It appears that Mr. Bush has taken back the only reasonable thing he's said in recent memory, that he didn't think you could win a war on terror.

"Terrorism" is a process, an attitude, a verb — it's not a sovereign entity or a specific person.

Yes, you can and should make it more difficult for things like 9/11 to happen, and we need to capture Osama, but all it takes is a handful of crazy individuals to slip through the cracks.

Didn't we learn anything from the Vietnam guerrillas? How can you stop individuals like snipers from taking pot-shots opportunistically using massive organized force?

To mix metaphors, there will always be bad apples with sour grapes. How can going over unilaterally and blowing up stuff in their countries of origin at incredible cost in dollars, lives, and international opinion possibly help? It's all about people, ideas, and money — let's use them wisely.

posted by Chris at 8:52 AM Permalink |

 
The best article I've seen on the guy with the new jawbone is Jaw transplant allows man to chew after nine years - New Scientist, but this one has a picture.

posted by Chris at 3:52 PM Permalink |

 
Here's a good article on the language of politics: Linguistics prof. George Lakoff dissects the "war on terror" and other conservative catchphrases.

posted by Chris at 3:45 PM Permalink |

 

There was a cartoon in the Auburn Journal a few days ago, and I believe there is a tiny but exciting little caricature of me in it.

posted by Chris at 4:30 PM Permalink |

 

Over at MoveOn, they've got a pretty good new ad about "True Republican Values". Check it out.

posted by Chris at 3:53 PM Permalink |

 
I stayed up late to watch a very cool show on PBS - it was conductor Michael Tilson Thomas going through the details of how the San Francisco Symphony prepares to play a piece like Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony. When he talks about his feelings on how certain passages should be interpretted, the passion he feels for the music is awesome and obvious.

I've always liked that piece, and I've had a soft spot for MTT ever since I saw him conduct when I was a student 22 years ago at Iowa State - I think he was with the Los Angeles Symphony back then.

They're playing the show again this afternoon at 4:00, so we're taping it. You can find out all about it here: Great Performances . Keeping Score: MTT on Music - there's a well done Flash presentation there as well that's worth playing with that includes an interactive score of one of the movements.

posted by Chris at 3:44 PM Permalink |

 
So I'm talking with The Lady Janet this morning about my campaign for the local school board, and I said, "You know, maybe we should both just vote for these other two people and forget it," and she said, "Let's wait and see. I'm still planning to vote for you unless you're splitting off this other person's vote and you're a Nader." (Heh, heh, heh. She said "urinator.")

posted by Chris at 5:34 PM Permalink |

 
At my office, I subscribe to a moderated listserv forum hosted by the Audio Publishers Association. There was a thread going about abridgement, and one of the participants, Barry Marks, wrote a broad response about art and the realities of the marketplace that I found surprisingly insightful, so I've asked Barry's permission to use his essay as a guest column. Please take a moment to read But Is It Art?.

posted by Chris at 10:13 PM Permalink |

 
This just in from today's Excite.com Poll:

Results of a poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland released on Friday indicate that 54% of Americans believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Evidence of such weapons has not been found. (AP) Do you think that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, or a program to develop WMD, before the United States invaded last year?

Yes 62% => 8296 votes

No 33% => 4423 votes

I'm not sure 3% => 475 votes

I don't care 0% => 93 votes

Current number of voters: 13287

© *The Excite Poll is provided by Rosner Interactive Services. It is a voluntary poll for our users, and is not scientifically projectable to any other population. We present these polls to give Excite users an opportunity to share their opinions on particular topics. Individual answers are not collected.

I wasn't aware that this was a trick question - did 62% of the people who took this poll overlook that last line that says "Evidence of such weapons has not been found."? If the Bush Administration could find even a shred of evidence, they'd be all over it. Is this mass hysteria, mass hypnosis, or am I missing something?

posted by Chris at 10:33 AM Permalink |

 
This is the amazing mailbox that The Lady Janet constructed for us to hold all the big stacks of mail and catalogs we get almost every day. It's been our mailbox for over 8 years now, and it's perfect - it almost always holds it all, it matches our house perfectly, it's very sturdy, it's well-made, and it's cuter than a bug's ear, even if the bug's crawling on a kitten who looks perplexed.

But now our new mailman has decided that despite years of flawlessly enjoyable mail delivery and receipt, it comes up short on several counts of USPS standards for what constitutes a mailbox, and we've received a form asking us to correct the problems. Brother.

If we don't ignore it, or they pursue it, we need to provide a door and a flag and make it waterproof. Stay tuned...

posted by Chris at 4:33 PM Permalink |

 
OK, I'm jazzed, I admit it. I'm a huge Jason Mraz fan, and on August 31st, Dave Matthews Band is closing for Jason Mraz at the Sleeptrain Amphitheater, and we're going. It's been a bit of a challenge already because our only child started kindergarten last week, so it's the first time we've had to deal with "going out on a school night." This is also the first "real" concert we've tried to go to since we got stuck in traffic and missed the first half of Pink Floyd at the Oakland Colliseum, circa 1991, so I'm gonna be there and heaven help anyone who tries to stand in our way.

I'm also a bit peeved at Ticketmaster or Sleeptrain or Dave Matthews.com or whoever is responsible for the fact that when I ordered tickets a month ago, they didn't have any good seats, so I paid less for crappy seats up behind "Nosebleed" in the "Egypt" section of the lawn, and now they have a block of good seats up in the "Behind the People with Connections" section but there's no way to trade up now that they're bought and paid for.

If you've got Winamp, there are some great live videos of Jason Mraz in their media library, like this live solo version of You and I Both. If you don't have Winamp, it's non-evil and free, so it's probably worth your while to download it now.

posted by Chris at 3:01 PM Permalink |

 
Last week I had some work done on my car that involved removing the battery, so I lost the programming for my radio buttons. Rather than trying to remember or look up all of the frequencies, I'm experimenting with a new system - natural selection.

Here's how it works:

There are six buttons. The last button never changes because I'm too aware that 107.9 "The End" is the best station in Sacramento for a compromise between my tastes, what I can tolerate, and the crap that actually gets played, and since it's really the last station before it cycles around, it makes sense to keep it the last button. It's been there for years, and it just feels like "home."

The other five buttons are completely flexible - if they play something I hate, or they talk too long, or too many DJ's are talking at once, I just hit scan until I hear something I like and I reprogram that button. I don't even try to determine what the station is or whether it already exists on another button.

Using this system, I've already been pleasantly surprised a couple of times by what came up. One day in a freak accident, I actually programmed a button for the local Christian Rock station, but that was quickly corrected by stations higher up the food chain. By the way, I don't think "Christian Rock" is an oxymoron. People like Phil Keaggy and Larry Norman have done some really fantastic stuff.

posted by Chris at 9:50 PM Permalink |

 
This is a quick update on my campaign for a seat as a Governing Board Member for the local elementary school district. I'm really doing this. My name will be on the same ballot as Bush and Kerry when we go to the polls here in Auburn this November. It cost $330 to give myself a "shout-out" in the back of the sample ballot, and I had to swear before a notary public that I'd uphold the constitutions of the United States and the state of California, forsaking all enemies.

As it happens, there are seven people vying for two seats in this race, which is pretty much unprecedented. You can read all about it in this article from the local paper that appeared yesterday: Financial Issues Key in Auburn Union Race. In this article, I play the part of Christopher Benson.

posted by Chris at 9:16 PM Permalink |

 
Here at Asparagus Pee, we've been aware for some time now that Fox is planning to bring back Family Guy next year, but they're really bringing it home now with Family Guy "mini-marathons," so tonight I get to watch 4 old episodes back-to-back! See, Fox isn't totally evil. Here's the official scoop: Family Guy on Fox.

By the way, it's OK that I'm falling for their evil plot to lure us away from the Olympics - we'll most likely be taping both networks on our two VCRs anyway.

I'm curious... can you do that with a TiVo?

posted by Chris at 11:08 AM Permalink |

 
Got a bunch of old links piled up, so I won't give sources - just assume the usual suspects...

• John Kerry sites: The Classic, A New Wannabe, and The Horse's Mouth.
• Cool Reverse Dictionary.
• Here's a brand new Kurt Vonnegut article, I Love You Madame Librarian.
• Kodak's Photo Composition Tutorial
• How to be creative.
• How to have a successful blog, Part 1 and Part 2
• Office Space movie fans, go here for a full update
• Should these commercials be on TV?

posted by Chris at 11:43 PM Permalink |

 
There's a cute article based on Lynne Truss's book Eats, Shoots & Leaves over on the Blogger Knowledge site called Eats, Blogs & Leaves.

posted by Chris at 3:18 PM Permalink |

 
I'm not sure if this is interesting or not, but it's semi-amusing to me in that well-doggoneit-if-these-conspiracy-guys-aren't-bending-over-way-too-far-trying-to-find-some-kooky-stuff-to-believe sort of way: Reverse Speech Presidential Elections 2004

Apparently, these folks believe you can tell more about a candidate's true intentions by listening to what they say backwards.

posted by Chris at 5:58 PM Permalink |

 
Interesting new study reported in The Telegraph: Alcohol sharpens your brain, say researchers.

posted by Chris at 1:56 PM Permalink |

 

If you like Will Ferrell and/or you don't like George Bush, this is pretty amusing: Will Ferrell - A message from White House West.

posted by Chris at 5:18 PM Permalink |

 
I'm on a new health kick that involves, among other things, eating and sleeping better, drinking a lot less, and going for a walk every morning before work. One of my many blessings is living near the edge of the American River Canyon in Northern California, and my walk takes me from my house, where there's no view whatsoever and the deer never hang around, about two blocks away to a neighborhood in an abandoned olive orchard that has great views of the canyon, and lots of casual wildlife milling about.

Day before yesterday, I startled a pair of deer, a buck and a doe, so yesterday, I took my digital camera with me and snapped a few candids of some wild turkeys (Mmmm... Wild Turkey™) that were just kinda hangin' out, and some sunflowers that were really tough to sneak up on.

Click the pics below for the larger images:

Sunflowers	Momma T w/Chick	5 In a Row
3 Turkeys	About Face!	This space intentionally left blank.

posted by Chris at 5:18 PM Permalink |

 
I've just learned via e-news from the Skeptics Society that Nobel Prize-winner Francis Crick, well known as the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, passed away last Wednesday at the age of 88. Michael Shermer's written up a nice obituary over on his Skeptics Society website.

posted by Chris at 1:57 PM Permalink |