wallpaper
Newt Gingrich, another likely contender for the 2012 presidential nomination, had barbed advice for Palin on ABC's Good Morning America breakfast show. "I think that she's got to slow down and be more careful and think through what she's saying and how's she's saying it," he said.Granted, Palin's favorability ratings are at their lowest since she entered the national consciousness, but how dumb does one have to be to be unacceptable as a presidential candidate?
While teaching his history course at Reinhardt College in Georgia a couple of weeks ago, Ms. Schroeder noted, Mr. Gingrich had expressed some thoughts on the subject.Oh yeah, Newtie is considered a potential 2012 Republican contender too.If combat means being in a ditch, he told his class, "females have biological problems staying in a ditch for 30 days because they get infections, and they don't have upper body strength."
Men, he said, "are basically little piglets; you drop them in the ditch, they roll around in it."
And yet, he went on, if being in combat "means being on an Aegis class cruiser managing the computer controls for 12 ships and their rockets, a female again may be dramatically better than a male who gets very, very frustrated sitting in a chair all the time because males are biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes."
wallpaper (Savage Chickens) So 'scuse me; I gotta go kill a giraffe....the interview was a predictable exercise in self-justification. She still doesn't know what "blood libel" actually means historically, saying that "blood libel obviously means being falsely accused of having blood on your hands." Maybe Randy Scheunemann can work on that with her one of these days, after she sorts out the difference between South and North Korea.
wallpaper
wallpaper My general line is that there are three kinds of bad weather: wet, cold and windy. Any one isn't bad; any two are unpleasant, but all three together are miserable. However, there's one more that's in a special class of miserable all by itself: freezing fog. It doesn't have to be below 32 F; mid-thirties and down, the fog just cuts through you. It's more painful than having your tongue frozen to icy metal and harder to get away from. I have been more miserably cold in fog in the upper twenties than I have been in sub-zero temperatures in northern Ohio and Ontario.
wallpaper Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
wallpaper
wallpaper Well, even if NORAD and Google can't spell, have a great one, folks.
wallpaper When I checked in at NORAD's Santa Tracking page a few minutes ago, he was at Zanzibar, Tanzania. Happy Christmas Eve, all.
wallpaper This topic is, for the most part, one that strikes me as inconsequential and frankly, annoyingly distracting. Celebrate Christmas- or whatever holiday(s)- in the manner that works for you and yours, and let others do the same. However, this post by "Dr. Science" at Obsidian Wings struck me as both amusing and interesting:I recall being taught that one reason Washington attacked on Christmas was specifically because (English) American colonists didn't celebrate the holiday. The German Hessian mercenaries did, though, and so would be hung over and vulnerable when Washington and his army made their surprise attack. In other words, at the time of the Revolution Christmas was unAmerican.There is also some discussion of how our so-called "religious" holidays at this time of year are for the most part usurpations of previously-existing pagan holidays around the solstice, with their symbologies and traditions left largely intact, but with a new narrative superposed.
wallpaper 69 years ago today, Japan's forces attacked Americans at Pearl Harbor. The Big Picture has a collection of 34 photos from that day and its aftermath; some of them, like the above, seem very familiar to me, so I'm giving it the "Iconic Photos" label.
wallpaper 55 years ago, an unassuming woman refused to give up her seat on a bus. The first volley in the modern civil rights movement had been fired. (Quote below from Campanastan, with the further note, "...her refusal to surrender her seat ignited the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted over a year and left the public transit system with a crippling financial deficit.")"People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."-- Rosa Parks, in Rosa Parks: My Story (1992)Another notable item from today's anniversaries came when I was very nearly two months old: via the NYT, "On Dec. 1, 1959, representatives of 12 countries, including the United States, signed a treaty in Washington setting aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve, free from military activity." In many ways, this can be seen as merely symbolic. On the other hand, this treaty has endured for 51 years now, and has for the most part been respected. Given the cynicism and despair with which I regard humanity's awareness of and respect for our basic life support system, I can still muster a bit of hope when I witness such an enormous expanse of potential resources- and potential enrichment- set aside for scientific purposes. There is hope for a species and culture that has the awareness to say "We don't really understand this. Maybe we shouldn't mess with it for the time being."
