Posted 1:54 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: The Bluest Skies You've Ever Seen

Frankly, I've seen bluer skies, but who am I to upset their little fantasy?

Seattle from the Space Needle, Sep. 2005

If you look closely on the right you can see, floating eerily above the city, the ghost of Mt. Rainier. Here's a close-up.


Apparently the city has gotten sick and tired of all the damned tourists mucking up the place, flinging dollars left and right. So they're trying to make a dent in tourist traffic by screwing up the view with a couple of skyscrapers. That'll show 'em!

This photo was taken at a bad time of day for Rainier photos. Should've waiting until later in the afternoon. My dream "killer app" is a program that shows what time of day and year is the best for taking photos of various scenic spots.

You get a stale picture of Washington because, again I didn't get around to scanning. (As if my nonexistent readers care.) In fact, time is going to be scarce for the next two weeks, as I have something big coming up.

And if it works out, my nonexistent readers are going to get really, really sick of a Certain State.

Labels: Foto Friday, Washington

Posted 12:14 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Blue Hawaii

Yes, AGAIN, Hawaii. (No opportunities for scanning this week.) And what's more, the odds are good that there'll be more. So just choke it down.

Kahoolawe and Molokini from Wailea, Maui
Sep. 2003

The large island is Kahoolawe (pronounced Ka-ho-o-LA-way). This is the smallest of the eight main Hawaiian islands. It doesn't have any fresh water, and so is uninhabitable.

That wasn't always the case, though. The last four paragraphs on this page cite a timeline for human settlement of Kahoolawe. The author of the timeline suggests that the interior of the island (which is higher and rainier) was well-settled for about 150 years, during which agriculture changed the "rather fragile" environment, resulting in "ecological disruption" and "island-wide degradation".[1] (Note, when reading that, that Polynesians did not arrive in Hawaii until around 1000 AD.)

Anyhow, by the time the Europeans came, the human population was reduced to some temporary fishing settlements. Since then it's been used as a penal colony for men (punishing such crimes as theft, murder, and Catholocism), as well as a ranch. During WWII, Kahoolawe was used as a naval gunnery range. Recently, the Navy was supposed to have been cleaning it up to render it fit for human traffic, but last I heard they were way behind, and unexploded ordnance still litters some beaches.

The ultimate goal is to clean the place up and restore the native vegetation, but commercial use will be prohibited (according to the Kahoolawe Island Reserve site, linked above). The island will be kept as an archaeological site, and as a place where native Hawaiians can carry out spiritual practices. I'm not sure what part of Kahoolawe has any special sacred signficance.

You can take a virtual field trip with a group doing a restoration project here.

Now, if you look at the waterline below the hump of Kahoolawe, you can see a sliver of orange-ish rock. That's Molokini, the remains of a volcanic crater that lies between Maui and Kahoolawe. It's a very popular snorkeling area (I haven't had a chance to snorkel there). Here's a nice aerial picture showing the tour boats at anchor, and this page includes several close up photos. They must have been taken in or near the rainy season, since the island is pretty green. If you look at the large version of my photo, above, you'll see the white speck of a boat inside the crater.

[1] I blame Bush.

Labels: Foto Friday, Hawaii

Posted 3:07 PM by Angie Schultz

Mighty Mo

Niles suggested (too late) that yesterday's photo should pertain to Veterans' Day. I don't have much that's relevant, but I do have some pictures of Pearl Harbor.

Somewhere I may have better pictures, from an earlier trip, but I don't know what's become of those, so this will have to do.

USS Arizona Memorial from the USS Missouri
Pearl Harbor, HI, Jan. 2002

I've been to Hawaii several times, but rarely stop in Honolulu. The trip in 2002 was only the second time. The first time, in 1989, I visited the Arizona Memorial. I remember there were a surprising number of Japanese tourists.

The Missouri wasn't in Pearl Harbor when I visited in '89, though, since it had been de-mothballed in 1986 and was off doing battleshippy things, like making a Cher video. In 1991, however, she had a more dignified duty, in the first Gulf War. (The Missouri, remember, was fifty years old that year.)

I had a lot of chatty nonsense to say about the Missouri, but it's not appropriate to the occasion. For now, then, just links to the Arizona and Missouri memorials.

Posted 2:07 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Chasing Waterfalls

Waterfalls aren't known for their mobility, so there's really no need to chase them. In Yosemite, however, it is best to go at certain times of the year, else some of them dry up.

Yosemite Falls, Aug. 1995

Technically, that's Upper Yosemite Falls. The lower falls are hidden behind the trees.

This was part of the Great Vacation of '95, in which we went to Yosemite, Mono Lake, and down to Death Valley (which hasn't been posted yet). We missed much on the way (like the Devil's Postpile[1]), so we'll probably have to do it again one day.

[1]That would be a good name for a blog.

Labels: California, Foto Friday

Posted 4:37 PM by Angie Schultz

Thank You, Ted Rall!

Thank you for making us laugh about paranoid delusions...again.

Hey, remember when Bush was going to cancel the 2004 elections? Guess the fascist takeover is running behind schedule. It's probably tied to the brutal Afghan winter.

(The Yahoo link in that LGF post has rotted. See here for full text (I assume). Current twitchings and mutterings via Hot Air.)

Posted 4:56 PM by Angie Schultz

He Called Dibs[1]

Hot Air is outraged over an anti-Talent ad created by some lefty group. It features a middle-aged woman, a teenaged boy, and a cute lithping little girl talking about stem cells. Jim Talent voted against them! Against stem cells! Nobody doesn't love stem cells! What if one day, you needed a stem cell, and couldn't have it, because Jim Talent voted against it, huh? As the little girl says in the end: "How come he thinks he gets to decide who lives and who dies? Who is he?"

I'm afraid I cannot share Allahpundit's outrage. I'm too jaded. ("More jaded than Allah!" now there's a tagline.) It did induce Severe Heavenward Eye-Rolling Exasperation Syndrome H (SHEESH)[2]. The ad is apparently aimed at the enormous Dullard-American demographic. They would be those who:

1. Sorta kinda know what stem cells are, but never ever once considered, for the tiniest moment, that they might need a stem cell-originated medical treatment. "Sha-ZAYAM! My religious beliefs say stem cells come from murdered babies[3], but if I might need 'em some day, to hell with the babies! Bring 'em on!"
   
2. OR, people who haven't the foggiest damned idea what stem cells are, except that they cure all known diseases and Senator Talent single-handedly eradicated them from the Earth. Prolly has something to do with Halliburton.
   

Actually, I have known people who do fit into the latter category. They're sort of the socially-conservative counterparts to hardcore X-Files groupies who see government/corporate conspiracies under every rock. The Man is always coming down on the People! The upside is, these people are usually too lazy and embittered to vote.

Liberals aren't the only ones who appeal to the dullard demographic, of course. I remember an anti-abortion ad from the 1980s, in which a pregnant woman admitted that she'd felt differently about abortion back when she was younger and unmarried. The ad concluded with her asking us: "Why was it choice then, but it's a child now?" I dunno? Because you were an idiot who never considered the question before? What's that got to do with me?

In other fun campaign news, we got a heap o' campaign literature here at the old homestead. One of them asks: "What do John Kerry and Chris Bell have in common?" Turn it over to find the answer: "Everything."

My first question was: who the hell is Chris Bell? And my second is: what does John Kerry have to do with anything?

The fact that the ad is paid for by "Texans for Rick Perry" tells me that Bell is running for governor (against Perry, the current governor). Poor Bell is sort of the also-ran in this election. Besides Governor Hair (as Niles calls him; I think he stole it from Molly Ivins), we have the entertaining but doomed Kinky Friedman, and Carole Keeton Strayhorn, the state Comptroller, who's running as an Independent. Her main claim to fame (as far as I'm concerned) is that she wanted to go down on the ballot as Carole Keeton "Grandma" Strayhorn. She figured that if Kinky could be Kinky, she could have a nickname too.

But the Secretary of State (who decides these things), Roger "Not the Founder of Rhode Island" Williams, said no way. It's a campaign slogan, he said, not a nickname (her slogan is "One Tough Grandma"). She pitched a hissy fit and sued, but eventually dropped it, declaring victory and retiring from the field. The whole megillah put her in the laughingstock category, as far as we're concerned.

Anyhow, out of this field, Bell -- the Democrat -- is best known as "that other guy, Wossname". Here's his bio off his campaign page. Five years in the Houston City Council, two years as Congressman (losing to the "infamous" Republican redistricting of 2003), and he's ready for the Governorship? Oh, I don't know.

Anyhow, the ad has me scratching my head. Is Kerry really the anti-Bush? That is, a man so toxic to certain voters that they'll go out of their way to vote against him, even when he's not running? The ad has a photo of Bell and Kerry shaking hands, captioned "Congressman Chris Bell and Senator John Kerry together at a campaign rally last Friday." (URL added by me.) So that's fast work, tainting Bell with his known Kerry associations in just a week. I guess it's just Bell's good luck that Kerry's recent attack of foot-in-mouth disease didn't come a little earlier. All Perry can manage is to assert that, unlike that flip-flopping Kerry, Bell consistently votes against Our Troops!

So I'm wondering if this is a sign of desperation on Perry's part. Is his campaign faltering, that he has to reach for something to attack Bell with? (Look! My Democratic opponent is hobnobbing with the most recent Democratic Presidential candidate! Aiieee! Can Bill Clinton be next??) Or does his campaign really believe that a hint of Kerry is enough to get swing voters to don crosses and garlic and push the "R" button?

Apparently it's not his poll results. According to that article, nobody much likes Perry, but they like his opponents even less, with Chris "Wossname" Bell beating "Grandma" Strayhorn by one point, with 22 and 21 percent, resp., while Kinky "Richard" Friedman languishes at 10.5, and Rick "Hair" Perry leads the pack by a solid sixteen points. (There's also a Libertarian, James "One Percent" Werner.)

I see that back on October 27, Hot Air noted Perry's anti-Bell radio ad, "Mr. Way-Too-Liberal-for-Texas Guy", in imitation of those Budweiser "Real Men of Genius" ads.

Announcer: And you voted to let the United Nations oversee elections in America, because nobody stands up for democracy like the French!
Singer: Je m'appelle Christophe Bell.
Announcer: So wear your fancy beret with pride, Congressman Bell! Liberals everywhere salute you!

OUCH. That is LOW. (I can't stop laughing, that's how low it is.)

After thinking about it a bit, I figure that this is not so much aimed at swing voters as at those disgruntled Republicans who're thinking they'll just sit this election out. "Stay home, Republicans, and Jean and Christophe will be running Texas." L'Aiieee!

[1]From an old MST3K sketch:
Joel: Who can decide who lives and who dies?
Crow: I do, remember? I called dibs.
He did, too. That's what he wanted for Christmas: "I wanna decide who lives and who dies." I never thought to ask for that. Dang!

[2]I wonder if stem cells can cure that?
[3]Complex and nuanced philosophical and religious arguments truncated in the interest of brevity, not to mention a cheap laugh. You know what they are anyway.

Posted 2:38 PM by Angie Schultz

Foto Friday: Phall

View from Mt. Lemmon, AZ
Oct. 1994

We're having unseasonably cool weather here today (i.e., we're not drowning in our own sweat)[1]. So here's a fall-like image for you. I meant to post this last month (since it was taken in October), but didn't get many scanning opportunities.

When I took this picture I thought, "Damn that pesky dead tree! It would be a beautiful view if that thing wasn't in the way!" Now I know that's Art.

A nice mountain-top vista? That's nothing. Crap. Anyone could photograph that. But find some ugly thing blocking the view, and you've got artistic gold, baby. Only the most exquisitely-tuned sensibilities can recognize the beauty in an old dead tree.

[1]UPDATE: I blame Bush.

Labels: Arizona, Foto Friday

Posted 8:38 PM by Angie Schultz

A Note to My Readers

It has come to my attention that many of you -- if not most of you -- do not exist. I discovered this last week when I wrote my post about the book signing. This post required some fancy style sheet footwork (well, fancy for me, anyway), and I was having trouble getting it just right. So I used Niles's computer (which is almost always booted to Windows) to see if it looked any better in Explorer.

It looked horrible. I worked and worked to get the images in the right shape, to no avail. Then I discovered that it was not the images at all, it was the new blockquotes I was using. I had sweated and sweated to make the blog prettier (for YOU), which entailed setting the quote box width as a percentage of the screen width so the blockquotes would look nicer (for YOU) when the quotes were short.

But Explorer, apparently, doesn't think it needs to play nicely with all the CSS specifications, and sets the screen width to some ridiculous size (like a mile).

Now, I changed the style sheet (for YOU) on Sep. 1, so for two months the blog has been virtually unreadable to users of IE. And no one bothered to tell me.

Since approximately 97% of web surfers use IE[1], I conclude that the reason no one told me is because no one is reading the blog.[2] Well! That's gratitude for you!

Sure, sure, I realize that this blog is infrequently-posted drivel, but look at it this way: it could be frequently-posted drivel. I could post reviews of dreadful science fiction movies. Book reviews. Goldsteinian conversations with inanimate objects. Endless geeky descriptions of my various collections. You don't want that, do you? No. So pay attention, dammit! DON'T MAKE ME GET OUT THE FRUIT STICKERS.

NOTE: The Fleck y Breens[3] are exempted from this outrage, as I'm pretty sure they are devout Linux users.

[1]Remembering that 75% of all statistics are made up.
[2]Yes, I realize that I could find a sitemeter that would tell me exactly how many hits I'm not getting, but that a)often slows loading down to a frustrating extent and b) is for people who give a damn.
[3]Speaking of them, and their hot time in Vegas, I am tempted to post about the time that we went to Vegas for the sole purpose of seeing the "Star Trek Experience" at the Las Vegas Hilton (speaking of geeky). The thing is, I apparently didn't take my camera, so Niles's photos form our only record of the trip. And inside the actual "Experience," we---but I'll save that.