A new PDA
Topic: Whatever
Ok, so does anyone else care? I care! I have been looking at getting a new one for over a year now but just couldn't decide. Do I need Wi-FI (we have it at work so it would be nice)? What about MP3s? Yes I do want that one. Photos? Absolutely. I finally ended up with the PalmOne Tungsten E and spent last night setting it up. It has a crappy cover so I'll have to get a better one but the color is so nice. My old one is a PalmIIIxe with 8 mg memory and no color. It was so full. This one has 32 mg and I bought a huge card for it so I can put books and photos on it. It's so cool!

I was a bit apalled to find that the battery doesn't come out. What if it gives out? Do I have to get a new Palm? That would suck. Anyway I'm having fun playing with it now and loading all kinds of stuff, half of which I'll probably delete later because I never use it.

Busses are running! Yeah!
Topic: Busses, Cars & Trains
Suntran, Tucson's bus system, went right up to the line of last night for a strike, but they pulled it out. What a relief. I can ride my bike and they usually have three or four routes running the Sunday schedule manned by supervisors, one of which is the #8 Broadway bus which I ride, but many people don't have those options. They always go on strike in August, too, when it is so hot here.

Berger and the Missing Documents - by ?
Topic: Current Affairs
It sounds like a murder mystery. What was murdered was our credulity. How can even the most credulous person who passionately wants to believe in Kerry, the Clintons and the whole Democrat party, really believe that Berger accidently put high security documents in his pants and then, once he had them at home, misplaced them. Ooooh! You know Republicans have gone to jail for much, much less than this. If this was Condolezza Rice she would be sitting in jail right now because the uproar from every major media would have been overwhelmingly against her and would have believed the worst.

Too many other blogs have covered this so much better than I ever could since I'm not even sure how the whole classified doc system works. Here are just a very few of them.

James Lileks
Commonsense and Wonder
Instapundit and again Instapundit
Peeve Farm

Take the beam out of your eye, . . . .
Topic: Current Affairs
Well this is so tacky! The Mainstream Coalition is sending out people to conservative churches to make sure they are not advocating political positions in church.

A recent Sunday found Tina Kolm changing her morning routine. Instead of attending a Unitarian Universalist service, she was at the Lenexa Christian Center, paying close attention to a conservative minister's sermon about the importance of amending the U.S. Constitution to ban gay marriage.

Kolm is one of about 100 volunteers for the Mainstream Coalition, a group monitoring the political activities of local pastors and churches. The coalition, based in suburban Kansas City, says it wants to make sure clergy adhere to federal tax guidelines restricting political activity by nonprofit groups, and it's taking such efforts to a new level.

The 47-year-old Kolm, from Prairie Village, said keeping church and state separate is important to her. She doesn't want a few religious denominations defining marriage - or setting other social policy - for everyone.

"What it's all about to me is denying some people's rights," she said.

But some local clergy think the Mainstream Coalition is using scare tactics designed to unfairly keep them out the political process.

"Somebody is trying to act like Big Brother when there's no need for Big Brother," said the Rev. James Conard, assistant pastor at the First Baptist Church of Shawnee. "It's obviously an intent to intimidate."

Kansas isn't the only place in this election year where church-state separation has become a hot issue, but the Mainstream Coalition's efforts are more intense than most.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed a complaint this month with the Internal Revenue Service against the Rev. Jerry Falwell over a column endorsing President Bush on his ministries' Web site. Falwell said the group was waging a "scare-the-churches campaign."

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United, said local chapters have sent volunteers to church services the Sunday before an election, but he said the Mainstream Coalition's efforts are more sustained.

"To my knowledge, there's no other state organization doing what the Mainstream Coalition is doing," said Lynn, himself a United Church of Christ minister.

Some conservatives are upset.

"These people will stop at nothing to silence churches," said Andrea Lafferty, executive values of the Washington-based Traditional Values Coalition, which says it represents 43,000 churches.

The catalyst for the Mainstream Coalition's campaign in Kansas was the debate over gay marriage.

So, who is checking up on the sermons at the Unitarian church where Ms. Kolm attends? I attended a UU church for years and know that they are strongly political. The difference is the liberal churches call it "careing for people" but when a conservative church does it it's called hateful. Right! The Unitarians are very strongly political and have advocated political positions in every service and program they have. How about the Mainstream Coalition getting conservative christians to check up on UU churches. Gee, I don't know. Maybe that's too hateful. How dare anyone suggest that a liberal church can't advocate whatever they want.

I do see that the Mainstream Coalition is using the usual tactic of saying Oh, they aren't political. All the political stuff is done by their political action committee, Main PAC. Sure! I believe that . . not.

Well, I'm off to my liberal Episcopal church and I can't really say that I've heard them advocate who to vote for but I have heard sermons that advocate positions that aren't held by President Bush. So, if the conservative churches advocate positions not held by Kerry, it's illegal, but if liberal churches advocate positions not held by Bush, it's ok?

The 911 Commission Report
Topic: Current Affairs
I am going to read the report. Thanks to my brother, Tim, who gave me the link to the Washington Post where I could download the report and put on my PDA. This may take a while but I do think it's important.

The preface is truly sobering. We didn't know what was going on and certainly didn't realize how serious it was. We have such a great country that we could not comprehend that people hate us. Not as many as the liberals think, but enough. The europeans don't so much hate us as feel superior and put us down at the same time. According to them us Johnny-come-lately's don't have the right to not be like them.

The terrorists, who do hate us, also hate Europe and Europe refuses to believe this. They think if they can just be understanding enough and nice enough the terrorists will leave them alone and, if they don't, it's the fault of the United States, which is crap. They hate a social structure that isn't fascist and think they can stay socially back a couple milleniums while enjoying all the benefits of modern life and science. Ain't going to happen.

But I digress. The paragraph that I think best defines terrorism is as follows:

We learned about an enemy who is sophisticated, patient, disciplined, and lethal. The enemy rallies broad support in the Arab and Muslim world by demanding redress of political grievances, but its hostility toward us and our values is limitless. Its purpose is to rid the world of religious and political pluralism, the plebiscite, and equal rights for women. It makes no distinction between military and civilian targets. Collateral damage is not in it's lexicon.

I read that paragraph and thought "This is against everything that the liberals say they believe in. Why are they supporting the terrorists? Why are they trying so hard to stop us from protecting ourselves from terrorism?". I look at Afghanistan and Iraq and see the administration working to help women with schools, hospitals and fighting for as many rights as they can get. I see the religious right in the fore front of the fight against slavery in Africa, which is mainly operated and run by muslims, very often black muslims, which I suppose is one reason the African American activist groups in this country don't want to acknowledge how wide spread it is. After all how can they say that slavery is racist when black africans are enslaving black africans.

Ok, we have an enemy who intends to kill us or convert us and even if they convert us they'll probably kill us anyway because they hate everything that we are. Next is Chapter 1. I looked at it quickly but it's about the hijacking of the planes on September 11, 2001 and I know it will bring back the fear when I couldn't get hold of my daughter and the horror that people could actually do this and the terror that our world has changed because of the hatred of people without a conscience and with no value but hate. I listened to Hugh Hewitt read some of it on Friday and I cried again but I think we do need to remember and repeat and read and never forget September 11, 2001.

Colors
Topic: Whatever
I am always so far behind the current when it comes to fashion and I'm always so upset when I buy something that is in a color I really like only to find that it's "out". I just can't buy a whole new wardrobe in the new colors every year. Now I find out that it really is a conspiracy. Yep! Two or three years ahead THEY know what the new colors will be. How else will they get us to buy clothes we don't need?

Mobile Internet
Topic: Busses, Cars & Trains
There is such a cool story about getting the internet to remote villages by motorcycle or, my favorite postal bus. Using WiFI they basically download and upload email as they go through the village. The whole page linked above is fascinating to read. One clip:

...but perhaps the cleverest plan to put the internet on wheels comes from a cunning scheme to provide e-mail access in rural India using buses. Given the reach of the bus network, it is estimated that this approach could provide national e-mail coverage for a paltry $15m. E-mail by bus--why not?

What a cool way for everyone to connect to the world. When I was growing up in Mexico we lived beyond the car roads and our mail came down on a man's back and then by mule train. Even a mule could carry the equipment and everyone could be connected, even remote villages in jungles or arctic. I like this idea though I realize that there are some people who would find this apalling.

Bus Riding Republicans
Topic: Busses, Cars & Trains
According to Greenbiz News delegates attending the Republican Convention in New York City will be using public transit to get around. There really isn't any other option. Hopefully some will like it. The lack of interest in public transit is a real blind spot in conservative politicians. Well, in conservatives in general. I feel like a voice crying in the wilderness.

Christian Comedy
Topic: Spiritual
The Washington Post had a great article on Christian comedy. This I would enjoy going to. I'm not particularly a prude and say some hells, damns, and even shits many days, but I get tired of listening to "humor" that's nothing but sex and bathroom jokes. It's like sitting on the bus and listening to some people who have a f*** separating every other word. It's so irritating and boring and a clear sign of a lack of using their intelligence, assuming they have any. It's also extremely discourteous.

Sure, I listen to a potty mouth comedian and laugh, at first, but very soon, if I'm still laughing it's because I don't want whoever I'm with to think I'm a prude, though I'm getting less interested in that. I'm not a goody two shoes. Dogma is one of my favorite movies, I don't care who you screw, as long as you do it in private and don't push it in my face and expect me to bless you, and I'm still working out (at 57) what I do believe, but I get so tired of people who think that the only humor in the world concerns sex or toilets.

Crime on Their Hands - by Dell Shannon
Topic: Books - Mystery
This is the 17th Luis Mendoza mystery. They are hard to talk about as they are about the same thing but I enjoy watching the detectives as they interact and their families grow up. Luis and Alison are delightful characters, Luis with his intuition and Alison with her creativity. Luis, a hispanic who grew up in the slums of LA only to find out his grandfather was sitting on millions, after he'd grown attached to his job and Alison a red haired Scot-Irish lady who had grown up in Mexico who manages to gather together a menagerie of animals and people. In this book they find a stray dog. Actually he finds them when he stows away in Alison's car and she and Mairi, their housekeeper, try to save a mockingbird who got into some tar.

The detectives at LAPD homicide have the usual spate of crimes with, always, an unusual one or two to pique Mendoza's interest. I do enjoy reading these books. I'm not sure why.

Appearances of Death - by Dell Shannon
Topic: Books - Mystery
This is the 25th Luis Mendoza mystery. Lieutenant Mendoza and his detectives have their hands full, as usual. A nurse is kidnapped late at night while leaving the hospital. An elderly woman, dressed in her finest, is found bludgeoned to death in a phone booth late at night near downtown. A gunman with a stammer is hitting all night stores. A car salesman is shot dead in his showroom office. An elderly couple is poisoned with mouse poison. The usual list of inhumanity towards each other. The interplay of the detectives and they see again the underside of the human race and grumble about why they stay at the unappreciated job.

Luis is also trying to keep his wife, Alison, who is pregnant from running around looking for a house to hold them, their children and all their cats. She finds just the place.

The Best Think I Ever Tasted: The Secret of Food - by Sallie Tisdale
Topic: Books - Food
This is such a wonderful book. It's like she knew me, all of us. The author takes us from the 50s she knew growing up where everyone was enthralled with 'quick' foods. With convenience foods. With convenience appliances. Where no one really thought about what they ate but just ate what they told was good. Wonder bread. Bisquick. Hamburger helper.

She wanders through the years from medieval, and even before, to today and talks about why people eat what they eat. She talks about how we took ethnic food and made it bland and took the rough food of poor people and were told that now we could eat like rich people and have white bread and white sugar.

Most of all, though, she talks about how little knowledge we have of how we get our food and when we do know we try to not know. We don't want to know where our food comes from, we just want what we want, when we want. Most people in western nations never know what it is to be hungry, the natural rhythm of life not that long ago. Abundance and hunger. It's like we still have that craving for more and more that's never satisfied.

She talks about diets, her diets, other people's diets and how demoralizing they are as we struggle to not eat our abundance and yet can never not think about food. I know that's true. I was so smug in my skinnyness until I quit smoking and hit menopause and gained weight. It seems like since then I spend so much time thinking about food and what I want to eat, and can I eat it, and what should I eat but what I really want to eat. It is so pathetic. We starve ourselves in the midst of abundance because fat used to be a sign of wealth only now everyone can be fat so being anorexic is the new status.

I was never really hungry, but I know what it's like to not have much choice in what to eat, both when I was a child and money got tight and when I was a single mother. I remember how orange juice was such a luxury to me when my children were little and I couldn't afford pop or potato chips, but we were never hungry. Now I buy too much because it's such a pleasure to buy fruits and wonderful vegetables and all the meat I want. So I buy it and it rots because it's too much but I go out and do it again like I can't just buy enough.

Tisdale leads us down the roads of food and all it's meaning and angst, disgust and yearning, what we think food should be and what it actually is. She deflates our high opinion of our worldly cuisine.

Good book!

Young Conservatives
Topic: Current Affairs
The New York Times had a story about young conservatives (thanks to Andrew Sullivan). It's very interesting. I've always thought that there was much more diversity in the conservative movement than in the liberal movement and this confirms that it's continuing.

I, Robot - addendum
Topic: Culture
The right to choose our own safety also includes the right to believe how we want to believe regardless of whether or not that means we go to hell. Anyone who thinks that it's okay to harm people in order to save them in the afterlife, is wrong. This is the motive of parents who kill their children in order to make sure they go to heaven. This was the motive of the inquisition as they felt that they were giving the tortured person a chance to repent, and therefore go to heaven. This is the motive of "deprogrammers" who believe they are doing good by brutalizing people who don't believe like they think is correct. It's all justified in the name of saving them. This is no different from "saving" people from their own stupid choices about this life.

I, Robot - Movie starring Will Smith
Topic: Culture
This is a very good movie. It sort of is based on some concepts of Isaac Asimov's books though quite a bit of liberty has been taken with his original stories. Besides the concept of whether or not robots could evolve to take over the world is the idea of what is "safe enough". The robots think they have to take humans prisoner because they keep doing stupid things. This, of course, is what we often do to ourselves with stupid laws.

The current controversy over whether or not we need someone to tell us what we can and cannot eat is part of this. Personally, I think we are each responsible for what we eat and if someone gets sick or dies because of their choices, I don't feel that that is my responsibility or that I should have to pay for it. I try my best to eat what's right and do what's right but this is balanced by what is pleasurable and exciting. These are choices everyone has to make for themselves and when these choices are taken from us, we are prisoners. Anytime such issues are settled by laws and lawsuits, I end up paying for it one way or another. The only ones that come out ahead are the lawyers, like John Edwards.

This is a very good movie and even though it was loosely based on Asimov it's made me want to read some of his books again. I always enjoyed the "science" side of science fiction more than the "sword and sorcery" side, though I liked the s&s also. I always figure science is way ahead of magic and much more responsiable, though anything can be preverted. I just looked at my bookshelf and I have Heinlein and Gibson but no Asimov. I'll have to check the library. (Pause) Oh, just checked the public library and everyone of the "I, Robot" books are checked out. Good! It's always nice when something stirs people to read a book. I put my name on reserve.

Felony at Random - by Dell Shannon
Topic: Books - Mystery
This is the 27th Lieutenant Luis Mendoza mystery. A girl disappears at the Museum of Natural History and all the detectives at the LAPD Homicide division feel the shiver that always comes when a child disappears. Another child disappeared not long before from her house and has never been found.

While busy looking for the missing children they get an anonymous letter that a lady who they thought had died from drinking too much was murdered and that she wasn't the first one. A policeman is shot in his own home. An innocent man is anonymously accused of a crime and the detectives find out he's been accused again and again over the last few years which has caused him quite a bit of trouble. Elderly people on a small block start dying. All in all a full plate for the detectives.

Luis's wife Alison has their third child, Luisa, and is busy with the new (?) 100 year old winery she's renovating for them.

Storm
Topic: Whatever
I watched the storm move in. I could tell it was coming about 7:00 with winds building up and lightning to the west but it just now, 8:00 PM, hit with rain pouring. It's so cool to watch. I've seen rain move across the desert and never hit me and it's so unlike storms in the midwest and east where it rains everywhere not just in spots. This looks like a fairly wide storm and the rain is so welcome.

It only got to 98 today but it felt like an oven because of the humidity. I went to the mall and walked around for a while just to get some exercise and stay cool. The mall was jammed so I wasn't the only one.

The Wharton's Stretch Book - by Jim and Phil Wharton
Topic: Books - Nonfiction
I've got a book a week ago on stretching since I've felt so tight and creaky lately. At my age I might say that's to be expected but I didn't want to spend the rest of my life like that. I spent about an hour looking at books on stretching at the bookstore and finally took this one, almost by default.

It is a comprehensive stretching book. It stretches you from your neck to your toes. Yes, it even has stretches for toes. It takes a good hour to do all the stretches so I've broken them up in half hour groups and do part morning and part afternoon. I feel a little less creaky but it's not anything to shout about.

What is wonderful is that I'm doing the evening group just before bedtime and I'm sleeping like a log for the first time in a long time. Well, maybe not like a log but I'm falling asleep faster and don't wake up as much. This alone is worth the cost of the book. It does take some effort to spend that much time in stretching but I'll keep it up if only to get better sleep.

DHMO! Oh No!
Topic: Current Affairs
The horror of it! The horror of it! The next time you read something that is designed to scare you go to the DHMO site and read it carefully comparing the statements on the new scare site with the statements on this. What a great website.

Rainy week
Topic: Cycling
I only rode my bike to work on Monday and today. Our monsoons started in earnest and the chance of rain was well over 50% most of the week and I always have to take a big breath and face riding home in the rain. It's not really the rain but the chance of lightning. If there's lightning when I leave work I just leave my bike and work and take the bus home but if it starts when I'm halfway home and no place to stop it's a bit scary. I've also had fairly deep water of the streets to ride though that I'm not too crazy about.

Today I rode though and it was nice. It's cool in the morning but so humid. I can usually ride to work without really breaking a sweat but now that we're getting the humidity it's like riding in a sauna. It was fairly cool this afternoon because of the clouds and a nice ride home despite the humidity.