iPod Cleaning

Ken AshfordRandom MusingsLeave a Comment

Good tip from Unclutterer:

I offered up the following advice:

One day, one room: Dedicate half an hour to cleaning one room every day instead of cleaning the whole house on the weekend.

My husband and I still subscribe to this policy. In addition to picking up after ourselves throughout the day, we set aside 15 to 30 minutes for more intensive cleaning tasks like vacuuming, scrubbing toilets, and sweeping and mopping floors. Mondays we deep clean the dining room and kitchen, Tuesdays are foyer and living room, Wednesdays are bathrooms, Thursdays are bedroom, and Fridays are our shared office. We have created playlists that are 15 to 30 minutes long on our iPods with collections of fun songs to listen to while we clean. So, when the music stops, our cleaning tasks are usually coming to a close.

So I guess we should all have playlists that say "Upstairs bathroom" and "Kitchen counters" and so on….

Here He Comes

Ken AshfordYoutubeLeave a Comment

I don’t care what they say, or how many special effects it’s got.  It ain’t the same as the original tacky car-tune:

Liveblogging “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever”

Ken AshfordLocal Interest, Personal, TheatreLeave a Comment

Well, why not?  I’ve directed it, and I’ve seen every performance.

This is the 4th performance in front of a paying audience.

7:50 — Pretty full house.  A little bit older than usual.  Very cold night.  Nobody in the church balcony, so I feel free to type to my heart’s content.

7:53 — Pre-show music is nice.  We have a cast member out tonight.  She’s in the angel choir, no lines.

7:56 — Uh, why are we starting early?  Brad is giving his curtain speech.  He’s actually getting a little better at this.

7:58 — Oh, dear.  I should have checked where the table was set.  It’s too far stage left.  Danny will never be ab;e to squeeze in his seat.

7:59 — And here we go.

8:00 — How much do I love Sarah King?  Kid’s got talent.

8:01 — Uh, oh.  Not much laughter.  Tough crowd.  Landon, dude!  I told you to come DOWNstage.  If you say your line back there, nobody knows who’s talking!

8:02 — Volume is good though.  Danny fit in the chair.

8:03 — OK.  Now they’re laughing.  A little.

8:04 — Danny changed the line "The angel choir always sounds like a closet full of mice" to "a closet full of cats".  It still doesn;t get a laugh.

8:05 — I always find it weird when characters call other characters by their own name.

8:06 — Okay, the audience warmed up a little.

8:08 — The cell phone/supper gag.  Always an audience pleaser.

8:09 — Why can’t Sarah find that light?  It’s center stage.

8:10 — This scene never works.  Landon talks too fast.  Thank God it last only 30 seconds.

8:11 — Here’s Faith.  What kind of a night will she have?

8:12 — Is Erin good as the snotty stuck-up kid?  Or is she playing herself?

8:13 — Brad has a small part, but he’s really come along.  I wish those girls stage right wouldn’t be so far stage right.  They know better.

8:14 — Kelly”s gagging schtick worked okay tonight.  Better than usual.

8:15 — I never get tired of how cute Ruth Jeffers is.

8:16 — I really like that Grace/Elmer exchange.  Too bad I blocked it too far stage left so half the audience can’t see it.  My bad.

8:17 — Time for McKenzie to jump her cue.

8:17:30 — and she did.

8:18 — The five women chattering lasts 30 seconds too long.

8:19 — Faith, I swear to God you will lose your voice if you shout that much.  Angry, not loud, honey bear.

8:20 — I don’t like the way I staged this.  The kids in the center okay.  But the Herdman lineup is awkward.

8:21 — Wait for the laughs to die down before you start the next line, kids.

8:22 — SHAZAM!  The best part.  Not a great audience reaction tonight.

8:23 — Faith, you really have to stop inserting "I mean" and "You know" in your lines.  It may feel "natural" but it interrupts the flow.

8:24 — Louder, Faith.  She’s either too loud or too soft.

8:25 — This Sarah/Erin scene is sweet.  Sarah is simply a terrific actress.  Great for 12 years old.  I like that back-to-back thing they added on their ownl.  Nice touch.

8:26 — Fire scene coming up.  Kids running all through the church screaming, up and down the aisles.  It’s a miracle nobody has got hurt.  Well, except that one time.

8:27 — Landon!  If you cover your mouth, they can’t hear you!  And then Hobie’s punchline is meaningless.

8:30 — It’s the face afterwards that causes the laugh to go.  I should have told Kelly to not make that face.

8:31 — Wow, weird energy tonight.

8:32 — Fire scene!  Audience liked it.

8:33 — Why can’t they play this stage right like I asked?  Really, it’s where the lights are pointing.

8:34 —  Don is doing well.  I think the audience is glad to see someone their age in the play.

8:35 — Palm tree gag.  Cute.

8:36 — Mary and Joseph were refugees speech.  Yawn.

8:37 — The interplay between Danny and Kelly is cute here.  Ooops, early entrance kids.  Whaddup with that?  Not that it was a problem.  Actually it’s a little better if they come in early.

8:38 — Faith’s solo scene.  Her "conversion" scene.  Nicely staged, nicely lit, if I do say so myself.  Nicely acted.  Not a sound in the house.  Really nice.

8:40 — And the pageant within the play is about to begin.  Hey, the Miss Clark cell phone thing got a laugh!!!

8:41 — Beginning of pageant.

8:42 — "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear".  Why can’t Stephanie stand still?

8:43 — Molly’s wearing those earrings.  She told me I was the best director ever and then asked if I woulod let her wear them.  How could I say no?

8:44 — "Away In A Manger", "While Shepherds Watch Their Flcok By Night"

8:45 — Yeah, Molly!  Nicely done!

8:46 — Sheep knocked over.  Funny.

8:47 — It’s fine if the angel choir wants to stand there; but they can’t be seen.

8:48 — "We 3 Kings" shtick was good.  I think the audience was confused tho.

8:49 — "Silent Night".  Let’s see if Faith pulls off the crying.

8:50 — She does.  I wish the kids in the background would stop fidgeting.

8:51 — And now the epilogue.

8:52 — I’ve never understand that line that Landen says.  Speak clearly, boy.

8:53 — Montage.

8:54 — Final song.  Audience standing and singing.

8:55 — Oh, nice of you to join the cast for the final number, Sean (or Nathan, whichever twin it is).

8:56 —- The End.  Running time: 57 minutes.  Not bad.  Still a little fast.

And I am outta here.

Abstinence-Only Education

Ken AshfordEducation, Sex/Morality/Family ValuesLeave a Comment

Here’s the video:

…which serves as the launching point for this great comment by Amanda Marcotte:

Watching videos of representatives of organizations like the Abstinence Clearinghouse, the CWA, and the IWF always makes me tense, and I finally realized that it’s the women themselves (and women are the official faces of all these misogynist groups) that make me nervous. The permanent grins affixed to their faces from a youth misspent in drill team practice and the tension radiating from them that indicates they’re about to crap a diamond if they could relax their sphincter muscles enough to release it is a winning combination for making people uneasy. All that lying must do a number on your stress levels. I didn’t even realize a person could grin and grind her teeth at the same time.

Capt92dd0c64d0b54aa8846d74255b1f235It’s remarkable to me how some people can claim that abstinence-only (and I stress "only") works in light of very obvious countervailing evidence.  Just look at the graph.

Now what if I told you that Bush started abstinence only program funding in 2003?  The money got allocated in 2004, and the programs started going into effect.  And looked what happened, starting in 2005, after 14 years of decline.

Up. Tick.

Abstinence-only education "works" in the sense that it is — truly is — the safest policy for teen sex.  But it fails miserably in terms of actually preventing teen pregnancy and sexual disease transmission, which is, at the end of the day, all that matters.  It’s the sexual equivalent of Nancy Reagan’s gloriously naive "Just Say No" drug policy.  It’s not really an effective policy if nobody follow it, you know?

Some background on Valarie Huber, the pro-abstinence woman in the segment above.  She was once the State Abstinence Coordinator at the Ohio Department of Health.  Result?  65 girls in one single Ohio high school became pregnant.

Arming The Enemy

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

Stunning incompetence:

The report details a massive failure in government procurement revealing little accountability for the billions of dollars spent purchasing military hardware for the Iraqi security forces. For example, according to the report, the military could not account for 12,712 out of 13,508 weapons, including pistols, assault rifles, rocket propelled grenade launchers and machine guns.

Let’s be clear about this — we provided over 13,000 weapons to the Iraqi Security forces so that they can secure their own country . . . and we can only account for 800 of those weapons now?

Were Iraqis able to just walk into the weapons depot and take whatever they liked?  Are they missing because these so-called "Iraqi Security Forces" are now insurgents?  Isn’t it safe to assume they are now being used against our forces?

The mind boggles….

Tramps Like Me

Ken AshfordRandom Musings1 Comment

I scored some tickets to see The Boss.

Twenty-five years ago, that would have been a major coup.  It would have required having major connections or an all-night sleepout in front of Ticketron or something. 

Now all it requires is an Internet connection.

Say What?

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

Senate Minority Mitch McConnell (R-KY), on U.S. casualties in Iraq:

"Nobody is happy about losing lives but remember these are not draftees, these are full-time professional soldiers."

Oh, well.  That makes it okay, I guess.

Arbuckle

Ken AshfordRandom MusingsLeave a Comment

Arbuckle is a comic strip that intentionally rips off Garfield.

In fact, "Arbuckle" is just "Garfield" comic strips redrawn with the thought bubbles (from Garfield) removed.  The result? 

"Garfield" changes from being a comic about a sassy, corpulent feline, and becomes a compelling picture of a lonely, pathetic, delusional man who talks to his pets.

Here, for example, is the original Garfield:

Ga810926

And now the Arbuckle version:

Arb810926

Heh.

More Guns Make Everything Better

Ken AshfordGun Control2 Comments

I read this at InstaPundit:

I HEARD NEAL BOORTZ holding forth on the Omaha mall shooting this morning on the way to work, and I realized I haven’t posted on it. I don’t really have anything to say that I haven’t said before. But it’s worth noting — since apparently most of the media reports haven’t — that this was another mass shooting in a "gun-free" zone. It seems to me that we’ve reached the point at which a facility that bans firearms, making its patrons unable to defend themselves, should be subject to lawsuit for its failure to protect them. The pattern of mass shootings in "gun free" zones is well-established at this point, and I don’t see why places that take the affirmative step of forcing their law-abiding patrons to go unarmed should get off scot-free.

What Prof. Reynolds is saying — what he often says — is that by restricting guns, you actually encourage the number of casualties at mass-shootings like the one taking place in Omaha.

ArtmallshooteropdketvBut does this make any sense?

Let’s engage in a thought experiment.  Let’s assume that the Omaha mall was not a "gun-free" zone, and all other factors remained the same.  What would have been the likely outcome?

Answer: The same; nine people dead by a guy named Robert Hawkins.  The only way it would be any different is if some mallshopper (with a gun) was in the mall at exactly the right time and place, and was able to shoot Hawkins before damage was done.

And don’t get me started about adding more to the casualty tally because of crossfire.

We should keep in mind that the mall security people actually were aware of the shooting as it was going on, seeing it on their video cameras.  And they were too late to stop anything.

Sure, making someplace a "gun-free" zone isn’t going to stop people like Hawkins, but it’s not likely to prevent gun-toting heroes from stopping people like Hawkins either.  For Reynolds’ hypothesis to actually make a difference, you would have to have a large segment of mallgoers be armed and prepared to strike immediately on any would-be assailant.

And I don’t want to go to a mall where everybody is packing "just in case" there’s an incident.

Picture above:  Hawkins at the Omaha mall from a surveillance camera

UPDATE:  Someone needs to point something out to Glenn Reynolds before he castigates Nebraska for being anti-gun (and therefore inviting this sort of incident.  To wit:

State requirements:

Permit to purchase rifles and shotguns? No.
Registration of rifles and shotguns? No.
Licensing of owners of rifles and shotguns? No.
Permit to carry rifles and shotguns? No.

Do Military Families Support The War?

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

Nope:

Nearly six out of every 10 military families disapprove of Bush’s job performance and the way he has run the war, rating him only slightly better than the general population does.

And among those families with soldiers, sailors and Marines who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, 60% say that the war in Iraq was not worth the cost, the same result as all adults surveyed.

UPDATE:  Ooops.  Missed this.

When military families were asked which party could be trusted to do a better job of handling issues related to them, respondents divided almost evenly: 39% said Democrats and 35% chose Republicans. The general population feels similarly: 39% for Democrats and 31% for Republicans.

“The Democrats are not seen as the anti-soldier group anymore,” said Charles C. Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University.

WaPo Editorial On Romney’s “Faith” Speech

Ken AshfordElection 2008, GodstuffLeave a Comment

Well said:

RELIGIOUS liberty is, as Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney declared yesterday, "fundamental to America’s greatness." With religious division inciting violence across the globe, he is right to celebrate America’s tradition of religious tolerance. He’s right, too, that no one should vote against him, or for him, because he is a Mormon. We only wish his empathy for religious minorities such as his own extended a bit further, to those who do not believe in God.

It is regrettable that 47 years after John F. Kennedy felt the need to promise voters that his Catholic faith would not dictate his conduct as president, Mr. Romney felt compelled to offer similar assurances that "no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions." It’s regrettable, too, that the skepticism and even hostility some voters feel toward Mormonism has been played upon by the man who has emerged as his chief rival in Iowa, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who is running commercials that proclaim him to be a "Christian leader." That is why Mr. Romney felt the need to detail his creed: "I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the savior of mankind." If, as Mr. Romney correctly says, the country’s founders took care not to impose a religious test for any public office, a candidate’s belief, or not, in the divinity of Christ ought to be irrelevant.

Where Mr. Romney most fell short, though, was in his failure to recognize that America is composed of citizens not only of different faiths but of no faith at all and that the genius of America is to treat them all with equal dignity. "Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom," Mr. Romney said. But societies can be both secular and free. The magnificent cathedrals of Europe may be empty, as Mr. Romney said, but the democracies of Europe are thriving.

"Americans acknowledge that liberty is a gift of God, not an indulgence of government," Mr. Romney said. But not all Americans acknowledge that, and those who do not may be no less committed to the liberty that is the American ideal.

Emphases mine.

Iagree with Yglesius, too:

Now if Romney had wanted to say that the nature of his beliefs about Jesus are irrelevant to the campaign, fine. Similarly, if he’d actually wanted to avoid discussing Mormon theology, fine. But he didn’t stick to it. Instead, what he wanted to do was discuss just enough about Mormon theology to make it seem as similar as possible to orthodox Christianity while underscoring the idea that the nature of his belief in Christ is relevant to the campaign just insofar as his beliefs overlap with those of the Evangelical Protestants whose votes he’s courting.

All of this meshes with Romney’s disgusting efforts to unite all people of faith under the banner of excluding atheists entirely from his account of virtue. And this, in turn, combines with his ludicrous "say something nice about everyone" paragraph:

I believe that every faith I have encountered draws its adherents closer to God. And in every faith I have come to know, there are features I wish were in my own: I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient traditions of the Jews, unchanged through the ages, and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims.

What Sully Says

Ken AshfordWar on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

We live in a banana republic:

What defines such a republic? How about an executive that ignores the rule of law, commits war-crimes and then destroys the actual evidence? Today’s bombshell is that the CIA has done just that with respect to tapes  made recording the torture of enemy combatants. Read the whole story. We live in a country where the government can detain indefinitely, torture in secret, and then secretly destroy the tapes of torture sessions to protect its own staff:

The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terror suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in CIA custody — to severe interrogation techniques. They were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy, several officials said. The CIA said today that the decision to destroy the tapes had been made "within the CIA itself," and they were destroyed to protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value. The agency was headed at the time by Porter J. Goss. Through a spokeswoman, Goss declined this afternoon to comment on the destruction of the tapes.

My italics. This was a deliberate act to destroy evidence of war-crimes and to protect war criminals from facing the rule of law. The Congress needs to find out who authorized the destruction of those tapes. I should add that this is not the first time that videotapes of alleged torture sessions have been "lost."

Let me make this as crystal clear as possible: destroying evidence when you know there are investigations sourrounding that evidence, is a crime.  Period.

What everybody seems to forget is that merely 4 years ago, we were using the fact of Saddam’s terrible evil torture as a causa belli.  So where’s the moral compass here?

UPDATE:  Michelle Malkin is a howl today about this subject.  The basic gist of her post?  The CIA destroyed evidence of torture . . . and it’s the Democrat’s fault. 

She begins by taking the New York Times to task for publishing articles about how our government has concealed its torture program. She then criticizes Democrats who want to explicitly torture practices such as water boarding. Then she flips the entire argument around and blames the Democrats in Congress for not doing enough to hold the CIA accountable for destroying evidence of torture, despite the fact that when the destruction of the tapes occurred, it was a Republican majority.  Wow.

CLARIFICATION:  Not that there’s no reason to be upset with Dems.  Apparently some were aware of the obstruction of justice a while back and said/did nothing.  But of course, Malkin being outraged at Dems failing to oversee the CIA’s torture program — a program she thinks doesn’t require overseeing because it is perfectly legal — stains credulity.

Can’t Even Do This Right

Ken AshfordBush & Co.Leave a Comment

Embarrassing:

Harried homeowners seeking mortgage relief from a new Bush administration hotline Thursday had to contend with a bit of temporary misdirection from the president himself.

As he announced his plan to ease the mortgage crisis for consumers, President Bush accidentally gave out the wrong phone number for the new “Hope Now Hotline” set up by his administration.

This is the best part…

Anyone who dialed 1-800-995-HOPE did not reach the mortgage hotline but instead contacted the Freedom Christian Academy — a Texas-based group that provides Christian education home schooling material.

Huckabee Claims Jesus Endorses Huckabee

Ken AshfordElection 2008, GodstuffLeave a Comment

What he said:

STUDENT: Recent polls show you surging… What do you attribute this surge to?

HUCKABEE: There’s only one explanation for it, and it’s not a human one. It’s the same power that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of five thousand people. (Applause) That’s the only way that our campaign can be doing what it’s doing. And I’m not being facetious nor am I trying to be trite. There literally are thousands of people across this country who are praying that a little will become much, and it has. And it defies all explanation, it has confounded the pundits. And I’m enjoying every minute of them trying to figure it out, and until they look at it, from a, just experience beyond human, they’ll never figure it out. And it’s probably just as well. That’s honestly why it’s happening.

Does this mean that if Huckabee doesn’t win, Jesus has no power?

Seriously, dude.  That’s pretty arrogant, what you said.

Joe Carter, Huckabee’s e-press guy:

Let me clarify, while Governor Huckabee endorses Jesus, he certainly isn’t saying that Jesus endorses his candidacy.

No, he just said that Jesus is responsible for the surge in the polls.  Which means that Jesus prefers Huckabee to the other candidates.  Which is, you know, like an endorsement.

Twenty-First-Century Computing, as Explained by My Mother

Ken AshfordRandom MusingsLeave a Comment

Actually, it’s by the mother of McSweeney’s List writer Pasha Malla, but it could just as well be my mother:

the Internet: "Where people mess around with words."

e-mail: "A way of communicating with people. You plug in and go for it."

website: "Where you post information about a topic. Any topic. It could be anything. Therein lies the freedom."

firewall: "It must block something. On the computer. It’s something you can’t get beyond, no matter how hard you try."

Adobe Acrobat: "You made that one up."

virus: "You have anti-virus protection on your computer. It protects against bogey people—like, bogey-bogey. It’s really important. This scares me."

Firefox: "Definitely something to do with firewalls."

RAM: "The capacity of a computer … program. I think. Why don’t you just tell me? You’re mean."

MP3: "Pass."