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So there is good news and bad news about our new community garden plot. The good news: it is a nice-looking, friendly little garden, and we’ve already met two other gardeners who were extremely nice and seemed about the same level of experienced-amateur gardener that I might consider myself to be. Our garden leaders seem very nice, and should be holding some kind of group meeting soon, which I hope will allow me to really get to know the rest of the gardeners.

The bad news is a little more serious. Our 100 square foot plot sits next to two 30-feet tall blue spruces. That might be OK, except they sit immediately to the south. The. plot. is. shady. all. day.

If you’re not a gardener, you may at this point be saying, “So what? Clearly plants grow in shade, I see them all the time. Grow up!” In part, you’re right: I should grow up, but this is the second time in recent months I’ve had this problem: when we moved into our northwest-bottom-corner apartment and found I couldn’t raise much in pots on the windowsills. The garden was supposed to correct that problem, but as Sam considers, perhaps we are being “hazed” as new members of this exclusive locale. The pure shadiness of the plot means that more than half of the things I planned to grow must be crossed off. So, tomatoes, gladiolas, all peppers, basil, daisies and zinnias are out. LOTS of lettuce, spinach, broccoli, peas, collards, and did I mention lettuce? are in. We’ll show them we know how to garden.

The tragedy that keeps me from accepting this and moving on is that I haven’t grown tomatoes for over a year now, and was desperately looking forward to raising the crop that has the most payoff: a freshly grown and plucked tomato, something I could rest assured would grow in Colorado with much the same requirements as in Missouri. While I could quietly slip my brother $50 cash (he’s a certified sawyer) and the trees would suddenly no longer block the sun, I have a feeling I’d be hunted down by an angry mob if I did, since no one else would stand to gain from the trees mysteriously being chopped down.

So, we’ve taken the first steps – meeting a few other gardeners, and amending the soil with high-quality compost and sheep manure while picking out the blue spruce pinecones. This week I’ll probably put down peas and a few kinds of lettuce and spinach. If things work out, we’ll get a lucrative trading system down, offering the rare mid-summer spinach and lettuce when everyone else is drowning in tomatoes and basil. Oh, and next year we’ll request a move to a sunny plot.

Bananas are so tasty. From the time during my sophomore year when a group of friends and I decided to all eat bananas together at dinner to test a (weak) hypothesis that bananas cause weird dreams, I’ve seen them as one of the more interesting of fruits. So it follows that I jumped on the new book, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World by Dan Koeppel. It’s a little discomfiting to read about how the banana companies began by ruthlessly ruling Latin American countries, murdering their citizens and leaders and taking over large tracts of land in order to make the banana profitable to sell to Americans for less than an apple. Luckily, the companies are not nearly so ruthless anymore, but the damage is done. More interesting to me than this part of bananas history, though, is the fact that we don’t eat the bananas our grandparents ate. In fact, through the 1950s, Americans ate a BETTER banana: the “Big Mike” or Gros Michel. This banana, by commercial standards, was bigger, sweeter, creamier, kept better, traveled better, and was so well-loved that yes, you WERE in danger of slipping on errant banana peels in big cities in the 1920s and 1930s.

However, bananas are not an evolutionarily favored plant, for all their benefits. They are clones – which explains the lack of any seeds, and the remarkable uniformity of the ones you see at the grocery store. But in the past, and now again, it means bananas fall easily to any fungus, disease, mite or bacteria that successfully attack a single plant of a banana cultivar. In the 1950s, Big Mike bananas started disappearing due to a fungus traveling easily between plantations. Big Mike bananas are not extinct, but they don’t work in big plantations anymore. How frustrating, then, that our bananas today aren’t as good as back in your grandma’s day. I’m tempted to ask someone of the era what exactly these dream bananas were like…but to be realistic, if someone asked you forty years from your last one what was so great about Pink Lady apples, could you really pin it down?

In the 1950s, the banana companies were forced to realize that they needed a banana replacement for the Big Mike, and they scornfully switched to the “inferior” Cavendish banana you see now. It is more fickle in travel, smaller, less creamy, and generally considered a weak replacement (though consumers, apparently, didn’t mind or didn’t notice the difference slicing it into their cereal). But the Cavendish, as I write, is being attacked by a stronger strain of the same fungus that destroyed most of the Big Mike bananas. And we’re no better at solving the problem. Clones just don’t have the genetic strength of other breeding methods. The best hope currently for keeping our Banana Foster recipes for the next couple generations is to employ transgenic methods to produce a third commercial banana. Wild bananas generally aren’t very appealing, even if hardy, and most bananas eaten by the non-Western World are starchier, closer to a plantain (how many of us would switch happily to a plantain on your peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich?). And regular cross-breeding is next to impossible with seedless fruit. It’ll take a lot of trial plants to find something that we picky consumers barely notice is not a Cavendish, but doesn’t die from fungus or the other diseases currently decimating the crops.

Anyway, it was a really good book. If you don’t feel like reading it, you might want to instead check out the NPR Fresh Air interview the author did, complete with singing a banana jingle and a thoughtful explanation why transgenic bananas aren’t worrisome. The author had many opportunities to try bananas you’ll never see in the US, and confidently picks a favorite: the Lacatan. He claims it is sweet and extra creamy, and is beloved by the locals who have access to it. Again, no fair. I am being told that one of my favorite fruits isn’t even the best of it’s kind, with the two better varieties either gone from the market or only sold in and near the Phillipines. I’ll need to find someone to smuggle a Lacatan to me at some point, so I can tell kids years from now how amazing yet another banana they’ll probably never eat was.

There are several stories from the past week, but we’ll start with the one involving trouble.

Sam’s family has and loves two beagles. The older of the two, Baxter, is now blind and has decreased smelling abilities, so he causes relatively little trouble, if you can find it in your heart to overlook his copious but unconscious drooling. The younger beagle, Maddy, however, has a nose sharper than a top-ranked sommelier, and no qualms about eating ANYTHING within barest reach that might qualify as food. Families with beagles (like Sam’s) tend to be aware of this instinct, and hide all food well away from countertop edges, in containers with rocks on them, or take other extreme measures to ensure they don’t come home to a swollen-stomached dog and tipped over food containers.

Sam and I don’t live with a beagle. This was made evident when we thought our precautions with the two bars of 85% rich, dark chocolate we received for Christmas were sufficient. They were tucked in a paper bag full of other presents in a room with the door closed for our time at his family’s house, but on the day after Christmas, one of us must have left the door open. About an hour later, Maddy appeared very guilty, licking her chops, and retracing her steps revealed two carefully opened dark chocolate wrappers dragged outside, with no remaining chocolate. Sigh.

We all know chocolate is bad for dogs, and that this particular dog had done a ruthless, very bad thing, but we didn’t notice any problems right away, and left it at massive scolding and a sharper sweep of the house for other edibles she might be able to reach. A few hours later, Maddy had the appearance of an espresso junkie with a fresh dose of caffeine, unable to sit still, whining and drinking lots of water, but otherwise as goofy as usual. Perhaps a stomachache, we thought. Nothing serious. Everyone went to bed, while I stayed up to do some writing. Her demeanor changed sometime after 11pm. She started trembling all over and her eyes became very bloodshot. She didn’t respond to her name quickly, and would lean against me with her whole body shaking. Concerned, I checked a few sources online. This one in particular gave me the scary facts – she had eaten 7 ounces of very dark chocolate, double the toxic dose for her body weight; and was showing more than half of the symptoms. I counted myself lucky she was not yet experiencing seizures or coma, and woke up Sam. We tried the family vet first, where the answering service promised to leave a message for the vet on call, who’d get back to us in 30 minutes. 35 minutes passed with no call, so we called back the answering service, who basically shrugged and said they’d tried. Luckily, FC is known for its top tier vet school and accompanying small and large animal hospital, complete with emergency services. A call to them and some quick math on their end meant that we should bring the shaking dog right away. Bundling up for the cold, we headed out, disturbed that even the sight of the harness and leash didn’t raise Maddy’s spirits. This was bad.

The drive to the vet hospital was unpleasant, to say the least. Maddy apparently hates cars, and was very vocal about it. We got there and found the hospital empty of patients, where a young, kind vet quickly scooped her up and took her back. From that point, things got better – from the info we could share about how much she had eaten and when, they decided to make her vomit (the vet’s words were, “She puked up a LOT of chocolate. It smelled nice at first…like hot chocolate. But also like dog vomit”), coat her stomach with activated charcoal, and keep her overnight with IV fluids to dilute the damage. He assured us we had done the right thing by bringing her in, and that he gets a LOT of calls this time of year with the same problem. Their knowledge means they can do some calculations on the phone, like they had with us, and give a good estimation of whether the dog should come in or not. In this case, Maddy had eaten an awful lot of quite dark chocolate containing large amounts of theobromide and caffeine, and the puking helped her from getting worse. The vet was friendly, gave us regular updates through the night, and after taking a down payment sent us home around 2am, saying we could pick up the very naughty and now empty-stomached Maddy in the morning.

In the morning, Sam’s dad (everyone had been briefed by this point) offered to pick her up. She came back overjoyed to be both out of the hospital and the car, but having learned nothing. It is remarkable that such an unpleasant experience had no effect on her. How many humans can’t remember the last time they puked their guts out and why?!? Thank your ancestors…it’s an evolutionary advantage not shared by most other mammals, and probably responsible for our survival through thousands of ecosystems. I suppose the silver lining is that she has no memory to blame me or Sam for taking her to the puking-place, but it was shocking how little time it took before she was performing acrobatics to (unsuccessfully) slide another chocolate bar from its high perch on a bookcase. Beagles!

Since then, there seems to be a residual sense of danger averted – she has carefully singled out each family member for licking and insistent whining, as if to reassure herself that no love was lost from her actions. It’s lucky she lived through it all. Having gone through this and being thankfully human, I learned that you should get a clear idea of how much and what kind of chocolate a dog eats, and see a vet if they have any symptoms as seen in the links above. Also, vets are totally underpaid for inducing and cleaning up dog vomit. That part of the bill was less than $30.

I’m here at work, and people are getting awfully frantic about the possibility of snow tomorrow. Discussions are being had about whether or not to cancel meetings, how to inform people if we have to close the museum, how we’ll be able to operate if half the staff can’t get to work because of the snow, etc. I’ve been trying to be the voice of reason, but have switched tactics, and am now the voice of mocking and irony.

“OH Goodness! The seasons are changing again! Who would have expected it?!? How could we have predicted that the seasons might change! How can a motor vehicle hope to operate if there are two inches of snow on the roads! We’ll be helpless!”

I’ve recently switched to sarcasm, noting that I’ll be leaving work early to pick up extra ammunition on the way home, in case I have to defend my home during the weeks of isolation caused by a moderate snowfall.

I hope it snows a bit, that would be nice. I’ll still have to go to work, however.

This quote sums up my feelings about much of what we receive as news, both in print and video (yes, this includes much online news as well).

“To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.”—Aleister Crowley

Sometimes it feels like news is generated more out of a desire to fill time, than an actual need for people to know about certain things. It is important to keep up with the world around you, but at the same time, it is rare that an article in the paper will give you a complete picture. All you get is a ‘factoid’ that remains isolated from everything else you know about the world. You may know that yesterday 4 people died in a fire in central China that may or may not have been caused by arson, but since there is no relevancy to your life, your knowledge of it will make no difference in how you live your life, or the choices you will make.

I like to call it pseudo-knowledge. My head is full, but the links between each factoid don’t exist. It is not a collection of factoids that makes up knowledge, but rather the connections between them, tying our thoughts together, that constitute knowledge. Most news articles supply me with much in the way of factoids, and very little in the way of connections and relevancy. The knowledge that I find changes my life, and influences my decisions, stems from more complete sources which take the time to give a complete picture, rather than just selected tidbits. This ‘real’ knowledge is combined in a thick web within my mind that gives me the power to make more informed decisions. I find that news articles rarely integrate with this web, instead seeming to float about as disconnected noise.

Another term I’m going to toss out is “infonography”, which, like pornography, is often enjoyed with excess, filling, and then overfilling, a basic human desire. Many people (myself included) often find themselves with the purient desire to read more news, simply because they can. The internet has made this almost endemic. I sometimes find myself reading every little article I can, trolling through Google News or the BBC reading articles. Why? The desire to read them is totally purient. It isn’t rooted in a desire to become a better person through knowledge, but rather a desire to be entertained, without feeling guilty. Sitting around watching soap operas is seen as a waste of time, but sitting around watching the news is not. However, for many people, the two activities fulfill the same desire, entertainment. The fact that one is ‘real’, and the other isn’t, is irrelevant.

This is why my desire to read news waxes and wanes. I believe that a certain amount of news-following is helpful, to keep one informed about things that do affect your life, and to better understand how changes in one part of the world affect other parts, perhaps your own part. However, I try to keep it in perspective. Just because it is easy to move thousands of news articles back and forth across the globe instantaneously through the magic of the Internet, doesn’t mean we should. Just because I can sit down and do nothing except read news articles the moment they are released, doesn’t mean that is a healthy activity. I say this mostly for my own benefit, but many will find the same tendencies within themselves or others around them.

This topic is discussed in great detail, and with much rigor in the book Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. I recommend visiting your local library and reading it. Postman is a very cynical man, but he brings forth some very good points. Also of note is the fact that the book was written in 1986, about 17 years ago. News then was a bit different from news now, but Postman makes several grim predictions for the future of news, based on negative trends he saw in 1986. Many of these predictions have come eerily true in the years since the book’s publication, and are worth noting when you read it.

When considering conspiracy theories, it is easy to get wrapped up in concerns about motive and past history, and forget to actually analyze what is going on. Other times, over analysis can be a problem, and conspiracy theorists miss the forest for the trees.

The idea of “Chemtrails” is a theory I’ve been alerted to by Dustin. The basic premise is that the government is spraying us with some sort of odd chemical(s) which can be seen in the form of contrails that persist far longer than they should. These chemicals are a part of everything from population control experiments to causing asthma and allergies.

Now, based on what I’ve read, I’m inclined to believe that Chemtrails are a myth. Like many conspiracy theories, they rely on highly improbable conditions to create effects that are easily explained by existing information.

For instance, its a well known fact that allergies and asthma is an increasing problem in America. But instead of looking straight for a conspiracy, why not look to the ever-increasing quantities of fossil fuel consumed and industrial pollutants released into the air. There is no unexplained problem that warrants looking for an explanation in a conspiracy.

For some good information, check out the following two links:

• Atmospheric Disturbances, Chemtrails, Chembusters – This link, particularly the “Open Letter Critical of ‘Chemtrails’ claims” at the top of the page, is very enlightening.

• Chemtrail Controversy – This website contains an explanation of why the idea of chemtrails has no basis, written by NOAA meteorologist Thomas Schlatter.

  To see the other side, here are a few links from groups that are concerned that Chemtrails are a reality:

• Chemtrails 911 – This site has information and many photos of supposed chemtrails. One thing to remember when viewing trails that appear to be very close, is that they may be at drastically different altitudes, only appearing close because of your perspective. The atmospheric conditions at 45,000 feet and 15,000 feet may be drastically different, causing trails to spread and dissipate at vastly different rates.

• Aerosol Operation Crimes and Cover-Up – This rather hectic site contains much of the same info as above. Photographs of trails, as well as various conspiracy theories. It also contains a message board. One user noted that they took their home air filter outside on a ‘chemtrail day’ and saw that the air outside was much cleaner than the air inside! Another user used this as further proof that chemtrails exist, though I don’t understand how it proves anything, seeing as how household pollution is caused by everything from candles and incense to carpets, ovens, and your air conditioner. If there is more pollution inside than outside, wouldn’t that suggest that it isn’t coming from the sky?

  One key point is to note that in many cases, problems caused by contrails are brought up, which are sometimes problems that are blamed on ‘chemtrails’. However, the problems supposedly caused by ‘chemtrail’ conspiracies are easily explained by existing knowledge of pollution and atmospheric disturbances. To ignore the existing explanation and hunt for a ‘secret’ explanation is not a logical course of action.

  Sometimes I think that there is a belief many people hold that they are the only ones who cares about the world, and that everyone else is either ignorant, or has sinister intentions toward the world. In order for a secret chemical spraying program to exist, there would have to be thousands of people who are both willing and able to hide a program’s existance, and be willing to spray chemicals on their own families and countrymen. Conspirators would be needed in the government, the military, the airplane maintainence industry, the petroleum industry, flight controllers, ground crews, etc. Thats a lot of places, and a lot of people. It is highly improbable that all of these people could maintain perfect secrecy about a project. Of course, the complete lack of evidence is always one of the hallmarks for a conspiracy theory.

  I’ll leave you to make your own decisions about chemtrails, but something I think you all should read is this essay on the Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic. In 1954 people in Washington began noticing odd pits in their windshield. Within days, reports from all over Washington, concentrated in Seattle, began pouring into police stations and government agencies about mysterious pits forming in people’s windshields. Vandals were blamed, until the reports began numbering in the thousands. Everything from cosmic rays to secret government nuclear tests to sand flea eggs were blamed. Eventually, researchers from around the country looked into the situation, and found that the pits had always been there, and were on all cars across the country. The cause? Gravel from the road due to normal driving wear and tear. People had just started to actually look AT the windshield, instead of THROUGH it. The power of suggestion from a few news articles was enough to convince them that they were part of this big problem. Its described today as a typical case of mass hysteria, people’s fears cascading and feeding off of each other, resulting in a vast misunderstanding.

  Try to keep this in mind when viewing information about Chemtrails. Are we looking so closely at them that we are seeing something we think is new? Is the power of a little suggestion enough to make us look at contrails with fear? I pride myself on an open mind, but I’m also keenly aware of the human tendency to behave quite irrationally, especially when it stems from a belief that we are ‘helping’ people by alerting them of a hidden danger.

As every good schoolboy and schoolgirl learned, Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492, and today Oct. 13th (the second monday in October), is the day that we celebrate his journey. On that fateful day of his first landing on the island we now call Cuba, he stepped off the boat to be met by savages who gave him crudely tanned animal hides and misshapen beads in exchange for the great gift of civilization. Where would we be today if it weren’t for Columbus’s brave decision to stagger blindly across the ocean driven by stories of riches in India?

The myth of Columbus the Discoverer starts school children off with bad beginnings. You are taught very quickly who to respect (the white man), and who to disregard (the pitiful natives). Why, their presence on the continent was so inconsequential to society that we still use the word ‘discovery’ to describe what Columbus did. How do you discover something that is already inhabited by vast civilizations thousands of years old and supporting millions of people? From the beginning, the natives are stripped of civilization and humanity.

What was spoken of as discovery really amounted to an invasion, and the beginning of the end for the native peoples of the continent. It is not a thing to be celebrated. Fortunately, less and less emphasis has been placed on this holiday as the years go by. The holiday reached a peak in 1992, when the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in Central America. However, a large group of people came forward at the same time to protest the celebrations, pointing to the blatantly racist connotations. Since then, many have realized the error of the holiday, and have backed off celebrations.

Do you know what you are talking about? Do you know what anyone else is talking about? Critical thinking is the art of determining what it is people are talking about, how to let others know exactly what you are talking about, and how to avoid deception and illogical arguments.

This online course, called Mission: Critical at San Jose State University is a great start to learning how statements are formed, and how arguments are built.

Lets be clear on one thing. You are being lied to every day. You are lied to in the newspaper, on the TV, by your politicians, and by people you see on the street. Some are doing it intentionally, and others unintentionally. A clear understanding of how to parse an argument can give you a good idea of when you are being manipulated, and when someone feeds you a line of bullshit.

Johnny F. and Jasper B. reminded me of a good example in this post which is also where I got the critical thinking course link.

Bush has frequently used the term “Al Qaeda-type fighters” to describe combatants in Iraq. Why does he use this term, and what does he mean? If you’d like to see how often this term gets used just try this little Google search.

As noted in Jasper’s post, the Washington Post reported that 69% of Americans polled believe that Saddam Hussein had some roll in the 9/11 attacks against the US (see Jasper’s post for a discussion of why that statistic probably isn’t particularly representative of actual sentiment). Why do so many people believe that, despite a complete lack of evidence to support such a claim?

One reason might be that the term “Al Qaeda-type fighter” implies that the fighters are somehow connected to the Al Qaeda organization. However, if you parse the statement, its really just saying that the fighters bear some similarity to members of the Al Qaeda, which can be as vague as noting that these Iraqi fighters, like Al Qaeda fighters, are angry, dark skinned, and armed. A claim that there were a lot of “Viet Cong-like fighters” in Iraq would likely be just as accurate, though the implication would be confusing. Why would Bush compare these fighters to the Al Qaeda, if not to make people think there was some sort of connection? Its not a very effective way to actually describe the fighters, but it is a great way to lie, without actually making a false statement.

You can get away with a LOT of deception by using a little implication and associative logic (which is not particularly logical). This process has been honed to a fine art by politicians and the media, many of whom probably do it without even thinking.

So arm yourself with a little critical thought, and even if you think you know it, go skim through the online course as a refresher, its helpful. Now is a good time to be vigilant about what people are telling you, and how you interpret their statements.

UPDATE: Check out this article, titled Understanding Iraq’s Resistance in the Christian Science Monitor. I don’t normally read things like the Christian Science Monitor (in fact, I typically avoid them), but this article caught my attention. It is a very realistic and informative treatment of what sorts of people are resisting US forces in Iraq, and why it is misleading and inaccurate to describe them all as “Al Qaeda-type fighters.” Here is a quote from the article I find to be pertinent:

Although some, if not most, of these fighters sympathize with Al Qaeda, they cannot all be lumped together as President Bush has done, calling them “Al Qaeda-type fighters.” ... Defining everything broadly as a “terrorist” threat won’t resolve the underlying problem in Iraq – which is the lack of legitimacy of the US military presence in the eyes of Iraqis. Nor will it prepare the American public for a prolonged and costly struggle in Iraq.

Today has been a bad day. I woke up to my landlord coming in to fix our microwave, which he had woken me up to install the other day, only to do it wrong, necessitating today’s visit. Then I had to drive Madalene to the airport to fly to Colorado. However, instead of getting tickets out of the St. Louis airport, she got tickets out of the Kansas City airport because they were cheaper. She was intending to drive her car there and park it while she was in Colorado, but since a friend wrecked her car the other day, we had to borrow his car. He was very gracious in letting us use it, but it meant that instead of being able to just park it in Kansas City, I had to drive there with Madalene, and then drive the car back that day. I’ll have to do the same thing in a few days to pick her up from the Kansas City airport, unless she buys a new car in Colorado, in which case she’ll be driving it back.

However, the car we were borrowing is pretty old, and while its in good general working order, its air conditioning isn’t functional. This, combined with the fact that it was over 105 degrees out, made the 4 hour drive to Kansas City downright miserable. The heat, combined with the fact that in order to survive, we had to have the windows all rolled down, which created a deafening roar on the highway, gave us both bad headaches.

Also, we hit horrible traffic jams coming out of St. Louis, meaning Madalene nearly missed her flight. We were delayed even further when a security team took it upon themselves to completely unpack Madalene’s possessions, lay them out on a table, and carefully examine each individual item. One guard pawed through her underwear on a table right next to the main terminal hallway where every slack jawed passerby could see, while three other security guards stood nearby whispering and chuckling to each other.

I don’t even see why its worth even packing your stuff, you should just bring your empty bags, then all your stuff in a big ass trash bag. Then just dump it all on the floor and let the guards paw through it and then stuff it into your luggage when they are done. That would save you from having your carefully packed baggage completely undone and hastily repacked, you could just let them hastily pack it when they are done, and forget the work of actual packing it beforehand.

Then, on the way home, in the heat of the afternoon, I was feeling very unpleasant. I pulled over and holed up in a Subway for a few hours, hoping the heat would begin to die down a bit. As soon as the heat got down to a paltry 100, I decided to be on my way again. I was in a hurry to get out of the horrific Kansas City highway system, and wanted to get home in time for a friend’s birthday celebration. However, I got pulled over by a cop on my way out of town. He claimed I had been speeding, which I probably was by a small amount, but certainly not the amount he was claiming. However, I wasn’t in the mood to argue about it too heavily. Then he got me out of my car, and sat me down in his. He told me that I and the car smelled like marijuana. He told me that he could smell it on me clearly. I told him that there was nothing of the sort on me, in me, or in the car. Then he administered a little sobriety test, and then took my pulse. He said my pulse was way to high for me to be sober, and that I was lying to him about being high. I told him that I had just been driving in 100+ degree weather in a horrifically loud car, and that I was pretty stressed out from the day’s circumstances, and rather nervous at having been accused of being a liar and a felon. He didn’t believe me, so called for backup. He asked if I would consent to a search, so I let him search me, but told him not to search the car, because it wasn’t mine and I didn’t feel it was my place to give consent for its search. Then he flat out told me that because of my responses and behavior, he knew I was lying to him, and that I had marijuana in the car. He told me to just confess, so the penalties would be less than if I lied about it and was caught. I told him I wasn’t lying, then nervously sat in his car and waited.

Finally backup came, and the second cop sat me down and questioned me. He was playing good cop, while the other one was playing bad cop. He asked me about my job, and about St. Louis and other pleasant topics (“Oh, you live in the U. City area, eh? Nice place, I grew up there myself, very pretty, blah blah blah.”), all the while eyeing me and trying to figure out if I was high or not. Then he told me that the marijuana smell that the first officer detected was considered probable cause, and that they could arrest me and search the car without my consent. I don’t know where this marijuana smell business was coming from. I couldn’t smell a thing, and the second cop never mentioned that he could smell it. Sure, the car wasn’t very clean, and smelled a bit like cigarette smoke. Also, I certainly wasn’t clean, having been sweating like a damn dog for the last 7 hours. Add to that the smells of Subway sandwich wrappers, stale Mt. Dew, and a partially spilled bag of Sun Chips and that amounts to quite a few odors to deal with. However, marijuana wasn’t part of that equation in the slightest.

Finally they both sat me down and told me that if I didn’t consent to a search that they would send for a K9 unit. I finally broke down and let them search the car. I didn’t want to. I wanted to stand up for my rights. I wanted to say, “Bring the dogs. I am certain of my innocence, and I won’t allow you to violate the privacy of my friend’s car. Let them smell it, and prove you wrong.” But my voice fell flat, and I caved. The ‘good cop’ chatted me up while the ‘bad cop’ searched the car. He didn’t find anything of course, so he just sat me down again, and decided to give me a fat speeding ticket. Thats exactly what I need now, being on only part time wages.

After several more excruciating hours of driving, I finally arrived back home. Its now after midnight. I’ve been out of the house since about 10:30am, I’ve only had one meal all day, and I feel like crap. I’ve also missed Tommy’s karaoke party. I might be able to catch the end of it, but I’m filthy and I have a headache, and I have to work tomorrow morning anyway. I’m also good and excited about getting to pick up people from the airport both Monday and Thursday, when, if Madalene doesn’t decide to buy a new car in Colorado, I’ll have to make this same to/from Kansas city drive all over again. Plus the car needs gas, which is another thing I can’t afford.

This was supposed to be my birthday week, but I barely did any celebrating at all, since only a few of my friends weren’t busy or out of town or something when I tried to get together with them. I didn’t even do any relaxing because I was either stressed out at work doing things for another department that I don’t know anything about, or driving people to and from the airport, or helping Madalene with insurance hassles, or something. And now I’ve got a 108$ ticket as my present to myself.

The moral of the story is: Never leave your house, because bad stuff happens out there. I’m going to wash the stink of sweat, road, and whatever that damn cop was sure was weed off of myself, drink a gallon of water, take some Ibuprofen and sleep a few hours before work. Oh, and I just found out that my PC isn’t workin properly. Goodie.

As you all know, the French are a bunch of whining cowards who betrayed the US recently in our fight for Freedom. That is why the House of Representatives had to rename the French Fries and French Toast to Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast.

In the spirit of telling the French just how much we hate them now because they decided to oppose the Machine of War, er, the Machine of Freedom, we have to expel everything French from the US. Starting with the Statue of Liberty! Yes, the very hallowed statue was actually given to the United States by France! Lets send it back to them, letting them know that we don’t like them any more.

Thankfully, an action group called Send Back Liberty has already started to help us convince our leaders to remove the statue, and replace it with a statue of Ronald Regan, the greatest US President ever.

I suppose I’m in the minority here. I want to work on some website updates, but I can’t, because my host’s SSH and SFTP servers are down for maintenance. Thats fine, I can configure a PHP script for doing photo galleries, Gallery, I was going to set up for Madalene. Oops, no dice, Sourceforge is down for maintenance too, so I can’t download the scripts. And with Sourceforge down, I can’t commit any changes for iScrobbler either. Nor can I check out the XMMS code I wanted to look at.

I suppose I’ll just have to ‘relax’ or something. What do you people DO on a Sunday afternoon?

I’ve noticed a sentiment appearing in a few places that has me a bit puzzled. That sentiment is that discussion about the war on Iraq, and any pro-peace discussion, is somehow insulting to the people participating in the fighting, and that it is no longer appropriate. People who originally seemed open minded about the war, and willing to discuss anti-war options in an intelligent manner now seem reluctant to do so. I see people closing the comments on their blogs and discussion boards, and MTV Europe is, under mandate from the ITC, censoring their playback of music videos that contain “representations of war, soldiers, bombing, destruction of buildings and public unrest at home” due to “heightened sensitivity.”

Its been explained to me that it insults the soldiers and their families to suggest that they don’t need to be there, that they are risking their lives for nothing. What puzzles me though is that it doesn’t seem to be insulting for us to stand by and say, “You just stay out there in the desert risking your life, until we tell you to come back.” If someone is out in the desert waiting to die, and you believe that they shouldn’t have to be there, then it is your duty as a compassionate human being to do everything in your power to get them out of there. War is not a time to stop struggling for peace, its a time to struggle even harder.

There seems to be a rationalization for war that follows the conceptual line of, “The soldiers are brave and strong, and they are willing to die to protect us! We should respect that courage by sending them out to fight.” I seem to hear this all the time. I took a class recently with a guy in the Army Reserves. He was dreading a war. He didn’t want to go out and be expected to kill, and possibly be killed. His sentiment seems to be common. The soldiers might be willing, which is admirably courageous, but most of them probably don’t want to be out there. What about their families and friends? Do you think the mother’s of those soldiers want them out in the desert rather than back at home? I seriously doubt it.

War is hell. If you don’t believe that then you have watched too many Clint Eastwood movies, and haven’t read enough about Vietnam, World Wars I and II, Hiroshima, the Serbian conflict, and thousands of other bloody, hellish conflicts. When you resign yourself to war, and agree to be complacent and let it go on as long as the president pleases, then you are condemning those soldiers you claim to be ‘honoring’ to a hateful life in the desert. You treat them like expendable thugs when you say, “I’m not going to bother arguing for peace anymore, I’m going to just let you stay out there.”

I can’t stand hearing all the, “Lets not say anything bad about the war, we have to be sensitive” talk out there right now. Anyone who respects human life will do whatever they can to prevent war. Even those who believe war is necessary to deal with Saddam should agree that ending the war in the fastest way, by whatever means, be it victory in battle or some democratic end, is the most sane and preferable solution, and that discussing ways to end the war, including democratic ‘pro-peace’ solutions, should be a priority. War is not a time to stop trying to end it.

There is a bunch of Columbia debris on ebay right now. I’m not going to link to any of it, because I don’t want to dignify it like that. First off, its kind of gross that people find the debris, and then the first thing that runs through their mind is “Ah, I can profit from the misery of others!” Its not a tragedy, its an opportunity! An opportunity for PROFIT! Fortunately it seems like ebay is pulling many of the auctions. Technically, the debris is owned by NASA, and they need it back. They need the debris to try to figure out exactly how the explosion occurred, so they can prevent it for future missions. This is the first mission they’ve lost during reentry, and its vital that they figure out what went wrong, so that the remaining 3 shuttles can be used without fear of a repeat incident. Oh, and if you haven’t heard already, the reason this is all an issue is because Spaceshuttle Columbia exploded on reentry this morning over Texas. Seven crewmembers, including the first Israeli astronaut, were killed. It was the second shuttle destroyed during a mission, the first being Challenger in 1986.

In other news, today was a nice day, so we scooted to the zoo, then to buy groceries and stuff. It was quite pleasant.

I highly recommend that everyone go and watch this video (Realplayer required) about the Japanese internment camps during the 40s. The film was produced in 1944 by the US government, as an attempt to explain to people why the camps are necessary, and what they are like. In short, it is blatant propaganda.

The announcer cheerfully notes that these people aren’t under any suspicion, but need to be ‘evacuated’ due to military hazards. Throughout the film, it refers to the people in the camps as ‘evacuees,’ noting that they aren’t prisoners (which is strange, since they weren’t allowed to leave…). A shot pans across the camp, showing barbed wire fences and gun-toting military police, “The wire fences and military police are just artifacts of the military nature of the evacuation,” the announcer adds, as if that is supposed to make you feel a lot better about it.

Throughout the video, think about how you feel. It feels good. You see the people farming, as the announcer notes how skilled they are. You see them playing softball, how fun! Look at them learning new job skills such as farming and machine work, that will give them great job skills for the future! Boy scouts, Christian churches, lots of loyal citizens happy to spend some time in an evacuation camp in order to aid the war effort. How wholesome.

It almost makes you forget how horribly disgusting the whole thing was. Almost, but not quite. That little part of you that sees through the propaganda in the film, keep that part honed! Its easy to see through it when we watch the film almost 60 years later, but when you see things like it today, its much harder to detect.

This post caused me to laugh out loud. Way to go Josh, stick it to those damn limeys! You know, many lingustics researchers believe that ‘American English’ is actually closer in accent to the original English that was spoken before the colonies started, and that British began to change their accent after the revolutionary war as a way to distance themselves from the ‘rabble’ over in America, choosing instead to exaggerate the aristocratic ‘style’ of speech that we now know of as ‘British English’.

Of course, that might just be a wild theory set in motion by rabid anti-british factions. Maybe we are just rabble! No! No! Its not true, damn the limey and their lecherous language! Next time a british person tells me that they want to put their “spare tyre” into my boot, I’m going to run away screaming.