In case you missed it….
She looked good though, huh?
In case you missed it….
She looked good though, huh?
Not much to say about the terrible fires in California. It’s all very sad. But this underreported aspect to it caught my eye:
Our posting about the wildfires mentions that officials in San Diego used "reverse 911" calls to notify residents that they had to evacuate. We hadn’t heard of this practice. Thankfully, Debi Jones at Mobile Messaging 2.0 knows about the technology.
"The disastrous fires burning in San Diego have initiated a service used by the city and county government to inform and update residents. Mandatory evacuation orders have been communicated via reverse 911 on both landline phones and mobile phones," she writes. "The messages are prerecorded and as I’ve said, three messages have been received on my phone. The first was an evacuation order. The next message was a notice that San Diego schools are closed until further notice along with the instruction to keep children inside and restrict their activity levels (smoke and ash is so thick in the air that keeping it out of your house is impossible during large fires). The third message was information on evacuation centers that were still open as several are already full."
County officials estimate, based on census data, that their calls have reached more than 500,000 people.
Wired reports that these calls aren’t reaching everyone. "Those who rely on VoIP or cell phones exclusively are also out of the loop, because the system doesn’t know to call them. But the city has a website where residents can register a non-landline number and associate it with their address. It’s been up and down," the publication says.
Wired says some residents have taken to calling their home phone to see if their answering machine picks up. If it does, the house is still standing and the juice is still flowing.
Also, it looks like Twitter is coming into its own with the San Diego fires as the "front line" up-to-the-minute source.
The CIA has an actual "terrorist buster" logo:
Seriously. It’s on the CIA website. They just unveiled it.
Of course, it should look familiar to many of you…
Laugh, snort.
And it’s largely because of her answers to these questions:
I want to start with some questions about foreign policy and terrorism. If you become president you’ll enter the White House with far more power than, say, your husband had. What is your view of this? And what specific powers might you relinquish as president, or renegotiate with Congress — for example the power to declare a US citizen an enemy combatant?
Well, I think it is clear that the power grab undertaken by the Bush-Cheney administration has gone much further than any other president and has been sustained for longer. Other presidents, like Lincoln, have had to take on extraordinary powers but would later go to the Congress for either ratification or rejection. But when you take the view that they’re not extraordinary powers, but they’re inherent powers that reside in the office and therefore you have neither obligation to request permission nor to ask for ratification, we’re in a new territory here.
And I think that I’m gonna have to review everything they’ve done because I’ve been on the receiving end of that. There were a lot of actions which they took that were clearly beyond any power the Congress would have granted or that in my view that was inherent in the constitution. There were other actions they’ve taken which could have obtained congressional authorization but they deliberately chose not to pursue it as a matter of principle.
I guess I’m asking, can a president, once in the White House, actually give up some of this power in the name of constitutional principle?
Oh, absolutely, Michael. I mean that has to be part of the review that I undertake when I get to the White House, and I intend to do that.
What few people understand is the explosion of presidential powers that have occurred in the past 6 years under Bush-Cheney, many of the clearly beyond the scope of the Constitution. This should be alarming to both small-government conservatives and libertarians. Even if you don’t think Bush-Cheney has abused those powers, you should be concerned that a president — any president — in the future could decide to abuse them.
Hillary seems to understand that, and is the only candidate to my knowledge to openly suggest and work toward scaling back the presidential powers to make them in line with the Constitution. It’s also smart of her: it counters the ridiculous meme (thrown out by conservatives) that Hillary is a scary powermonger.
Of course, as others suggest, whether any future president is willing to voluntarily relinquish powers remains to be seen.
In case you haven’t heard, J.K. Rowling made a bit of news last week at a book signing:
In front of a full house of hardcore Potter fans at Carnegie Hall in New York, Rowling, sitting on the stage on a red velvet and carved wood throne, read from her seventh and final book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," then took questions. One fan asked whether Albus Dumbledore, the head of the famed Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft, had ever loved anyone. Rowling smiled. "Dumbledore is gay, actually," replied Rowling as the audience erupted in surprise. She added that, in her mind, Dumbledore had an unrequited love affair with Gellert Grindelwald, Voldemort’s predecessor who appears in the seventh book. After several minutes of prolonged shouting and clapping from astonished fans, Rowling added. "I would have told you earlier if I knew it would make you so happy."
This led to a predictable amount of conservative outrage. At Redstate, dvdmsr says the revelation means that “Dumbledore was more flawed than I thought.” At another prominent conservative blog, Newsbusters, they claim that the revelation somehow vindicates the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, who was showered with ridicule in 1999 after declaring that one of the Teletubbies, Tinky Winky, was gay. Mark Finkelstein, a Republican official in upstate New York, writes that “somewhere, Jerry Falwell is smiling”.
But the best outrage comes from "Blogs 4 Brownback":
At last the author, a Ms. J.K. Rowling, revealed the revolting truth: Dumbledore is a gay homosexual who doesn’t deserve to live on G-d’s green earth…
Well, I have some good news for the irate people at Blogs 4 Brownback: Dumbledore doesn’t live on God’s green earth.
Know why?
He doesn’t live at all. He’s fictional.
Yup, it’s true. He doesn’t exist in reality.
UPDATE: "Brownbeck" type fixed.
He looks like a hobbit, especially standing next to his 6 foot tall, tongue-pierced, 20-something, hot British wife. Not very presidential, I would say, which is why he’s in the bottom of the barrel in polls.
So this bit of news is likely to bring into the political mainstream:
Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has claimed to have seen a UFO, according to Shirley MacLaine in her new book, "Sage-Ing While Age-Ing."
Kucinich "had a close sighting over my home in Graham, Washington, when I lived there," the actress, a close Kucinich friend, wrote. "Dennis found his encounter extremely moving. The smell of roses drew him out to my balcony where, when he looked up, he saw a gigantic triangular craft, silent, and observing him.
"It hovered, soundless, for 10 minutes or so, and sped away with a speed he couldn’t comprehend. He said he felt a connection in his heart and heard directions in his mind."
Aliens sent insturctions to Dennis Kucinich? Oooookay then.
Although, it’s really not much different from Bush starting wars after he speaks to God.
Anxious to avoid upsetting air travelers, NASA is withholding results from an unprecedented national survey of pilots that found safety problems like near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than the government previously recognized.
NASA gathered the information under an $8.5 million safety project, through telephone interviews with roughly 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots over nearly four years. Since ending the interviews at the beginning of 2005 and shutting down the project completely more than one year ago, the space agency has refused to divulge the results publicly.
Just last week, NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers.
***
Among other results, the pilots reported at least twice as many bird strikes, near mid-air collisions and runway incursions as other government monitoring systems show, according to a person familiar with the results who was not authorized to discuss them publicly.
The survey also revealed higher-than-expected numbers of pilots who experienced "in-close approach changes" — potentially dangerous, last-minute instructions to alter landing plans.
So why keep it a secret? Here’s why:
A senior NASA official, associate administrator Thomas S. Luedtke, said revealing the findings could damage the public’s confidence in airlines and affect airline profits.
Yeah. Wouldn’t want to hurt airline profits….
YES, BELIEVE IT OR NOT, TODAY REALLY IS INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY!
As any Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy fan will tell you, that’s the answer: 42.
But what is the question?
How about this?
Suppose you could drill a hole through the Earth and then drop into it. How long would it take you to pop up on the other side of the Earth?
The answer is: 42 minutes.
On the plus side: Pretty large houses and a decent review.
On the minus side: Not as polished as we had hoped.
On opening night (Friday), we had a few minor bumps, attributable to opening night jitters I suppose. We seemed to have gotten over them by Saturday night, when the first Act was (for me) the best, and everything seemed to click.
Then came Act Two.
I was felt good about my Act Two (most of my heavy lifting, literally and figuratively, is in the first act). I tweaked a line or two that hadn’t worked, and was happy with my individual performance for the most part. But the group numbers — especially the closing — went severely off the rails, both from an onstage and technical perspective.
Now, there was some discussion as to whether the audience noticed anything or not. Being onstage, it SEEMED like we were a bunch of deer staring into headlights. Make that, a bunch of drunken deer staring into the headlights, trying to find where we were in the song, trying to hear the band, trying to listen to each other, while dancing around in cumbersome costumes and leaves and vines and whatever. I’m told NONE of that came across to the audience, which is good…
But for most of us — including our director Jamie (who was contemplating suicide at that point) — whether the audience noticed or not was irrelevant. We knew things had gone badly, that it wasn’t our best by far, and that’s all that mattered. The frustrating part was trying to determine HOW things got so bulloxed up, and it was difficult to identify the cause. Not knowing THAT made EVERYBODY nervous.
But Jamie pulled everyone together and did his General Patton routine. We worked the rough spots on Sunday, and were rewarded with a standing ovation at the end of the Sunday matinee.
Somewhat relieved, we were all able to enjoy a nice cast party at Jay’s (our lovely and talented ASM).
This is a hard show technically; Jamie said it was the most difficult show he’s done technically (and for Jamie to say that, you know it’s gotta be something). The plant, oddly enough, has posed very little problems for us technically; it tends to be sound issue, what with the band being behind a wall behind us. There are certain scenes where I literally cannot hear the person onstage with me, and I have to lipread to know when to say my line.
But we have it now, and we’re going to brush up this week just to be sure. Despite our attempts to mess it up, the audiences are really enjoying it. So next week’s show — I fully expect — will be as tight as a drum. You should come if you’re in the area.
And I was all ready to throw in the towel last week. Shame on me.
Down 3-1, and with Manny saying "Well, no biggie if we lose" (or words to that effect), I just didn’t have a good feeling about the Red Sox taking the pennant.
And even though we got off to a good start last night, we were leaving too many men on base and hitting into waaaay too many double plays. Up until the 7th, it was a nailbiter of a game. But once the crazy and/or scary Papelbon (pictured below) took the mound, I felt pretty good. And that’s when the rookies on the team really showed their stuff.
Now it’s time to face the Rockies. They really are, as everyone says, the hottest team in baseball right now. Ever. 21 out of the last 22 games blah blah blah. Okay, but there’s the thing. They’ve had a week to cool down the big mo. So, we’ll see. Should be a great World Series.
The video is a bit grainy, but worth it.
The setup is this. A public restroom. The mirror is replaced with ordinary glass. A pair of identical twins. The rest is self-explanatory…..
Variety’s managing editor tells us the campaign contributions of big stars, broken down by fiscal quarter-years. Some snippets:
George Clooney
Q2: ObamaBarbra Streisand
Q1: Clinton, Edwards, ObamaTobey Maguire
Q1: Obama
Q2: ClintonSusan Sarandon
Q1: Obama
Q2: Obama (additional contribution)
Q3: Richardson, EdwardsPaul Newman
06: Dodd
Q1: Dodd (additional contribution)
Q2: Clinton, Obama, Richardson
Q3: EdwardsTom Hanks
Q1: Obama
Q2: ClintonMichael Douglas
Q1: Obama, Dodd, Richardson, Clinton
Q2: Richardson (additional contribution)
Q3: KucinichMadeleine Stowe
Q1: Edwards
Q3: Edwards (additional contribution)Jamie Foxx
Q2: ObamaBarry Manilow
Q1: Edwards, Obama, Clinton
Q2: Biden, PaulChevy Chase
06: Dodd
Q1: ClintonElizabeth Taylor
Q1: ClintonForest Whitaker
Q3: ObamaTyler Perry
Q3: ObamaJon Bon Jovi
Q3: ClintonRenee Zellweger
Q3: ClintonSean Penn
Q3: Edwards, KucinichBette Midler
Q2: Richardson
Q3: Clinton, ObamaSidney Poitier
Q3: ObamaOprah Winfrey
Q3: ObamaOliver Stone
Q2: Obama, EdwardsRob Reiner
Q1: Clinton, Richardson, Edwards, DoddHugh Hefner
Q1: Clinton
Q2: Obama
Q3: Clinton (additional contribution)
Not suprisingly, the commie pinkos of Hollywood are all supporting a Democrat (or, in cases like Barry Manilow, all the Democrats). Only one contribution to a Republican candidate:
Dick Wolf
Q2: Thompson
Dick Wolf is executive producer of "Law and Order". Could have guessed…
My self-education as a wine conneseur is progressing slowly (as evidenced by the fact that I can’t spell "conneseur").
That said, I can safely say that I am not a fan of rice wine stuffed with baby mice:
Used as a cure all in rural parts of Korea, it’s made by stuffing a hoard of two to three day old mice into a bottle of rice wine and leaving it to stew for, ooh, a good year or so.
Updated casting choices for the new Star Trek movie:
Chris Pine (Just My Luck) will play a young Captain James T. Kirk and Karl Urban (Lord of the Rings) has been cast as Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy in J.J. Abrams’ upcoming Star Trek movie for Paramount. …Just last week, Abrams cast John Cho (Harold and Kumar) as Sulu, Simon Pegg (Hot Fuzz) as Scotty, and Eric Bana (Hulk) as the villain Nero. Also on board are Zoe Saldana (Guess Who, Drumline) as the young Uhura, Anton Yelchin (Hearts in Atlantic) as the young Chekov, and Zachary Quinto (Heroes) as the young Spock. Original Spock Leonard Nimoy will also appear in the movie. Little is known about the plot other than it will probably chronicle the Enterprise crew’s early days at the Starfleet Academy.
As some commentators have noted, it’s sounding a lot like Star Trek: 90210. I might pass.