AirBeagle

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:

• “Librarians and human-resources recruiters most appreciate applications that are short and sweet — until you have the MLIS degree in hand (at which point you can revert to the beloved vita with relative impunity).

• “The years you spent earning your Ph.D., and getting published, could be described as ‘10 years’ experience in academic research and critical writing.’”

• “That’s why the opening statement of your cover letter should convey that you are genuinely interested in library work — not as an alternative to teaching, driven by desperation, but as your ruling passion.”

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.’

First, « Bush and Blair planned the Iraq invasion immediately after 9/11, putting paid to the Boy Emperor’s lie that he didn’t make up his mind until the last minute »:

’… 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.

Meanwhile, on the home front, David Horowitz continues to storm around the country shouting that the halls of academe are actually Marxist-Leninist think-tanks in disguise (as though we don’t already have enough right-wing think-tanks to fill a state the size of Minnesota). Yesterday’s New York Times reported that Horowitz’s Academic Bill of Rights has been introduced almost verbatim as a “nonbinding resolution” (H.Con.Res. 318) in the House of Representatives by Jack Kingston (R-GA).

The “Bill of Rights” includes the following language:

1. All faculty shall be hired, fired, promoted and granted tenure on the basis of their competence and appropriate knowledge in the field of their expertise and, in the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts, with a view toward fostering a plurality of methodologies and perspectives. No faculty shall be hired or fired or denied promotion or tenure on the basis of his or her political or religious beliefs.

…

4. Curricula and reading lists in the humanities ad social sciences should reflect the uncertainty and unsettled character of all human knowledge in these areas by providing students with dissenting sources and viewpoints where appropriate.

…

8. Knowledge advances when individual scholars are left free to reach their own conclusions about which methods, facts, and theories have been validated by research. Academic institutions and professional societies formed to advance knowledge within an area of research, maintain the integrity of the research process, and organize the professional lives of related researchers serve as indispensable venues within which scholars circulate research findings and debate their interpretation. To perform these functions adequately, academic institutions and professional societies should maintain a posture of organizational neutrality with respect to the substantive disagreements that divide researchers on questions within, or outside, their fields of inquiry.

The reality of all of this beautifully-worded laguage, of course, is at root deeply and firmly anti-intellectual, anti-freedom, and anti-academic. As the American Association of University Professors points out, “When carefully analyzed, … the Academic Bill of Rights undermines the very academic freedom it claims to support. It threatens to impose administrative and legislative oversight on the professional judgment of faculty, to deprive professors of the authority necessary for teaching, and to prohibit academic institutions from making the decisions that are necessary for the advancement of knowledge.”

The most trenchant quote from the Times was the one from the Brown University student who whined because he had been “assigned” Karl Marx “four times” in the course of his underprivileged academic career. “Adam Smith? Not even once.”

What a tragedy. Apparently this nimrod has never heard of checking a book out from the library. He probably only knows who Adam Smith is because some right-wing ideologue told him that he was an “important” thinker (and ignored Smith’s less pigeonhole-able views, such a that “natural liberty” cannot be attained if government is left to “the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind.”)

This isn’t to say that I don’t think there’s no such thing as left-imposed political correctness on some campuses under certain circumstances. But I don’t think there is any generalized ideological litmus test in place for hiring faculty or making pedagogical decisions, no matter what some conservative professors may think. I encountered just as much conservative thought — often shoved down my throat — at Stanford as I did “liberal” thought, and the same has been true at the University of Michigan.

I think the conservative backlash of which Horowitz’s galloping crusade is the most visible example is a much bigger danger to academic institutions than any so-called leftist bias.

Another Amnesty International Report, released in January, says that the Castro regime on January 10 put into effect a law which forbids access to the Internet except “to those, such as officially recognised businesses and government offices, with special telephone accounts payable in US dollars.”

The Amnesty International report adds: “This prevents ordinary Cuban people from accessing the service.”

But no. The Castro regime is a glorious apotheosis of the socialist vanguard, a beacon of liberty and freedom and human rights.

They wouldn’t do anything like restrict Internet access. They wouldn’t throw people in prison for 26 years for owning a private library!

Well, for goodness’ sake! « Has Dashle FINALLY grown a spine?! »:

‘Mr. President, last week I spoke about the White House’s reaction to Richard Clarke’s testimony before the 9-11 Commission. I am compelled to rise again today, because the people around the President are systematically abusing the powers and prerogatives of government. We all need to reflect seriously on what’s going on. Not in anger and not in partisanship, but in keeping with our responsibilities as Senators and with an abiding respect for the fundamental values of our democracy. Richard Clarke did something extraordinary when he testified before the 9-11 Commission last week. He didn’t try to escape blame, as so many routinely do. Instead, he accepted his share of responsibility and offered his perceptions about what happened in the months and years leading up to September 11. We can and should debate the facts and interpretations Clarke has offered. But there can be no doubt that he has risked enormous damage to his reputation and professional future to hold both himself and our government accountable. The retaliation from those around the President has been fierce. Mr. Clarke’s personal motives have been questioned and his honesty challenged. He has even been accused, right here on the Senate floor, of perjury. Not one shred of proof was given, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to have the perjury accusation on television and in the newspapers. The point was to damage Mr. Clarke in any way possible. This is wrong—and it’s not the first time it’s happened.’
…
‘The Commission should declassify Mr. Clarke’s earlier testimony. All of it. Not just the parts the White House wants. And Dr. Rice should testify before the 9-11 Commission, and she should be under oath and in public. The American people deserve to know the truth—the full truth—about what happened in the years and months leading up to September 11. Senator McCain, Senator Cleland, Secretary O’Neill, Ambassador Wilson, General Shinseki, Richard Foster, Richard Clarke, Larry Lindsay … when will the character assassination, retribution, and intimidation end? When will we say enough is enough? The September 11 families—and our entire country—deserve better. Our democracy depends on it. And our nation’s future security depends on it.’
—Democrats.Senate.gov

Well, with all due respect, Mr. Minority Leader, I’ve been saying ‘enough is enough’ for three years now and begging, wishing, pleading, praying for you and your party to grow a spine and say the same thing. Welcome to the anti-fascist bandwagon. Now are you gonna just make speeches or are you gonna go out and DO something about it? We are powerless, you are not. Do your job; send DeLay to Leavenworth and Bush/Cheney back to Texas. Please.

Oh, great speech by the way …