Martha Stewart's Everyday Food magazine is really good. The pizza recipes in the March issue look tasty and fairly easy to do. Suprisingly not evil. Go figure!
Dress Barn has some really cute dresses right now.
Seriously. Dress Barn. Who knew?
Oh, and Karen Hughes is still a lying sack of dung. (I'm listening to Air America Radio and feeling all feisty right now.)
Random: March 2004 Archives
Weirdness bolded for emphasis.
WASHINGTON – In the spring of 1998, a unit dedicated to Osama bin Laden at the CIA's counterterrorism center hatched a plan to snatch the Al Qaeda leader, who by then had declared war on the US.
The group of 17 women and 7 men who referred to themselves as "the Manson family," according to an official familiar with the plan, meticulously surveyed - through intelligence from Afghan tribal leaders and satellite photography - the Tarnak Farm, a mud-walled complex in an isolated stretch of desert near the airport in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
--> "Averting 9/11: How close we came", Christian Science Monitor, March 25, 2004, www.csmonitor.com/2004/0325/p01s01-usfp.html
A friend emailed me the following gem yesterday. You've probably seen it already. At first glance it reads like a light-hearted (if heavily cliched) look back at childhood with all its bumps and scrapes. Read it again. It asserts some ideas that many of us accept which are actually quite harmful. My responses are in italics.
Subject: People Over 30
People over 30 should be dead.
Here's why ............
According to today's regulators and bureaucrats! , [Apart from the bad punctuation, the "regulators and bureaucrats" phrase raises a red flag. Who are we talking about here?] those of us who were kids in the 40's, 50's, 60's, or even maybe the early 70's probably shouldn't have survived.
Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint. [Oh. THOSE bureaucrats. They took away our lead paint. Wah. You know how many kids still get sick from lead every year?]
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets, ... and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. (Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.) [Hey, as long as you don't get in an accident, you're OK if you're not wearing a helmet. If you do get in an accident, bye-bye brain.]
As children, we would ride in cars with no seatbelts or air bags.
[See previous paragraph. My parents always made me wear a belt, because they weren't dumb and wanted me to live. OK, I still think of air bags as a newfangled thing too]
Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat. [OK, so I miss doing that.]
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors! [What do "today's bureaucrats" have to do with that?]
We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing. [Yeah, do you know what they put in those things?!?! My parents wouldn't let me eat them much either. At least with regulations, we know what's in them.]
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this. [Huh!??!]
We would spend hours building our go -carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes.
After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. NO CELL PHONES!!!!! Unthinkable!
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-! Boxes, no video games at
all, no 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cell phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms.
We had friends! [And TV. What about books?]
We went outside and found them.
We played dodge ball, and sometimes, the ball would really hurt.
We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. [Note the casual, innocent mention of the word "lawsuits"]
They were accidents.
No one was to blame but us.
Remember accidents?
We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it. [Ah, but of course, this doesn't happen with kids anymore.]
We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms, and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live inside us forever.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rang the bell or just walked in and talked to them.
Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment.
Some students weren't as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. Horrors! [Yep. This still happens]
Tests were not adjusted for any reason. [Like learning disabilities?]
Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected. [Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sounds like a straw man argument to me. We still care about consequences.]
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law. Imagine that! [Law that was developed by bureaucrats, remember?]
This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers and inventors, ever.[What generation are we talking about? People never took risks before? The Renaissance didn't produce amazing problem solvers and inventors]
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.
And you're one of them!
Congratulations!
Gee, thanks. I think.People over 30 should be dead.
Here's why ............
According to today's regulators and bureaucrats! , [Apart from the bad punctuation, the "regulators and bureaucrats" phrase raises a red flag. Who are we talking about here?] those of us who were kids in the 40's, 50's, 60's, or even maybe the early 70's probably shouldn't have survived.
Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paint. [Oh. THOSE bureaucrats. They took away our lead paint. Wah. You know how many kids still get sick from lead every year?]
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets, ... and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets. (Not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.) [Hey, as long as you don't get in an accident, you're OK if you're not wearing a helmet. If you do get in an accident, bye-bye brain.]
As children, we would ride in cars with no seatbelts or air bags.
[See previous paragraph. My parents always made me wear a belt, because they weren't dumb and wanted me to live. OK, I still think of air bags as a newfangled thing too]
Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat. [OK, so I miss doing that.]
We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. Horrors! [What do "today's bureaucrats" have to do with that?]
We ate cupcakes, bread and butter, and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always outside playing. [Yeah, do you know what they put in those things?!?! My parents wouldn't let me eat them much either. At least with regulations, we know what's in them.]
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one actually died from this. [Huh!??!]
We would spend hours building our go -carts out of scraps and then rode down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes.
After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on.
No one was able to reach us all day. NO CELL PHONES!!!!! Unthinkable!
We did not have Playstations, Nintendo 64, X-! Boxes, no video games at
all, no 99 channels on cable, video tape movies, surround sound, personal cell phones, personal computers, or Internet chat rooms.
We had friends! [And TV. What about books?]
We went outside and found them.
We played dodge ball, and sometimes, the ball would really hurt.
We fell out of trees, got cut and broke bones and teeth, and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. [Note the casual, innocent mention of the word "lawsuits"]
They were accidents.
No one was to blame but us.
Remember accidents?
We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it. [Ah, but of course, this doesn't happen with kids anymore.]
We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms, and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes, nor did the worms live inside us forever.
We rode bikes or walked to a friend's home and knocked on the door, or rang the bell or just walked in and talked to them.
Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment.
Some students weren't as smart as others, so they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade. Horrors! [Yep. This still happens]
Tests were not adjusted for any reason. [Like learning disabilities?]
Our actions were our own. Consequences were expected. [Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sounds like a straw man argument to me. We still care about consequences.]
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke a law was unheard of.
They actually sided with the law. Imagine that! [Law that was developed by bureaucrats, remember?]
This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers and problem solvers and inventors, ever.[What generation are we talking about? People never took risks before? The Renaissance didn't produce amazing problem solvers and inventors]
The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all.
And you're one of them!
Congratulations!
Now the part that got left out of this version but is in the original, is this tell-tell sentence at the end:
Pass this on to others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before lawyers and government regulated our lives, for our own good.
Excuse me? Lawyers didn't invent head injuries. The government didn't cause lead to appear in our paint. Regulations are the reason that we know what's in our food, and that companies don't get away with more trickery than they already do. (Ever read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle? That book is partially responsible for the reform of the meatpacking industry... which took — you guessed it — regulation.) Lawsuits and government rules don't exist so that stupid people can blame others for their own mistakes. They exist so that we can be protected from the stupid decisions of companies who are only focused on their bottom line. You can't get rid of all companies just because some of them screw up, or get rid of all people because some of them commit crimes. Why would getting rid of all lawyers and rules because some of them are bad make things any better? If nobody enforces the rules, there are no rules.And it's not funny, dammit.
(Additional note: I'm not the only one to find this thing immensely irritating. See a list of other things that happened during "the good old days" here.)
On the way back from a walk just now, I passed a car with one bumper sticker that said "Californians of faith fighting the death penalty", another bumper sticker that said "RecallGrayDavis.com" and a big American flag stuck in one of the front seat cupholders. All this was on a Prius.
Do you think the driver is deliberately messing with people's minds?
That line from "The Princess Bride" keeps getting stuck in my head. I got to go to one of the same-sex weddings at City Hall in San Francisco on March 10, the day before the courts stepped in and shut the whole thing down. It was a beautiful wedding... an ex-coworker of mine stood up there at the top of the stairs with her partner of 21 years and their two sons. (Supposedly, the spot they picked was the same one where Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe got married — as someone joked, this marriage seems set to last a whole lot longer.)
One of the staff there told us that they'd all been vying to marry the couples, and that finally they had to set up a system of shifts — no more than two hours a day each. They just all wanted to be part of this so badly.
I'm glad my friends made it in just under the wire, but I feel bad for the other couples that had appointments after the court called a halt. And, of course, the question of what rights all the married couples have now is up in the air too.
I hope the court is sensible and fair about this. Apparently, what I consider fair and sensible isn't obvious to everyone, though. "States' rights", "sanctity of marriage", "protection of children"... blah blah blah. We either all have equal rights or we don't. What's it going to be?
In any case, other people who went to a wedding at City Hall during this amazing month can probably testify to the joyous atmosphere. How often do you get to experience that... let alone in a municipal building? When was the last time a bureaucrat made you smile?
The oddest spam, hands-down, that I've ever received. And apparently I'm not alone. (But did he know, I wonder, that he was emailing a Jewish organization?)
Subject: Please read because this is a very important message from Ted Jesus Christ GOD. ADVHello:
This is NOT pushing any product or service or selling anything. This is about somebody that was very IMPORTANT in the Computer and Software and Internet Industry that was born on World Earth that at 37 years old had a SEVERE 40 days and 40 nights on a large Sail Boat and was TEMPTED by Satan or Devil and this SPIRITUALLY and keeps getting told and this thousands of times by Angels that identify themselves to be Michael and Gabriel and More Top Angels that this person is the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and have given this person over a period of over 7 years enough information to almost prove this through VISIONS and DREAMS and LOUD SPIRITUAL VOICES and LOUD SPIRITUAL EVENTS and MORE. This information and everything that this person is writing is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN and is not about selling anything or any product or service. This is worth you taking the time to read because this may be the only communication you ever receive about this and this person can almost prove that this person is the Second Com
This is about Ted R. Kurts that was raised by a very good Christian family and to be a Christian and went to Christian Churches and Christian Church Schools for Teds entire life. Ted went to Christian Elementary Schools and then Christian Academy and then Christian University and then Christian Graduate School. Ted most of the time did very well in school and was a good student. These schools included Valley View Junior Academy and then Thunderbird Adventist Academy and then Loma Linda University and then the La Sierra Campus for Undergraduate and then Loma Linda University and the Loma Linda Campus for Graduate School. Ted took a medical curriculum and was completely self taught in Computers and Software and the Internet that Ted decided to get into for a serious hobby and then for a career and then started up a business. If you check around some you will find out that Ted was the Founder and President and CEO of a very well respected Silicon Valley and California and United States of America based Softw
Ted while on a large Sail Boat of Teds that was anchored in the San Diego Bay had a SEVERE 40 days and 40 nights and had many LOUD SPIRITUAL EVENTS that included Visions and Dreams and Hearing Loud Spiritual Voices and More that convinced Ted that Ted was and is actually a distant descendent of the Jewish King David and is the Son of Man and the Son of David and the actual Second Coming of Jesus Christ and this through a BLOODLINE and a NATIVITY and NOT from remote or in the sky or in clouds. Ted after this has been WORKING VERY HARD in RELIGION and MUCH MORE THAN RELIGION and had to get out of the Computer and Software and Internet Industry and did. Ted was told many times that what Hitler did was to eliminate a BLOODLINE and LINAGE that HE could not have a Second Coming and Return from a NATIVITY. Ted did NOT have a breakdown and this is NOT mental and is SPIRITUAL. Ted has begged and pleaded and prayed many times to God to get and this well over 1000 times an answer and then from Michael the Angel and
You NEED to REALIZE that this newsletter is CAN-SPAM compliant per the United States Federal Law of CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 that allows for Unsolicited Bulk Email or UBE or Unsolicited Commercial Email of UCE to be sent if certain requirements are met. These are met and if you are going to overreact or complain or harass because this email address received this newsletter then you NEED to read the legal section below to figure out your CRIMINAL and CIVIL LIABILITY if doing any overreacting or sending any complaints or hostile email to anybody about this or taking any action regarding this. This is NOT SPAM because this complies with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003.
And it truly goes on and on, in this vein, til the break of dawn. Oy.
From the NY Times today, an exchange between a Hummer dealer and an actress:
"She told me she wanted to buy a hybrid, and she was concerned about the Hummer and its effect on the environment," Mr. Drake recalled. "I asked where she lived. She said Beverly Hills. I said, `Out of curiosity: How big is your house?'
"She said: `What does that matter? It's 20,000 square feet.' "
He said he replied: "I don't know what's less correct. Having three people live in a 20,000-square-foot house, with a pool and heaters and air-conditioners. Or me driving my Hummer 500 miles a month."
Mr. Drake's house, he said, is 3,000 square feet.
Only in Hollywood...
--> "A Prius-Hummer War Divides Oscarville", New York Times, March 6, 2004, www.nytimes.com/2004/03/07/ fashion/07CARS.html
"I want to live in a country where religious beliefs (or lack of religious beliefs) are not an issue. In short, I want an atheist homeland, a place where my lack of belief in a “supreme being” or organized religion does not put me at odds with 90 percent of the country and its most powerful political leaders."
--> http://www.arbiteronline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/02/23/4039aff78e385
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