The beagle is once again in his customary final exam support role, next to me down here in the basement as the wind from the approaching thunderstorm howls outside.
Superstitious though it may seem, I know I’ll make it through as long as he’s around.
Well, ugh. That’s my reaction after completing the first three assignments for the first of four undergrad courses the University of Michigan is forcing me to take before I will be permitted to join that exclusive club, grad school, on 29-June.
UM’s School of Ed pointed me to, of all places, Brigham Friggin’ Young University’s online independent study department to pick up two geographies, one political science and one economics class in the next eight weeks. I didn’t know it was possible.
But for a mere $1,380 plus the cost of books, you too can get 12 hours of undergrad college credit from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And believe me, the course materials let you know that little fact.
Other than the rather obvious evangelistic efforts, it actually is pretty slick. After you register and pay online, they send you CD-ROMs with Quicktime movies and an access code. You can order your books directly from them or, as I did, cheap online from half.com. (Geography120: $93 at BYU; less than $10 online.)
I received the first CDs last week, and the book for the first geography course today. I went online, entered the access code, enjoyed the presentation from BYU’s president extolling the virtues of education to Godly young men and women, and then started the course.
You are given supplemental text lessons and you read the textbook, then are given opportunities to write short-answer essays and practice the true/false and multiple choice assignment. Once you feel you’ve mastered the text and the practice sessions, you do what is called a ‘Speedback Assignment,’ which is 25 multiple choice and true/false questions. It is open book. Once you’re satisfied with your answers, you hit submit and the assignment is graded instantly.
For my first geography course, there are 13 lessons, a ‘mid-term’ and a final exam. Only about half of the lessons have graded Speedback Assignments, but each of those are worth 5% of your final grade.
The mid-term and final must be proctored by a qualified person. BYU sends the exam materials to the proctor, who administers the test and sends it back (you pay postage). Two weeks after you complete the final, you get a final grade and an official BYU transcript showing completion. Since that will satisfy the state of Michigan that I meet their higher-than-Oklahoma standards for an elementary education social studies minor, it works and I can recommend it … so far. After two graded lessons, I have a 94 average.
Still, I’m having flashbacks to the ‘80s, especially since the middle school class I ‘guest taught’ today spent an hour watching The Goonies. A college boy once more. I’ll have to try better this time around; not cutting classes to go watch bad ‘80s movies like, well, The Goonies should help.
Y’all excuse me now, though. I have a headache brought on by contemplating the peripheral distribution of the populations of Mediterranean Europe, Jefferson’s theories on principal cities and whether Belarus or the Czech Republic is a better source for computer programmers and whether the latter will be able to successfully deal with 100,000 historically repressed Romany.
Ah the halls of ivy.
Between converting this site to Textpattern—since LunarPages is no longer interested in helping resurrect MovableType (if they ever were)—and starting my 12 hours of undergrad courses in preparation for grad school 29-June and substitute teaching, I’ve had very little time for updates here, sorry.
But let’s take a quick look at how the Boy War Emperor is making us ‘Murricans safer, shall we? First up, « when Mubarak talks, perhaps we’d better listen »:
‘Arabs in the Middle East hate the United States more than ever following the invasion of Iraq and Israel’s assassination of two Hamas leaders, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in comments published Tuesday. Mubarak, who visited the United States last week, told French newspaper Le Monde that Washington’s actions had caused despair, frustration and a sense of injustice in the Arab world. “Today there is hatred of the Americans like never before in the region,” he said in an interview given during a stay in France, where he met President Jacques Chirac Monday.’
—News.MyWay.com
Ooops.
‘He blamed the hostility partly on U.S. support for Israel, which assassinated Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi in a missile strike in the Gaza Strip Saturday weeks after killing his predecessor, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. “At the start some considered the Americans were helping them. There was no hatred of the Americans. After what has happened in Iraq, there is unprecedented hatred and the Americans know it,” Mubarak said. “People have a feeling of injustice. What’s more, they see (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon acting as he pleases, without the Americans saying anything. He assassinates people who don’t have the planes and helicopters that he has.”’
‘Unprecedented hatred?’ Ruh-roh. Not even precedented on 11-Sep?
‘Israel says such killings are self-defense. But Mubarak said the assassination of Rantissi could have “serious consequences” and that instability in Gaza and Iraq would not serve U.S. or Israeli interests. “The despair and feeling of injustice are not going to be limited to our region alone. American and Israeli interests will not be safe, not only in our region but anywhere in the world,” he said.’
Not safe anywhere in the world. Thank you, George W. Bush.
But don’t worry. Our Imperial Senate is on the job, as « a leading senate fascist says the ‘D’ word »:
‘A senior Republican lawmaker said that deteriorating security in Iraq may force the United States to reintroduce the military draft. “There’s not an American … that doesn’t understand what we are engaged in today and what the prospects are for the future,” Senator Chuck Hagel told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on post-occupation Iraq. “Why shouldn’t we ask all of our citizens to bear some responsibility and pay some price?” Hagel said, arguing that restoring compulsory military service would force “our citizens to understand the intensity and depth of challenges we face.” The Nebraska Republican added that a draft, which was ended in the early 1970s, would spread the burden of military service in Iraq more equitably among various social strata. “Those who are serving today and dying today are the middle class and lower middle class,” he observed. The call to consider a imposing a draft comes just days after the Pentagon moved to extend the missions of some 20,000 of the 135,000 US troops in Iraq.’
—Yahoo News
And just what provoked said ‘intensity and depth of challenges we face,’ eh, Chuckie? I’ll answer the question for you: the Boy Emperor’s Divine Providence hubris, his Cabal’s incredible criminal negligence and ignorance, the complete dereliction of duty by the Congress, talk radio screaming bloody murder and, as a victim of the vast right-wing conspiracy told editors today, « the timidity and cowardice of the fourth estate »:
‘Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) told newspapers editors gathered here this afternoon that they had to be “more vigilant” and act with “more tenacity” to combat the failures of the Bush administration to provide “vital information” to the public. Interviewed by Marvin Kalb on the opening day of the annual American Society of Newspaper Editors convention, Sen. Clinton said: “It’s difficult for editors and publishers here to get to the bottom of stories. This administration, to an extent I haven’t seen before, tells the press to go away—and they do, like most people do when told that more than once. … Many in this administration are quite expert at saying nothing despite your best efforts to get them to say something.” She reminded the editors that “so much is at stake now and the public needs more information.” She also warned that “the echo chamber of talk radio can drown out a three-part series any of you write.”’
—Editor and Publisher
Amazing that she of all people would cut them a break with moderate language. Until these people get their heads shaken so hard their pea brains rattle, they will continue to be steamrolled by the Imperial Cabal. Bet on it.
Blender and VH1 have teamed up to list the 50 worst songs of all time. I would agree that Starship’s “We Built This City” is a plenty bad song, but the worst? The worst? Have these people never heard Bryan Adams’ ”(Everything I Do) I Do It for You?” Michael Bolton’s “How Am I Supposed to Live without You”? Kenny G’s “Songbird”? Anyway, I may be old and irrelevant, but any magazine that splatters photos of Mariah Carey and Christina Aguilera all over its website will have a lot to answer for in 10 or 15 years.
Also, it says everything that none of their top 10 picks is older than 1982, which means none of the Blender crowd is older than, say, 28. That means not old enough to have ever suffered through the sheer torture of Mary MacGregor’s “Torn between Two Lovers,” David Soul’s “Don’t Give up on Us,” and Terry Jacks’ “Seasons in the Sun.” What punishment is it to have gotten through Wang Chung and Bobby McFerrin intact and relatively sane? You can only say you’ve lived if you’ve survived Dan Hill and Barry Manilow. And Morris Albert. Now those are battle scars.
How long will it be before all the ash trees in southeastern Michigan die out? I heard a figure on the radio just now of 6 million ash decimated by the emerald ash borer and almost did a double take. Unbelievable.
A howling wind tore through the boulevards of the southeastern Michigan town, stirring up dust motes, leaves, beetles, and memories of regret, pathos, and anomie.
This year’s Lyttle Lytton Prizes (a spinoff from the better-known Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, sponsored every year by San Jose State University) have been announced. The winner:
This is the story of your mom’s life.
Runners-up:
I am pleased to announce that, although attitudes have improved immensely, the beatings will continue.
And:
While a hellish yowl tore my throat, the panicked kitten—in fact me—leapt crying for the throat of Julia, there seeking comfort—and revenge.
And:
Juicy, their love was like forbidden fruit: tasty.
My favorite, though, is this one:
I know who the murderer is, Kevin blogged.
[Link courtesy Metafilter.]
Let’s see. Prediction from the National Weather Service: possibility of thunderstorms 20%; temperature will rise to 76 by noon then fall to 67; and the winds will be between 25-30 mph, with gusts as high as 49 mph.
Great. I don’t know whether to dress for wind and rain or for a luau.
This weather is almost astonishing in its California-ness. Blue skies, sunlight for most of the daylight hours, temperatures in the high 70s, and lots of dry wind. I suppose, on second thought, it’s more like a typical spring day in Merced, but that’s neither here nor there.
Wildflowers are popping out all over the complex. The robins and the starlings, with their shiny-coal feathers and their striking long yellow beaks, were out in force all weekend, poking around the grass for food. The squirrels were not quite as mobilized, but they made their presence known. A black cat from across the fence terrorized the beagle briefly.
The twentysomethings across the “yard” from us played some ball for a while this afternoon, but it was otherwise very quiet this weekend, which is curious considering that they were out almost every night during the week tossing Frisbees or tossing their pigskin. Maybe they work weekends, who knows.
This weather, though undeniably pleasant in a generic sort of way, makes me feel incredibly lethargic and useless. I find it amusing that it has finally been proven beyond a doubt that this so-called native Californian does not really have any deep primordial longing for stereotypical Californian weather conditions. Not that anyplace in California other than San Diego necessarily has those stereotypical conditions (if you think LA does, check out the eternal smog-yellow sky and then get back to me).
Those fanstasies that people are supposed to have about escaping to Tahiti or Maui or some other tropical island with palm trees and piña coladas? I don’t have those.
The one silver lining that I haven’t quite been able to figure out is that my allergies seem to have suddenly dissipated. No clogging or asthma for the past three or four days, at least, and no pharmaceutical adjustments needed. Not sure why, but I’ll take the normalcy wherever I can get it.
The dog was back to his old tricks today, though he seemed to be somewhat more drowsy than usual (which is to say, he spent somewhat more than his usual 22.5 hours a day asleep). He ran without much apparent impairment down the stairs to be let out this morning, darted speedily over to the patio door to make some noise at a visiting squirrel, and whined for treats. All is normal in beagle world.
The nightmare that is the last few weeks of school is almost over ….. yet it seems right now as though it will never be over. April 29 seems very far away.
We no longer have cable, so we’re already unwittingly doing it, but if you have cable and are of a mind to do this, it’s something to consider. [Link courtesy LibraryJuice.]
[First pic: We’re going somewhere? Now? YAHOO!!! Second pic: Ummmm, this is a really long hike, dude. Third pic: ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!]
Today, we demanded too much of the geriatric and overweight in our house. And I’m not referring to myself or Frank.
We took the beagle on a very long (too long) hike around Pickerel Lake, north of Chelsea in the Pinckney State Recreation Area.
He’s all worned out.
We drove out to Peach Mountain, which is, allegedly, according to this thing called the internet, a place where you could walk around Stinchfield Woods. But we ran smack-dab (as we say in Oklahoma) into that monolithic institution, the University of Michigan, which owns all of that neck of the woods and has an observatory on Peach ‘Mountain.’ (And I wonder if they also own that strip-mine quarry out there, too?)
The roads have very stern ‘No Parking for Any Reason at Any Time’-type signs every few yards and the trees on the edge of the property have ‘No Access for Any Reason at Any time’-type signs every few yards. I don’t think UM wants anyone to get in there, even though we, the public, supposedly ‘own’ it.
So we pushed on and discovered our second obstacle. The Pinckney State Recreation Area, like the Hudson Mills Metropark nearby, charges admission. We thought $4 for Hudson Mills was a little absurd for a short hike; imagine our surprise when the friendly ranger at PSRA wanted $6.
He leaned towards my driver’s-side window and asked which pass we wanted, the day pass? The beagle answered from the backseat with a very loud ‘Ruff!’ Alas, we didn’t have that much cash with us, not having planned on being charged for touching nature.
We turned around and found the parking area at Pickerel Lake (free!) and had a reasonably enjoyable hike (with the exception of a visit from a very friendly and hyper terrier of some sort named Howard, who was at a loss to understand why Bayley was rather … less-than-happy to see him.
The trail is lovely and even though you have to share the road with mondo-bicyclists who all look the same, since they’re outfitted as if they’re in the Tour de France, they were polite and friendly and it wasn’t too bad.
It was, however, way too long for the old, fat beagle. I ended having to carry him the last quarter-mile or so back to the Jeep. On our last rest stop, he attempted to sit down and ended up falling over. And yes, I should be horsewhipped; I’m feeling majorly guilty this evening for not taking just a little bitty hike with him.
He’s been very quiet this evening, not moving a whole lot because he’s sore. Otherwise, he seems to be fine; he’ll just be grandpa-ish for a couple of days. He did enjoy most of the hike (although he could have done without meeting Howard) and it was a beautiful spring day, so it was a good thing.
And maybe, just maybe, he lost a pound or two of all that winter fat. He turns 10 in August and the Battle of the Bulge is getting ever more crucial in making sure that he matches his great-grandmother’s record of 17+ years of happy beagle life.
The archival permalinks are now working. I missed a step in the Textpattern setup regarding ‘clean URIs’ that I didn’t see the other day. So, we should be back running. No word yet on if or when LunarPages can resurrect Movable Type; the server is scheduled to go down Sunday at 04:00, so even accessing the site might be difficult. But at least I figured out most of the archiving system.
Now. Can anyone explain what an ‘NAS’ is and why they might want to move the server AirBeagle.com resides on to such an animal (a move which, I might add, resulted in total failure and the necessity to pull it back out and redo the whole thing—ha, ha, Windoze stuff is so funny.)
« Here’s how the Boy Emperor supports our troops ». Dr. Strangerummy made the announcement:
‘The Pentagon formally announced Thursday that it had stopped the planned return from Iraq of some 20,000 American troops, giving commanders the extra firepower they believe necessary to confront an insurgency that is taking a mounting toll on the U.S.-led coalition. The decision, announced by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after first being reported Wednesday, breaks a promise to soldiers who were assured when they arrived in Iraq that they would stay no more than one year. By extending their tours of duty by three months, the Pentagon is acknowledging that the insurgency has ruined its plans to reduce the size of the U.S. military presence this spring. The troops had expected to return home this month after completing 12 months in Iraq.’
—MSNBC
‘A promise made is a promise kept,’ indeed. Shame on them all.
Support our troops. Bring them home.
Proof that Ann Arbor is not always a ‘sunless horror, devoid of joy and hope,’ was provided by a gigantic orange ball in the sky the last couple of days; beagles were especially grateful as they took the opportunity to get in some serious tanning. (No, he’s not mad in that last pic, he’s blinkin’ in the sunlight.)
Thank god for spring.
Weekend Magazine, The Michigan Daily’s, well, weekend magazine, put out its Best of Ann Arbor issue today and a very well-deserved Best Blog award was given to Rob over at Goodspeed Update.
We weren’t even mentioned. Alas. I’m beyond crushed.
The nod to GU is great, but the article’s true genius is the final paragraph, when ‘Arts Writer’ Ruby Robinson pens the following:
‘The future looks bright for blogging to become common practice, especially as bloggers don’t have to follow the rules of newspaper grammar and citing sources and can post articles, opinions and random thoughts with ease and comfort.’
Pardon my very loud guffaws (mixed with a tinge of righteous indignation). But that’s about the smarmiest thing I’ve seen come out of any little local newspaper in quite some time. And believe me, I’ve seen some smarmy out there.
And it comes from a paper that names umich.edu as the Best University Website in Ann Arbor and names whites as the Worst Race, and had staffers call up pizza parlors in town pretending to be drunk and confused Indians with heavy accents, a craving for jalapenos and a spotty phone reception in order to judge the quality of the service.
Isn’t it great, my fellow bloggers, to be looked-down upon by the likes of The Daily? Methinks Ms. Robinson needs to find out that many blogs are not run by 14-year-old girls writing in IM-speak about Justin Timberlake rumors.
Not that all that should take away from Rob at all; congratulations to him for all his very hard work … it’s well-deserved.
Technology is a wonderful thing … until it crashes and burns spectacularly.
We’ve had our own problems (obviously) with technology here around the manse this week; the crash of our Movable Type CMS punted us back into the dark ages of hand-coding web pages (oh the horror!).
But at least we weren’t alone. I went to the Mallett’s Creek branch of the AADL this afternoon and picked out my customary haul of movies (‘cause, after all, it’s my job; around here, Frank’s the Music Nazi, but I’m the Movie Nazi).
But when I went to the self-checkout machines, the screen was filled with an apology notice, ending with ‘See Circulation Staff.’
I went up to the circ desk (fortunately there was no line), where, after 15 tries to make the reader recognize my library card, the librarian was left scrambling for (oh the horror!) a pen and paper. The entire library system was down.
She found a few forms and a pen and wrote down my card number and then had to list the bar codes for all 12 of my movies.
This was followed by the kicker: It took her and another librarian to figure out when the movies were due back. They had difficulty deciding the date one week hence that I am to return the items. Quite a line was beginning to form at this point. Finally, they decided on April 22 as the due date (‘15 plus 7 equals 22, doesn’t it?’).
And then high technology came back to the rescue: She used a ‘Post-It’ note to write the due date and stick it on the movie box (‘Do you want one for each of your 12 movies, sir?’ she asked. ‘No thanks, that’s not necessary,’ I said, my eyes a little wide).
It’s so good to know that some technology is reliable … I simply cannot imagine what would have happened if that sticky note had not worked.
Until I straighten out the fight between Movable Type and Textpattern over my single SQL database, older comments you may have made on posts will not be available, but they are not lost. However, the commenting system is working fine, so feel free to rant away … that is all.
Today really felt like the first day of spring. Classes were sitting out holding their sessions in circles on the grass, there was some massive groovy “Goodness Day” event going on in the Diag, and every available spot on the grass was covered with sunbathers or Frisbee throwers. A lot of out-of-town visitors now too, as one of our readers predicted. It’s supposed to get up into the 70s in the next couple of days. It almost makes you wish there were a beach nearby.
Well, Textpattern is installed and working … I hope. Comments are back and we’re Movable Type/CGI/Perl-free and mostly PHP (but still XHTML Strict compliant). There are some slight differences that I’ll have to work around over the next few days.
There are still some issues; the recent articles and recent comments sections on the sidebar still need some tweaking; MT entries need to be imported; the archiving system has kinks I’ll have to work out over time; and categories are screwed for awhile for reasons I won’t go into.
I’ll have to laboriously add back all entries for the last two weeks, because of MySQL database complications I also won’t bore you with.
But it’s good to be back. Did you miss us?
« This is incredibly disturbing and sad’ »:
‘Out here on the farthest reaches of the U.S. military effort in Iraq, they are calling it “The Silent War,” the one where Marines are mortared and maimed, bombed and blown up, ambushed and killed, and almost nobody but them and their families know about it. Out here on the western perimeter, a few hundred yards from the Syrian border, a battalion of Marines, spearheaded by the embattled Lima Company, has been fighting for nearly two months to forge stability on a piece of territory that the Army’s 82nd Airborne carved out before them, also in relative anonymity. They don’t make the headlines, not like those in Fallujah or Baghdad, but they still bleed and die, still mourn the loss of their comrades.
…
Gannon was surprised when he saw the heavy casualty reports from the 82nd Airborne, which had been there before the Marines. “I was, like, `Whoa, why haven’t we been reading about this?’” he said while sitting in the small office that is his command center. “What’s been going on here? Have they been having some kind of silent war? And, sure enough, they had been.”
…
“We’ve had more contact here in a week than we did in the entire first phase of the war,” said Lt. Isaac Moore of Wasilla, Alaska, who fought with Lima last year and now is with Weapons Company. Cpl. Matt Nale, 32, of Seattle, said he has seen it all, from mines to bombs to small-arms fire. “I don’t think there’s a day that we’ve been out that we haven’t been hit,” he said. Most of the injuries have been relatively minor. Fewer than 10 Marines have been taken out of commission. “Still,” said Navy Corpsman Justin Purviance of Denver, “if we keep getting wounded at the rate we’re going, one of every three men in the unit will be injured before we get out of here.”’
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
33% casualty rates possible? And you gotta die and be sent home silently and anonymously in an aluminum tube before us fat lazy bastards back home even hear your name?
And this in a quiet corner of the Imperial Province of Iraq. What’s happening elsewhere?
Meanwhile, the Boy Emperor ‘acknowledged that recent images from Iraq were alarming. “Look, nobody likes to see dead people on their television screens,” he said. “I don’t. It’s a tough time for the American people to see that. It’s gut-wrenching.”’
I don’t care if you don’t like to see ‘em, you Texas Twit, YOU ordered their deaths and injuries and YOU should have the courage to look at each and every one of them and finally and fully understand the consequences of your extremist political agenda. Your gut should be wrenched … each and every single minute of every day that you don’t clean up this mess you and your ‘advisors’ created.
And you need to fully and completely, without the smarmy, unapologetic frat-bastard-ness, explain to Lima Company why you lied and condemned them to taking 33% casualties in Husaybah.
After pitching a fit with LunarPages, who finally apologized and agreed to restore the entire Movable Type installation, I spent an hour or so this morning trying to make the backup work. It doesn’t.
MT is, to a non-programmer such as myself, often incomprehensible and beyond cranky. If you don’t hold your mouth just right and pray to the Gods of Venus and Mars and turn around three times counter-clockwise and genuflect to Rome, Mecca and Wall Street, it just won’t cooperate. Unless, of course, you are someone who can whip out Perl and SQL code, etc., in your sleep. MT runs great … as long as you don’t touch it. When something goes wrong, look out.
Add to that the recent comment spam and other worries that Perl scripting introduces, I decided this morning to just screw it and move on. I’ve had my eye on a much simpler and more elegant solution for quite some time: Textpattern, created by Dean Allen, daddy of the Oliver Dog and the Hugo Dog, and S.O. of the always intelligent and interesting Gail Armstrong, all of whom are happily living in the south of France. [And if you’re not checking in for your daily dose of Oliver and Hugo, well, you’re just not in touch with what’s right in the world. Cures my cranky-pants every time I see them.]
Textpattern is a wonderful little CMS, very clean and simple, based on PHP. And I should have transitioned long ago. Textpattern took me exactly three minutes and 45 seconds to install, from download to entering my first entry. Compare that with Movable Type, which took multiple failed tries over two weeks, followed by $25 to Six Apart, followed by an appointment for installation, followed by the installation, followed by follow-up e-mails, followed by a few weeks of laborious coding on templates. All I can say is the Oliver Dog’s Dad rocks the house.
Of course, as with anything technological, there is a bit of pain involved: Stripping AirBeagle.com’s template pages of all of their Movable Type tags and replacing them with the new TP tags, as well as learning the new nomenclature of said TP tags. But we should be back up to speed in a few days as I find time to get all the templates converted.
Until I get things running, as I mentioned earlier, you won’t be able to add any more comments until further notice. If you have something to say, please feel free to send me an e-mail (mail | at | this domain.com). Otherwise, thanks for reading and for your patience.
The content management system I use to control all facets of AirBeagle.com was obliterated by my hosting provider, LunarPages, today, without notice or warning and with extreme prejudice. I only found out about it in a back-handed sort of way. Therefore, there will be no updates for a day or two or three until I figure this mess out. I have to find a new hosting provider or a new CMS, which would involve days of re-coding all the templates and CSS for the site. This is coming at the worst time possible, since I’m just starting my undergrad classes in preparation for grad school this summer.
Since the CMS, Movable Type, also controls commenting, you won’t be able to add any more comments until further notice. If you have something to say, please feel free to send me an e-mail. Otherwise, thanks for reading and for your patience as I try to resurrect all the shattered pieces of AB.com.
And everybody stay away from LunarPages. Like the plague. Their attitude is snarky, snotty and nasty. Won’t be getting any more of my business, that’s for sure.
Walking down Liberty tonight after a movie at the Michigan, we saw the planet Venus rising low in the sky to the west. It would be difficult to think of a more beautiful sight.
A guy from Lansing talking about the two halves of Michigan on a radio call-in show this morning: “We don’t worry about the UP, and they don’t worry about us trolls in the south.”
A random question (inspired by a recent srah post): Does anybody know of any good places to buy tea (as in loose-leaf or bags in stores, store sections, etc, versus cafes that sell tea by the cup) in the Ann Arbor area? I am getting a tea jones and would like to try something other than my usual diet of English and Irish Breakfast.
It was sunny late this morning when I got up (had my first long sleep in almost a week). But the cloud cover rapidly rolled in and the National Weather Service is predicting a 20% chance of showers. April in Michigan.
I’ve talked to a few of the second-year students in the past couple of days. The adjectives I’d use to describe them and the looks on their faces: relieved, relaxed, and, in some cases, resigned. One of them got a library job offer that you could see made his face light up. The look on his face gave me some hope.
To a one, they can’t wait till April 30, when every last vestige of group projects, finals, and graduation will be done and over with.
It would seem that I’m going to have to start using a peak flow meter on a regular basis, at least until the pollen season is over. It’s a very simple device, actually; the best analogy I can come up with is to those “Hi Striker” carnival attractions in which you strike a platform with a mallet and try to hit the bell at the top of a pole. In this case, I blow as hard and as fast as I can (a book I looked at says it’s like trying to blow out as many candles as you can on a crowded birthday cake) into a mouthpiece on a plastic cylinder with a small round indicator that flies up to whatever level you achieve on a scale from 0 to 700. The optimal “flow” for someone of my age and height is 596. I make over 500 most of the time, but when I get an asthma attack, it drops off to the 400s or worse.
Apparently we’ve made it to another milestone: a listing in Google Directory. (We’re under Reference -> Libraries -> Library and Information Science -> Personal Weblogs, if you’re interested.)
I wouldn’t agree with the brief description of our blog that appears there. Because this blog is all about the beagle. It’s that simple. And very zen.
… there was a huge Good Friday concert in the Diag today complete with a big wooden cross on the steps of Hatcher and an electric Christian rock band that sounded like a washed-out version of Live circa Throwing Copper, performing a retooled rendition of “O come all ye faithful,” so you really never know where this crazy schizophrenic campus is at.
There’s a long column in yesterday’s Chronicle on Higher Education advising Ph.Ds on how to make the transition to librarianship, “because the library profession consistently offers a deeply satisfying career with multiple rewards that are too often missing from the faculty positions within reach for most Ph.D.’s.” The column includes tips like:
Great. Wonder how many Ph.Ds I’ll be competing with when I go out looking for a job. I don’t have anything against Ph.Ds. In fact, I admire you guys. But, you know, I’d like to get a job too. And I don’t have a vita to use “with relative impunity.”
It’s always amusing to watch hypocrisy in action — as when certain conservative library blogs that normally get into conniption fits about any e-mail or posts on any other library-related site (including their own) that “don’t have anything to do with libraries” write reams on their own blogs about such library-related topics as gay marriage (and why gays are biologically disordered, and why if gay-positive books are allowed in libraries there will eventually be a backlash and a rise in books on how not to be so gay, etc., etc.).
I lay in a hot tub for a half hour tonight and felt as though it were the first time I had had a chance to breathe and relax in days. I had to think for a couple of minutes to recall what day it actually was. I have been buried in the basement and chained to my computer since at least Saturday working at one thing or another, and I have neglected my significant other (for which I am deeply sorry), my sleep patterns, my spirituality, my posture, and my diet. Somehow it doesn’t feel that last term was quite this much of a grind; I don’t know why this is so. It’s all been a blur of BBC News, iced tea, journal articles, bibliography citations, one book after another, and the occasional break to attend to the whining of the beagle. The best part is that it will be over in three weeks.
Morrissey may not be making great music anymore, but he’s still good with a one-liner (this one’s from tomorrow’s Guardian):
Q: What do you feel when you look in the mirror?
A: Extreme reluctance.
Census stories fascinate me. This one, from today’s Associated Press wire, shows that San Francisco County lost more residents in 2002-2003 than any other California county (Steve and I left the month after the July 2003 cutoff point).
Meanwhile, Los Angeles County gained the most residents (which is ironic, considering that people used to flee LA to move to SF), and the fastest-growing county was Riverside.
The long-predicted flow of people from the coastal counties, which are fast becoming unaffordable except for the wealthiest, to the inland and mountain counties is taking place. When I was a kid, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties were weeds, wildflowers, and wide-open spaces, with sleepy towns and military bases interspersed along stretches of Highway 10. Now they are booming exurb factories, with no end in sight to the sprawl. When Steve and I visited last year, that sprawl was in evidence everywhere, from the wide, spacious, pedestrian-free boulevards of Ontario to the gleaming sparkly bustle of Palm Springs International Airport to the spooky, walled-off “gated community” enclaves of Rancho Mirage.
I find myself wondering where in California anymore would be a tolerable (and affordable) place to live.
My presentation was serviceable; it was supposed to clock in at 5 minutes and the professor signaled when I was going over the clock (which I don’t think she did with others who seemed to go over 5 minutes). I suppose that there were some advantages in going first (there were 19 presentations of 5 minutes each today, with a similar number scheduled for next week, and I had volunteered to go first), the biggest of which is that the nerves and the butterflies were quickly dispensed with. The disadvantage (or one of them) was that I got to see what others did with their presentations after I had already done mine, which meant that I couldn’t adjust my style in response.
Most everyone else’s were very good, excellent in some cases, but the difference was that mine, I think in retrospect, was kind of all over the map (given the topic I chose, that was probably inevitable). It was synthesized, but maybe it was a little too synthesized, maybe not reliant enough on scholarly journal articles and research. Oh, well. It’s done.
Now there is the final homework in 503, studying for and taking the 503 final, and finishing and presenting the looming Comm Studies paper.
I went to Ambrosia this morning to sit and do some last-minute prepping for my final 643 presentation. A grad seminar (apparently in Mideast politics, because every other word was “Islam” or “Baathist”) was holding court at a bunch of tables in a circle in the back. I sat at an empty table next to them and did my presentation outline on a legal pad while they pontificated. Meanwhile, a GSI sat at the table in front of me and held office hours with several of his undergrad students.
The Lecturers’ Employee Organization held a one-day walkout today to protest what it terms the University’s intransigence in addressing bargaining issues that the union has been pursuing with the university since last August, including salary, benefits, and “job stability” (i.e., tenure). Naturally, neither the local news coverage nor the position papers put forward by the union and the university has shed any light on the realities of the situation, and I don’t know enough about the history of the dispute to express an opinion about the walkout, so I won’t.
The picketers did not block any of the entrances to the library complex or West Hall. I don’t know what I would have done if they had; I suppose my instinct would have been, of course, to honor the picket line. I probably dishonored the strikers by not taking the recommended day off. If I had not had my final presentation hanging in the balance (the professor did not reschedule her class, nor, according to a firm letter sent out by the provost yesterday, was she or any other faculty member supposed to, which is of course one form of leverage that the university has in its arsenal), I would have taken the day off. I suppose my acts were selfish; I wouldn’t argue with anyone who said they were.
It’s nice to know that there are good people in the world. I was in a rush this afternoon, picking up a slice of pizza on my way to work, and I knocked my tray onto the floor in the Union with my awkwardly-positioned backpack. The slice of pizza was dust. An undergrad woman walked over and helped me get the mess off the floor, smiled, and joked, “I’d still eat it.” Then the woman behind the counter at the pizza booth saw what had happened and gave me another slice on the house.
Well, time to break out the inhaler. Asthma has returned.
By the way, thanks, Steven and Bentley, for the Sudafed advice. I bought some today and it helped a lot.
It’s good to know that some people have nothing better to do with their time than write letters to their local newspapers (in this case, the Aberdeen American News in South Dakota) and ask whether any local libraries “carry” a “children’s book out right now that advocates homosexuality.”
The newspaper’s News Line helpfully identified the book(s) — King & King and its sequel, King & King & Family — and wrote in reply:
The books are not available at the Alexander Mitchell Library in Aberdeen. A search of the state’s library network revealed that no public library that is part of the South Dakota online database has them. However, several public libraries in Minnesota have the books as do some in North Dakota, though none locally.
Alexander Mitchell officials said that there are some public libraries in South Dakota that aren’t part of the state’s online network, and it’s possible the books might be found at any of these locations.
The News Line is correct — at least about the online network part of its answer. I checked the South Dakota Library Network online catalog. No hits for the titles or the authors (Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland).
Oh, by the way, in case anyone was wondering: Ann Arbor District Library has King & King — four copies !!!!! And one of them is checked out !
Ypsilanti District Library, however, does not have the offending title.
What a fine public service. The Aberdeen American News slogan: “Making it easier for South Dakota book burners to zero in on their targets, even if they’re across state lines.” Well, thank God that no easily identifiable South Dakota library has that trash in its collection. [Aberdeen American News story courtesy LISNews.]
No wonder my allergies have been so nightmarish the past few days. I took a look at Pollen.com. A lot of the pollen here is nothing I’ve ever really been exposed to before, at least not on any prolonged basis: cottonwood, poplar, cedar, juniper. The pollen I dealt with in Oakland was mostly mulberry, oak, and grass. Maple appears to be the only common variable so far (other than grass). The forecast is for the pollen count to be high for at least the next three days. Great.
Two acquaintances talking on the 5 Packard:
“Happy Spring!”
“Yeah, right. I’m just glad to see a few hours of sunlight.”
Actually, it was fairly warm today, once the sun rose high enough in the sky. The morning was pretty damn miserable, even though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky (or, I keep forgetting, because, not “even though”). But it got up in the high 40s and maybe low 50s in the late afternoon.
What AirBeagle would look like if he did a guest shot on South Park
(No, I don’t have a goatee in real life. I just thought it looked bitchin’. And I don’t always have a pissed-off look on my face either. Well, at least not all the time.)
Create your own character at the South Park Studios and let us know what you look like.
No, it’s not Michigan-related, but it was fun. Now, what do we call the South Park me?
That horrible sandpaper feeling in the back of the throat, endless post-nasal drip, a pseudoephedrine-induced sense of doped-up zombie lethargy all day long … yep, allergy season is definitely upon me. Yuck. This is why I can’t stand the spring.
« Here is what happens in Canada when two soldiers wish to get married »:
‘Jason Stewart has become the first member of Canada’s military to marry a same-sex partner, exchanging vows this weekend with his fiancé Joey Schwehr. The couple eloped Friday when Stewart arrived at Schwehr’s Kingston, Ontario home in a white stretch limousine. Stewart is an Officer Cadet at the Royal Military College. “The first time we went on a date, (Joey) said he wanted to be picked up in a white stretch limo with white roses in the back and be surprised,” Stewart told the Toronto Star from the hotel where they were staying.
…
Canada, like most western countries, accepts gays in the military. “Everyone’s always been really supportive,” said Stewart of his peers and teachers at the college, Canada’s officer candidacy school. “I’ve never gotten any flack about it,” told the Star. “Everybody’s just gung-ho and most of my superiors are more worried about me getting married at a young age than who I’m getting married to.” Stewart is 19 and Schwehr is 20.’
—365Gay.com
And, from the same article, here’s what Jason and Joey would have faced south of the border:
‘But in the United States, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network has issued a warning to lesbians and gays in that country’s military to stay clear of marriage and even civil unions and domestic partner registries. “Members of the armed forces still face discharge and other punishments if they attempt to marry or enter into a civil union,” the SLDN said in a directive. “Any attempt by a member of the armed forces to marry, or enter into a civil union with, someone of the same gender can be used as grounds for discharge under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and potentially effect discharge characterization,” said Sharra E. Greer, SLDN’s Director of Law and Policy. “Military personnel should never answer questions regarding their sexual orientation without the advice of an attorney,” Greer cautioned. “Service members have the right to say nothing, sign nothing, and get legal help.”’
Yes, America. Land of the free, home of the brave. My country …
The light of day is dawning and the rats are scurrying. The truth will have a way of coming out. Just ask Richard Nixon and his aides, one of whom, « John Dean, this week judged the Bush presidency as trumping Nixon’s in ‘secrecy, deception and political cynicism’ » which is ‘potentially the most corrupt, unethical and undemocratic White House in history.’
’… George Bush first asked Tony Blair to support the removal of Saddam Hussein from power at a private White House dinner nine days after the terror attacks of 11 September, 2001. According to Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British Ambassador to Washington, who was at the dinner when Blair became the first foreign leader to visit America after 11 September, Blair told Bush he should not get distracted from the war on terror’s initial goal – dealing with the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Bush, claims Meyer, replied by saying: ‘I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.’ Regime change was already US policy. It was clear, Meyer says, ‘that when we did come back to Iraq it wouldn’t be to discuss smarter sanctions’.’
—The Observer
In other words, when Bush said, and I directly quote Mr. ‘Jesus is my Hero’ himself, ‘Fuck Saddam, we’re taking him out,’ he meant it. It appears to have been an all-consuming obsession with him and his so-called administration. So much so that « a man formerly known for his veracity and uprightness perjured himself before the world to justify the invasion »:
‘US Secretary of State Colin Powell has admitted that evidence he submitted to the United Nations to justify war on Iraq may have been wrong. In February last year he told the UN Security Council that Iraq had developed mobile laboratories for making biological weapons. On Friday he conceded that information “appears not to be… that solid”. The claim failed to persuade the Security Council to back the war, but helped sway US public opinion.’
—BBC
‘May have been wrong.’ In other words, you were talking out of your hat to provide cover for a lying, extremist political agenda. And now your chance to, perhaps, become America’s first African-American president may be permanently in the toilet. How are you feeling now, Mr. Secretary?
Incredible.
Yep. Sneezing fits, congestion, a sudden need for constant Kleenex, itching eyes, and a scratchy, irritated throat and roof of the mouth. This after just 5 minutes out of doors this afternoon. The allergy season is here. I hope it stays just allergies and doesn’t trip over into asthma.