Red Wheelbarrow

Fish and Chips?

2009-07-06T16:25:00.004-05:00

The Mayor of Liverpool, Nova Scotia, invited Paul McCartney to his town while he's having a concert in the province.

"I am writing to personally invite you to join us for fish and chips and an informal ukulele jamming session on the banks of the Mersey River in Liverpool," Mr. Leefe wrote.

Source

McCartney is a very public vegetarian.

Bye Sarah

2009-07-06T11:14:00.003-05:00

Jezebel's Anna N. analyzes Sarah Palin's resignation speech.

For a better understanding of Palin's approach to theology, consult the children's show Veggie Tales.

I sometimes wonder if American politicians who spend most of their energy saying the press needs to shut up remember what country they live in.

Seven Deadly Sins of the Train

2009-06-25T11:36:00.002-05:00

As many of us lock ourselves voluntarily in shiny metal boxes, "contestants in a suicidal race",Sting might say, it occurs to me that perhaps bringing back some of the shaming techniques of the middle ages might be helpful. We've already started going medieval on our prisoners of war, so why not bring back more of those "Dark" ages to brighten up our day. We can avoid the listing of virtues, as they are always a bit grating...

Learn from this justly irritating Youth,

To brush your Hair and Teeth and tell the Truth.

- Hillaire Belloc, from A Moral Alphabet

Now onto the sins!

The seventh sin is smell. Bringing hot, greasy food onto the train entraps us all into a McNightmare from whence we cannot escape. Coffee is neutral enought to get a pass...but smokers are always going to make me gag. The only thing alleviating the smoking sin is that you can escape the smell by moving a bit away, not always an option with the fast traveling smell of food.

The sixth deadly sin is "headphones". By encasing it in quotes, it indicates the headphones are at such a loud volume as to penetrate the heads of all in a 10 foot radius. The loudness of headphones is directly proportional to how truely awful the music being played is. I have yet to hear anyone blasting out a particularly engaging interview being given by Terry Gross

The firth deadly sin is cell phones, though it bleeds into the sixth with blended purpose phones much as the crappy ringtone you downloaded is making all our ears bleed. Exceptions for loud use of cellphones are if you have to give instructions to Jack Bauer how to best torture a suspect into opening a socket to save the city. Otherwise, as my late friend K_ would say, "Shut it.".

Fourth on the list of deadly train sins is paying for the ride. As the train prepares to leave, there are inevitably some dazed riders who only now realize they have to get off the train, and slowly make their way to the front, so they can lay down their bags across two sets of seats to only now begin looking for their ticket. Followed by a five minute conversation with the train conductor - who they seem to not know cannot leave whilst they are hanging out of the door - about where the train they are now leaving might be going next.

The third sin is person space. Not satisfied with taking up two sits as they nap on the train, these folks also stick the legs out into the hallway, making a dance necessary to get by. Not to mention the baseball fan - not sure why it's always them - who comes onto the train solely for the purpose of stretching, which can only be accomplished by placing their arms and rapidly balding heads as far back into the seats behind them as possible.

The second sins can apply to bicyclists, people with stroller carrying babies or groceries and those with giantic cardboard boxes of unknown seeping items who then find the only place for these is in the hallway, completely blocking egress for everyone behind them. This could be an actually deadly sin, in the event of an emergency.

The first deadly sin belongs not to passengers but to the management. Not aligning schedules to reality is not the fault of drivers if the schedule is impossible to keep - it's up to the Train-masters to correct. No GPS on trains, announced "times" for trains that are just someone reading the printed schedule, and not the real time when the train will arrive, is keeping us all in the dark.

Gone forever

2009-06-25T11:35:00.001-05:00

Now no married person will be able to tell their spouse they want to "go hiking in the Appalachians" without being given at the least a quizzical look.

10 Years

2009-06-23T20:14:00.001-05:00

10 years, and thousand of miles....now two rivals will meet again.

Mrs. Peggy

Conner

Lakewood, Ohio - the Battle of the Lake! Then Peggy goes to Niagara Falls with M_ for a tad. Conner is disdainful of waterfalls, since "the incident".

Daily Proverb

2009-06-23T08:16:00.000-05:00

Watching birds bathe and drink from a birdbath, one sees they have not heard of the germ theory of disease.

Seen on the train, an ongoing series

2009-06-22T20:20:00.004-05:00

Work - or rather, concern for excess fuel consumption involving us overly in the middle east, leads me to enjoy the trains in our areas. It's a bit sad that even where I live some are against more rail lines being built:

I HATE sitting on one of our many side streets waiting for a train to roll through. It's a danger at each street crossing. Does anyone know how many streets a train crosses at street level? The answer for the Rapid is zero. Add to that the danger to pedestrian traffic and the additional noise of a train through Lakewood and it's hard for me to see any benefit for Lakewood.

- Donald Farris, the Lakewood Observer forums
(source)

Actually the trains cross the streets a lot in Shaker Heights, but they've built the street alongside it. And as someone in the thread notes, cars are not too friendly when they bounce pedestrians around either. At least to be hit by a train, you have to be on the tracks. Cars can get you anywhere, on the sidewalk, in your homes, in balloons, and even in Canada.

There are still plenty of folks riding the rails who are just kept rapt by our ever-exciting economy that makes you wonder if buying a 5 ride ticket to get to your job is a wise investment. I saw one fellow eagerly reading, which makes people who might want to write pleased, although he was reading Dan Brown, which is a bit like watching someone eating scallops raised in a bathtub, if you see what I mean.

In other news the RTA (the local train and bus concern) is about to improve service for us all! They're going to...eliminate ticket booths in favour of ticket machines....and patrol the trains for those without proof of purchase. They already have the machines, sitting in Tower City and elsewhere. They have not been used for at least a month or more so far. They are still all on, and using electricity, but it being summer that's probably a good idea.

The main thing is I am still living in the region and enjoying mass transit, and so are many others. People who cannot bathe, smokers, and those carrying bags of deep-fried breakfast can feel free to avoid the trains if they wish, I've been told they help the environment more by being outside or in cars, or standing on the ends of piers on the lake.

Random Business Equations

2007-01-23T16:58:00.000-05:00

The amount of work a person does is inversely proportional to the amount of time they spend bragging about how hard they work.

Chance that someone is being scammed in a business meeting at Starbucks is increased by 21.5% each time one person mentions how much money someone else - who they do not name - has made in the potential venture.

Each time a person calls you instead of emailing, add 10% to the amount they care about their own time instead of yours, since it's faster to read than to listen.

There is a 94.3% chance that someone who uses the hand sanitizer on your desk when visiting is already sick.

82.1% of bloggers make up things without properly sourcing them.

Overheard on the train, a continuing series

2007-01-10T11:36:00.000-05:00

"I stole a ring by accident. I swear, I didn't mean to, I'm not thief, I don't even know how it happened. I was in [a store] and tried on a ring, it didn't have a tag on it. Then I kept shopping, bought some things, and went to the next store. I was browsing and saw I still had the ring on! I totally forgot it was there!"

"So I decided to see if I could steal some other things too, and I can".

"I can tell you how to steal from [lingerie store]. You know how? You just put the stuff on. They aren't gonna check your ass!"

- anonymous, on a train

Squirrel Madness?

2006-12-28T09:33:00.000-05:00

In lean years, Boutin said, trees starve squirrels so that when larger seed crops are produced randomly, there are fewer squirrels around to eat up all their future seedlings.
Monitoring red squirrels near Kluane National Park in the Yukon, however, led to surprising results.

Months before a big cone season started, squirrels went into a reproductive frenzy.

The pattern repeated itself in 1993, 1998 and again in 2005.

I for one, blame video games and sex on television. (link to CBC story)

Random cell cat photo

2006-12-27T09:38:00.000-05:00

M's mom's cat Olive contemplates having a squirrel under the tree.

Low brass is fierce

2006-12-11T12:59:00.000-05:00

They may change the picture later, but apparently low brass is a symbol of fierce fighting:

Link to Original BBC Story(link via Fark)

Got your holiday shopping done?

2006-12-05T13:21:00.000-05:00

Quote of the week

2006-11-30T14:16:00.000-05:00

Now, maybe it's because I have a toddler at home, but the EPA's argument, presented by Deputy Solicitor General Gregory Garre, quickly sounds very familiar. 1) I can't clean it up; 2) Even if I could, I don't want to clean it up; 3) You can't make me clean it up; and 4) China is making an even bigger mess. How come China never has to clean it up? When and if all that fails, the EPA, like my son, just puts its hands over its eyes and says there is no mess in the first place.

Dahlia Lithwick writing in Slate

Random cell photo from summer vacation

2006-11-27T18:30:00.000-05:00

The Torture Paradox

2006-11-10T09:22:00.000-05:00

The US Veep claiming waterboarding prisoners is a "no-brainer" is pretty appalling, though I have noted more than a few media outlets claiming waterboarding is not too bad of a torture. This article by Heather Malick gives the viewpoint of someone who actually had this technique used against him, by the Japanese in WWII:

"He directed the full flow of the now-gushing pipe onto my nostrils and mouth.… Water poured down my windpipe and throat and filled my lungs and stomach. The torrent was unimaginably choking. This is the sensation of drowning, on dry land, on a hot dry afternoon. Your humanity bursts from within you as you gag and choke. I tried very hard to will unconsciousness but no relief came."

We should not visit upon our enemies that which we would not accept as treatment for those of our own as prisoners. It doesn't matter if some of our enemies do that and worse - the reason we're better than our enemies, among other things, is that we do not torture.

The underlying paradox is this: if the treatment is so brutally effective, how can it also be harmless?

Stymied Cells

2006-11-08T22:33:00.000-05:00

Shorter Washington Times: "We don't know much about embryonic stem cells, so the wisest course is to research them less."

Random sentence overheard on a train

2006-10-25T14:52:00.000-05:00

My brother I and took a trip, and all the way down to Texas he was older than me.
- Train rider

Santorum on Lord of the Rings

2006-10-18T14:27:00.000-05:00

Santorum used the analogy from one of his favorite books, J.R.R. Tolkien's 1950s fantasy classic Lord of the Rings, to put an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq into terms any school kid could easily understand.

"As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else," Santorum said, describing the tool the evil Lord Sauron used in search of the magical ring that would consolidate his power over Middle-earth.

(Link found via BoingBoing.net).

A minor point - the war in Iraq is more akin to invading the mines of Moria and trying to "contain" Mordor, if we're going to use analogies. The fact he thinks that the many terrorists on earth are the equivalent of a single entity unable to focus on more than one place at a time is pretty telling. In the past, they've attacked embassies and naval vessels in various countries and continents. And not to put too fine a point on it, Iraq, unlike Mordor, was unlikely to overwhelm the entire world with it's forces or weapons in the forseeable future.

And if we're going to analogize LOTR, let's remember the leaders thought a direct attack on Mordor would be suicide. Instead, they made an attack to draw attention away from their spies in the form of hobbits inside the dark land. And let's not forget the plan was never to democratize Mordor, but to destroy it or render it inert.

No benefits for Traitors and Gays?

2006-10-18T11:46:00.000-05:00

Peter Graves, a spokesman for the Office of Personnel Management, which administers the congressional pension program, said same-sex partners are not recognized as spouses for any marriage benefits. He said Studds' case was the first of its kind known to the agency.

Under federal law, pensions can be denied only to lawmakers' same-sex partners and people convicted of espionage or treason, Graves said.

Glad we've got our priorities straight on this one. I'd like someone to explain to me how exactly this is defending marriage.

(Link)

Bad Headline

2006-10-12T17:08:00.000-05:00

Yankees Pitcher Made No SOS Call Before Crash

Link.

This just in - the Titanic didn't issue a Mayday, either.

Writing for pay

2006-10-10T12:11:00.000-05:00

Things that should be obvious but escape some people...
If you write about a subject that is paying you, and don't disclose that in your writing, it's not honest.

Jeff Hess is a source for this and always many other tasty tidbits of info.

Disclosures: No one pays me to write this blog. We have no ads, although you could argue that linking to my wife's Jewelry Site and my sister's Chapbook sites are kind of ads, but they don't pay me for them either. At least the links don't feature animated gifs or windows that can't be closed whilst blinking at you.

Give them Shelter

2006-10-10T11:48:00.000-05:00

If people want a cat or a dog, there are usually plenty available at local shelters. Stores in malls like The Animal Zone in the Great Northern Mall are often a source of problems for pets and owners alike. They sell sick animals to unwary buyers, sticking them with the vet bills in the end, or worse news for the pets. One dog in the aforelinked story was removed because it was underweight - this is just inexcusable.

If you're in doubt about shelter pets, you shouldn't be - medical problems are usually treated, and adopters are informed of any conditions. M_ adopted Conner in 1999 from the Berea Animal Shelter, and he's still our gray, unemployed, furry, sleepy friend to this day.

Web 2.0

2006-09-07T16:05:00.000-05:00

Many of you have read about the exciting new Web 2.0 that's coming around the bend. What is it? Many venture capitalists of the past may be slightly weary of the web, having gone through the phase in the 90's of not knowing what HTML was but agreeing to pay people $150/hour to write it for them. For those who have now finally understood HTML, Web 2.0 has the exciting possibility of adding a bunch of high tech acronyms sufficiently shiny and new to open up those wallets yet again. I am calling the bottoming out of this meme as being when Web 2.0 was touted as being helpful with dieting.

Vacation photos phase 1

2006-09-03T22:21:00.000-05:00

Cropped and edited the vacation photos for the Maine-Nova Scotia trip, they are now up here.
Update 9/13/2006 - Fix this link so it actually works now
Some samples:

Near Old Barns, outside of Truro, Nova Scotia

It was Blueberry season while we were there, we got a little blueberry hunting in. They are quick little things...

Harborville, Nova Scotia

All of the good photos were taken by M_, naturally.

Most are of scenery, tomorrow we try to put up the photos we got at Greg and Reta's wedding...