2008 National Book Festival

Holly, Sarah, and I went to our fourth annual Book Festival down on the Mall. This has become our favorite event in D.C., bar none. The Festival is conducted in two acts, one might say. Act 1 is where the authors give a presentation, read from their work, or just chat with participants at the genre pavilions. Sadly, we've never had time to attend any of those because we're always camped out in lines for Act II...the book signings. These lines can stretch out a long way. The line above was for Phillipa Gregory. Neil Gaimon once again took top honors for the longest line. He missed the Festival last year but was back this year with a scheduled three hour autograph session...unprecedented. The young lady in line ahead of us (above) told me that Gaimon was overheard to say that he would keep signing until they took the tent down around him...Neil is prolific AND fan friendly.

As a team, we snagged autographed books from Laura and Jenna Bush, Jan Brett, Brad Meltzer (my camera malfunctioned!), Paul Theroux (signing my book in the picture above), Neil Gaimon, Philippa Gregory, Walter Isaacson, and Jon Scieszka. I mulled over standing in line for Salmon Rushdie, but surprisingly his line was almost as bad as Neil's...and Donna reminded me that there was always the chance that some crazed fanatic hadn't heard that the fatwah was cancelled.

Odd about Jenna and Laura...this line moved the slowest due to security measures. You probably can't see it, but I put a red circle at the metal detector they were making everybody pass through. After about an hour and half, they suddenly gave up on this and everybody rushed forward, bypassing the detector and funneling into yet another line. The SS guys looked hard at us, made us all pile our backpacks to the side, and ran us down one last gated-funnel (you've seen cattle herded into pens, right?) and there was Jenna and Laura. They did at least look up every once in a while, but for the most part they had that "what in hell did we get ourselves into this time" look on their faces.
Was a really nice day...it only started raining as we're in our last line of the day. Books and rain don't go well together, so we rushed back to the car with our goodies. Aching backs, tired feet, sunburnt foreheads...great fun.

Penis Theft Panic

Fascinating...just fascinating...
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KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

"It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.

Five Years On...

Taken from the news article:
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A Washington Post-ABC News poll showed nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the war was not worth waging.

Told about the poll result in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America," Vice President Dick Cheney, in Oman after a visit to Iraq, said: "So?" He added: "I think we cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations of the public opinion polls."

The war has cost the United States $500 billion. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed and millions displaced. Nearly 4,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed, as well as 175 British troops and 134 from other countries.

-----------------------------
Exactly! Why should elected officials be bothered by the insignificant schmuck opinions of U.S. citizens?

The chutzpah...it takes your breath away.

Nick'd Again

http://

Thanks Doctor Wu :)

Daniel Grayling Fogelberg (August 13, 1951 – December 16, 2007)

Ahh, so many memories tied up in listening to Fogelberg's music while in high school in the '70s. Sad to see his passing.

Hickory Grove

Hickory Grove, wait for me
I'm just as poor as a man can be.
Hickory Grove, wait for me
I'm just as blind as the other men that see.

Hickory Grove, make the sun
Rise slower I don't have much time.
Hickory Grove, watch me run
Down through the years of my prime.

Lady Luck, play your hand
I've got a life for you to play with
Hickory Grove, you will stand...
I've got a dream that I can stay with.

The Naughty O'Leary Elves

Some holiday cheer brought to you by those naughty O'Leary dancing elves.

what you're all getting for christmas

The blind get a helping hand in Nashville

What a nice story...and what an amazing journey for both little 5-year old Kajal and the doctor who wants to restore her eyesight.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Baghdad Burning (but in the rear-view mirror)

Riverbend and her family safely made it out of Iraq and into Syria. If you haven't been reading her years-long account of life in Baghdad, do yourself a favor and go there now.

Anti-Illegal Immigrant Resolution

Early this morning, Prince William County's Board of Supervisors unanoumously to approve an anti-illegal immigration resolution. It's been mainstream news here. My county is going to be the bow-wave of sister resolutions being considered by many other counties surrounding Washington.

Here's a summary from the Washington Post newspaper:

Prince William County supervisors early this morning voted to move forward with a nationally watched plan to crack down on illegal immigrants by increasing local police enforcement and restricting certain public services.

The measures approved yesterday improve cooperation with
federal immigration authorities and direct police to check the immigration status of anyone accused of breaking the law if the officer suspects that person is an illegal immigrant. They also would deny certain county services to illegal immigrants, including drug counseling, some elderly services, and business
licenses.

The county's plan to deny services has evolved since it
was first proposed. Services such as access to schools and emergency medical care are federally protected, and illegal immigrants are already ineligible for benefits such as Medicare and food stamps.

Instead, Prince William has pinpointed a more limited set of services and benefits, including substance abuse counseling, homeless assistance and in-home care and other county programs for the elderly. County officials said they are not sure how many illegal immigrants are taking advantage of these programs or how much money would be saved by curbing them.

Now, I'm not a fan of illegal immigrants being coddled in our country at the expense of the legal citenzry, but I have some doubts about anything good coming out of this particular set of restrictions. The reasoning appears to be: if we don't help illegal immigrant drug addicts and don't provide elder care to illegal immigrants, we'll solve the illegal immigrant problem? I'm sure that can't be the rationale, but I didn't attend the hearing to get the background. Seems to me that this might save a few bucks, sure, but is it worth it to deny those specific humanitarian services?

I support stiff fines for the employers of illegal immigrants and a standardized National ID card. But that's another blog from this hard-pressed liberal.

Brain-Eating Amoebas (or, Thanks Australia!)

Yahoo headline today, "6 die from brain-eating amoeba in lakes" caught my eye. I'm eternally fascinated in all things that eat brains...a childhood phobio I suppose. Excerpt:

A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die…. It's killed six boys and young men this year…and health officials are predicting more cases in the future.

"This is definitely something we need to track," said a specialist in recreational waterborne illnesses for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Wow, you think?)

According to the CDC, the amoeba called Naegleria fowleri killed 23 people in the United States, from 1995 to 2004. This year health officials noticed a spike with six cases — three in Florida, two in Texas and one in Arizona. The CDC knows of only several hundred cases worldwide since its discovery in Australia in the 1960s.

Find Your Candidate

This was interesting. An old work colleague sent me this little quiz. You answer a few questions (11 of them) and it spits out a "here's the candidate most closely aligned with your views" answer. I was pretty surprised. You may be surprised, too.

http://www.wqad.com/Global/link.asp?L=259460


In other news, I heard on NPR today that Radiohead new marketing strategy complete eliminates the record labels. You can preorder a semi-traditional CD for a nominal fee. or you can pre-register to download the music on 10 Oct. Your payment for the downloaded version of the album is "?"...meaning, they're leaving that part up to you. Interesting.

Can I Cut In Line?

Donna gave me a wonderful 4-CD boxed Led Zep retrospective for Christmas, and it's quite wonderful stuff...great for driving, great for workouts, just generally great.

Then I heard yesterday that Led Zeppelin is going to reform for one show in London in November, with John Bonham's son playing drums. I'd love to see that show! But then again, so would about 20 million other folks. Problem is...their venue can only seat 20,000.

The BBC reports, though, something that intrigues me...the ability to buy a ticket will be decided by public ballot, and if anyone is caught trying to resell their ticket on internet auction sites, the ticket will be canceled.

What an outstanding idea! I'm still pissed about not being able to purchase nice seats for Steely Dan or Van Morrison, only to find plenty of front row seats on auction sites for heartbreakingly staggering amounts of money.

Anyway, I best go...i hear that 80,000 fans a minute are trying to register for the chance to buy a ticket. Maybe I'll get lucky.

What The Hell?

My Twin Lakes High School class of 1977 celebrated a 30th year reunion this August. I wasn't able to go. I just checked in on their website to find they'd posted some pictures, and this is the group shot.

Holy hell...what happened to everyone? Who are these people?

sigh

no, i don't mean the Tokyo band

work just flat out sucks lately...too damned busy to goof off.

on a positive note, i finally got approval to print this year's Annual Report

noticed that everyone is making lots of blog posts, and i've fallen far behind in reading through them :(

sigh

Half of All Canadians Too Ignorant To Be Canadians

For Kelly!
P.S. I suspect most Americans would be in a similar boat...and sinking.
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OTTAWA (Reuters) - Most Canadians know so little about their own country that they would flunk the basic test that new immigrants are required to take before becoming citizens, according to a poll released on Friday.

The Ipsos-Reid survey showed that 60 percent of Canadians would fail the test. A similar poll done in 1997 showed a failure rate of 45 percent.

"Canadians appear to be losing knowledge when it comes to the most basic questions about Canadian history, politics, culture and geography ... (they) performed abysmally on some questions," the firm said in a statement.

Only 4 percent knew the three requirements a citizen had to meet to be able to vote while only a third could correctly identify the number of provinces and territories. Just 8 percent knew that Queen Elizabeth II is the head of state.

The survey was carried out for the Dominion Institute, which aims to boost knowledge of Canadian history and values. It said all high school students should have to pass a special citizenship exam before they can graduate.

"It is frankly disheartening to see the lack of progress made by our group and the countless other organizations working to improve civic literary of Canadians over the last 10 years," said institute co-founder Rudyard Griffiths.

The Ipsos-Reid survey of 1,005 adults was conducted between June 5 and 7 and is considered to be accurate to within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Time for a Dead President

part of his HBO special...R rated for language so the audio is NSFW
http://www.jibjab.com/view/127339

Eat My Brains

Yahoo news reports today that a naturally occuring virus has been discovered that might hold the means of limiting the spread of fire ants. That's great news, especially given where we might go live in a couple of years.

The ants have no natural predators in North America, but quite a few in South America. Scientists are considering if they can import any of those natural predators to the North here...like maybe the phorid fly.

"...the small phorid fly seeks out fire ants and lays its eggs on them. The eggs hatch into tiny maggots that bore into the heads of their host and feed on its brains."

Umm, no...maybe not the phorid fly.

Riverbend

Riverbend, the young blogger from the heart of Iraq, is leaving her home. She and her family are trying to decide whether to go to Syria or Jordan (no passport needed).

So we've been busy. Busy trying to decide what part of our lives to leave behind. Which memories are dispensable? We, like many Iraqis, are not the classic refugees- the ones with only the clothes on their backs and no choice. We are choosing to leave because the other option is simply a continuation of what has been one long nightmare- stay and wait and try to survive.

She's long been blogging about the decline of her country, and if you've been following her posts you've probably shared a bit of the pain and frustration. I'm a bit amazed it took her family this long to decide to leave...most of the moderates left long ago I'd think.

New Frontiers

Yesterday, physicist Stephen Hawking rode the Zero Gravity Corp airplane and experienced weightlessness for about 3 minutes total by my calculations (25 seconds per 8 passes). For a while, he was free of this planet and from his physical chains. Said Hawking, "Many people have asked me why I am taking this flight. I am doing it for many reasons. First of all, I believe that life on Earth is at an ever increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, or other dangers. I think the human race has no future if it doesn't go into space. I therefore want to encourage public interest in space."

…and that thought has nagged me for years…what are our options? What if the collective “we” destroy this planet? What then?

Two days ago we heard that European scientists had discovered a potentially habitable planet 20.5 light years away in the constellation Libra.

Now this is only about 120,509,246,957,068 miles away. So let’s see, with conventional rocketry we’d need to achieve 36,500 miles per hour to escape the solar orbit. I believe the fastest we’ve been able to go so far is 40,000 mph with the Apollo capsule…but that’s a bit cramped for a trip that would then take you 474 years to complete. Oh, we’d need fuel too.

So maybe we should set our sights on terraforming Mars, instead.

Kim Stanley Robinson wrote an astounding account of how we might actually transform Mars into a place where humans might live and prosper. Considered to be the finest living “hard” science fiction author, his Mars trilogy is a fascinating read.



Hard science fiction, by the by, is characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both.

The colonization of other planets is scientifically and economically feasible. Being an optimist, I like to think that some day our Earth-bound hatreds may subside enough to let us look beyond our National borders and see something grander to achieve.

And if that makes you sad, which it should not, you can always look at this.