-a". This is "one-and, two-and, three-and, four-and, five-and, six-and".

There is a second version of the song below that is in that more traditional 6/8 double waltz time I mentioned, and it's actually neat to hear the difference.



Of course, if you want to get really stumped, here is yet a third piece from the same composer that has the first half of each phrase in 6/8 time, and then shifts to 3/4 for the second half:



(If you are having trouble getting all the Grooveshark widgets to load in this blog post, hit the F5 key to refresh the page. That usually works.)

By the way: Grooveshark.com is just a great place to find every obscure piece of music (as illustrated in this blog post). So far, the only song that I haven't been able to find is the 12" version of Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes"... and that's pretty rare. Combine that with Pandora.com, which plays "more of the same" based on your musical preferences, and you have everything you could ever want for listening to music on the internet.

In New York State Gay Marriage Now Legal

Congratulations to all a major portion of my old friends in New York.

Real gay marriage, passed into law by a Republican congress in one of the nation's largest states: that's the writing on the wall for the anti-gay brigade that even they can't fail to misinterpret.

Quelle Surprise: No Illegal Immigrants = No Harvest

Georgia passed a "no-illegal-immigrants-in-our-state" law right before harvest. Illegal farm workers got the hint and took off. Now farmers are royally screwed as crops are not getting harvested.

Georgia, which passed an Arizona-style immigration bill in April that is due to take effect next month, has seen thousands of undocumented immigrants flee the state. A state survey released last week found 11,080 vacant positions on state farms that needed to be filled to avoid losing crops.

The solution? Not working out so well either:

For more than a week, the state’s probation officers have encouraged their unemployed offenders to consider taking field jobs. ... On the first two days, all the probationers quit by mid-afternoon, said Mendez, one of two crew leaders at Minor’s farm. Mendez put the probationers to the test last Wednesday, assigning them to fill one truck and a Latino crew to a second truck. The Latinos picked six truckloads of cucumbers compared to one truckload and four bins for the probationers. "It's not going to work," Mendez said. "No way. If I'm going to depend on the probation people, I'm never going to get the crops up."

Gee... Remember when people warned against deporting all the illegal immigrants because they do the jobs that Americans won't do? Who could have guessed that they would be right?

A Wonderful New Children's Book

On sale at amazon.com. I'm also told that Samuel L. Jackson does the audiobook for this as well. Way cool.


Other good ones:
That's Not Your Mommy Anymore: A Zombie Tale
Monsters Eat Whiny Children
All My Friends Are Dead

Walk By The Beach

I went with Cousin Paul for a walk down by the beach today. Not as eventful as a walk around Jasaan, but we did see a family of manatees in the canal: I wanted to swim out and give one of them a hug, but Paul talked me out of it. We also saw a turtle's house: Paul did try talking me into reaching in and grabbing the turtle, but I took a pass. After that we had a nice lunch at The Frosted Mug.