Two Interesting Thoughts

I recently saw a very pleasant and cerebral conversation between Craig Ferguson, the Scottish gentleman on CBS after Letterman, and Stephen Fry, an English actor and playwright (I think) whom I recognize from the film V for Vendetta, as the TV show host and owner of a Qu'ran (which got his character killed).

One thing Mr. Fry said, on the topic of language, thinking of being studied by aliens from beyond earth, or intellectuals alien to our culture, that if we consider the worst things we as humans do to each other--harm, torture, abuse, be cruel in general--and then consider the best things--loving, being intimate, having and teaching kids--how inconsistent it would seem to the aliens the way in which we casually use the terms and language about the worst things; "Traffic was torture today," while when the word "fuck" is used, a curse word even, that represents, among many things, the most intimate act that humans do for both pleasure and procreation, the user is decried as dirty and wicked and considered ripe for censure.

Another thing that was discussed was the contrast between the modern European population and the American-descended-from-European-immigrant population. Today's Americans (that came from Europe) are descended from a gene pool that said "I'm outta here...there's something better far away, far away and unknown, and I'll find it or die trying," while today's Europeans descended from a gene pool that said "Ooooh, no no no. I'm good and fine right here."

That's definitely a simplification, probably even an oversimplification, but it made me think. It helps that that point of view came from two Europeans, and two Europeans that have since left the UK and moved to the States. But, still...

Not sure if I'm Surprised...

I'm sorry, and I hope this is my last post about Joe Stack, The Building Smasher, but I saw an article (I'm sure if I perused various blog sites long enough I'd find this stuff) and had to link to it.

So, Joe Stack is being hailed a hero by anti-government internet bloggers.

Just when I thought that the left and right would come together to condemn this, um, terrorist, (which I'm sure they will) it seems like elements of the left and the right came together to declare this, um, terrorist, a hero.

It seems like some of the things he said will be taken seriously, or more seriously, now that people are declaring him a hero.

Wow...America finally gets to experience first-hand the phrase we usually reserved for the Middle East: One person's terrorist is another's hero.

Is perspective on the menu for Americans?

And the Stench Hung in the Air...

After getting my fill of the coverage of Austin's plane crasher/house burner, I decided a I needed a bike ride. Since I stopped partaking in a certain smelly tobacco habit, I like the occasional energy burn-off that actually gives you energy. But when I left the house and got on the bicycle, the air had a recognizable stench.

At first it smelled like the fields before Vallejo, where the air is thick with the odor of processing petroleum. This is Texas, but around Austin you never smell oil fields. After a moment I noticed that petrol wasn't the smell exactly, but more of a combination of industrial building supplies being burned. And since many plastics and a few building supplies are made of petroleum distillates, the initial smell made sense.

So, yeah, I guess we were close enough to be in the smelly fallout from the plane-into-the-building morning.

I noticed yesterday that about twenty minutes after I posted a link to the guy's rant on his website that it had been taken down by the FBI. It was then that I was glad that I made a document copy of it before it was snatched. I thought I'd post an entire blog entry under the title "The People Have a Right to Know" with the copied and pasted letter, which, while rambling and angry, has some interesting topics that should be discussed in the mainstream media but of course now will never be taken seriously by anybody. But, one of the local TV stations beat me to it, and I'm sure other sources did as well, and a first amendment fight was never going to be an issue.

I have a roommate who works for the IRS, and she said that the building that was hit yesterday, that it wasn't the main office space for normal rank-and-file IRS workers, but rather the property seizures department.

Sounds about right.

Domestic Terrorism? Definitely...

Nailed it...

The house burner was named Joe Stack, and he was also the plane owner, and it seems like the initial reports that the plane was stolen were either accidenetly incorrect or deliberately fabricated...that'll matter later I suppose.

But now they're calling it a criminal act of violence...

Check out Mr. Stack's website.

Domestic Terrorism?

Matbe it's unfair to characterize what happened a few hours ago here in Austin so early in the "investigation", but, to give some background (like I'm some sort of journalist): a small single engine plane crashed into a building near the US HWY 183 and TX 360 interchange in north Austin, rather close to us, right around 10 am local time.

A little more background, as things have come to light: a housefire was burning, also in northern Austin, around 9 am, and everyone in the house is fine and accounted for--except the husband. Who is missing. And owns a small single engine plane. The building that was hit seems to be a federal building, at first they were saying IRS, then they were saying maybe some IRS office and some other offices, and other sources are saying DHS. TV crews said the federal government was not very forthcoming with which exact offices were housed here. Hmm.

An eyewitness report said the plane was about full throttle, or at least the engine sounded as such, and headed straight into the building. He was saying that either the plane was in very bad shape, with most instruments malfunctioning, or it was a deliberate dive. Other witnesses said that they saw the plane buzzing apartment complexes, cruising between 30 and 50 feet.

Like I've said before, follow Achim's Razor...sounds like a deliberate crash into a federal building (how would somebody know which building? Hmm) with a stolen plane (possibly, some reports are that the plane is stolen)...stolen or not, sounds like some domestic terrorism to me.

Some Winter Olympic Notes

I think I just realized why I enjoy the Winter Olympics...

I've never been a rah-rah go-'mer'ka kinda guy, and sometimes those kinds of people really get under my skin.

But, I'm a silly kind of spectator in that pretty much any sport will entertain me when on the idiot box. As people who know me know, I love baseball, watch football, soccer, hockey, college basketball, lady sports, volleyball, track and field (too bad this is only a hot tv item once every 48 months), curling (which I haven't seen yet)...pretty much anything. I especially like it when I don't recognize or understand what's going on and the announcers speak a language other than English...sometimes even when they speak English it doesn't neccesarily help out--cricket anyone?

What I'm getting at here is that once every two years (Summer and Winter Olympics alternate their four year cycles, if you haven't noticed) people who don't ever really give a shit about sports become enthralled. I realized I enjoy that, and that's why I like the Olympics...

The cyclical nature of fanaticism in a single sport affecting the entire world is also coming up this year: the World Cup, something that I'm getting excited about already.

The Voynich Manuscript

Over this past weekend I became privy to one of the great intellectual mysteries of our age: The Voynich Manuscript. Also, to see every page individually in photograph form, check this out.

The Voynich Manuscript is named for a Polish-American book seller named Wilifred Voynich who came into possession of said manuscript in 1912. It has baffled every scientific mind that's tried to decipher it. The language is unknown, the drawings are fairly accurate, and theories abound. Nazi-busting encryption geniuses were stumped. Super computers crashed...no one's been able to work it out.

The pages and ink have been carbon-dated, so the scientific community knows about when the book was produced (sometime in the sixteenth century). You can read all about this sucker at Wikipedia and the site I furnished (there's less info there), but I'm going to run through some of the theories.

The written language doesn't look that difficult--well, maybe to plenty of people, but not to me, and I'm by no means an expert in linguistics or encryption. One theory is that it is a very elaborate hoax. That theory's detractors usually say that there was far too much time spent on this for it to be a hoax, far too much thought and planning put into the roughly 30 distinct letters and thousands upon thousands of constructed "words". But, a hoax would explain why computer programs consider the text gibberish.

But, those same computer programs are not programmed to be able to understand tonal variations in script (I'm told from an article that opened my eyes tothe VM). South-east Asia has many tonal languages (Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai to name three that are actually all in different language families). One theory is that someone from east Asia, living in Europe, most likely finishing up education there, was trying to construct a written language of their particular tonal language that would be easier for Europeans to understand.

While looking through the images, one of the circular deals, I found what to me looks like simplified Kanji characters. Kanji, specifically, is Japanese, but Kanji is based on simplified Chinese characters (both Korean and Japanese used Chinese symbols as a basis of their written language once you go far enough back in time). So, it almost looked like a translation wheel, with some Kanji looking characters on one side of the circle, and on the other side, the strange characters, either solitary or in small clusters.

I make no claim as to the master problem solver, I just try to look for what reasonably makes the most sense. It does look like too much work for a hoax. How can we be sure this isn't the last stitch of knowledge (there are many herb and plant pictures in the VM) from a dying people and language? Well, there almost certainly would be other things written in the language floating around Europe.

The constructed-translator theory made the most sense to me...but it still almost seems like too much work...

Take a moment and bask in the mystery...check the script out...

A Civil Rights Issue?

In New York State, there will be a battle at the ballot this year (mid-term elections always bring out the best in folks)(Texas is having their gubanatorial election, and while I can name the incumbent and two other well-heeled republicans, I'm having trouble naming a single dem even though there are six running...but that's a different story) over district zoning, and, depending on your point of view, civil rights.

The situation: rural districts in upstate New York that long ago lost their base of manufacturing jobs courted and won the affections of the Department of Corrections, and jobs returned. Prisons placed in rural areas brought economic opportunities to these hard-hit communities (read--impoverished). As compensation for housing criminals in the area, the small rural communities get the prisoners counted as residents in the census; heck, they use energy and resources, why shouldn't the towns where they're being held captive reap the benefits of more federal representation in the House, representation that matches how many bodies are in an area? This is the argument from the rural town point of view.

Why shouldn't they get the benefit of more representation? In New York, felons are disenfranchised. So, giving an amount of representatives to rural communities based on the sheer numbers of voting age eligible people while ignoring the fact that between ten and forty percent of those same voting age eligible people are, in fact, not eligible to vote leaves one community with more power that it would have had otherwise, and one community--the one from which the prisoner left (which tends to be the lower income places in and around the greater New York City metropolitan area)--with less power and less voice.

Civil rights leaders are introducing a bill in the state legislature that might make it to the ballot (New York is the first such state to start this particular battle, but abour seven or eight are about to follow suit (California, Texas, Ohio, et al)) that would count innmates in the census as members of the communities that they've left instead of the areas where their housed now. Their goal is to give more representation to communities that are hurting. (Are impoverished rural communities not hurting?)

Counties with prisons or multiple institutions are already trying to kill the bill.

Now, getting lost in all this, besides the fact that both sides have reasonable points (notwithstanding the disenfranchisement of felons, which is a problem for another post), is that while depressed rural areas losing their manufacturing-job based economy tend to be conservative and depressed low-income inner city areas tend to be big-city liberal, and both sides seem far apart on many things, they do share some very important desires: better schools, better jobs, and better control of drugs and crime in their communities...things that come with political power.

Beautiful Words for Baseball Fans

"Pitchers and Catchers", or, more accurately, "Pitchers and catchers report today." For fans of baseball, theses words mark the official start of the baseball year. The long winter of NFL, NBA, and NHL is finally over, and Spring Training is right around the corner. Today's the day...

Ahh, baseball starting...

Self Censorship

One of the lines I wanted to use when writing my "Welcome to the World" post for our new nephew Colton I felt might not be in good taste, no matter how amusing I found the line. After telling everybody about it, and not including it, I realized that it probably would have been fine...so I'm including it now...

The line I stopped myself from including was: "So now little Colton joins the roughly 3 billion other men on this planet in a constant search for nipples to put in their mouths."

Should I have ever really cared? This is my blog, I guess...

Happy Birthday Corrie!

Well, I made it long enough on this blog site to wish my wonderful wife Corrie a happy birthday. She turns 29 today...which means that we're entering our tenth year together? Holy jeeze...

I love you, baby! Here's to at least 29 more awesome years!

Here's a blast from the past...

Caddyshack Memories

Wanting to wathc something the other night, and learning that Corrie hadn't ever seen Caddyshack, we decided to broaden her comedic horizon a little and put on one of the "funniest films ever from America."

I remember one of those fake commercials from ESPN a few years back where they asked a golf caddy "What's the best golf movie ever?" The caddy's response: "Oh, that's easy: Caddyshack." Right away the 'interviewer' asks "What's the worst golf movie ever?" The caddy responds even faster this time: "Oh that's easier: Caddyshack II." I relayed my memory of this commercial to the girls here before we watched the original, since I noticed that both the original and the sequel were in possesion by members of the house.

How could one not like Caddyshack? Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight...Well easy enough, I suppose, if, like my mom, you don't like Chevy Chase, or if, like Corrie, you don't like Rodney Dangerfield. Then I bet it wouldn't be that hard to really dislike it.

From my own memory, I remember liking the hell out of Caddyshack and really being annoyed with Jackie Mason in the sequel. Then we watched the original, and the classic lines still resonate, and the culture clash I can see in a different light, but the humor is mostly one-liners and slap-stickery. My opinion of it dropped anyway, if that's not too blasphemus.

Then we watched the sequel, ready to make like MST3K and talk trash throughout the film, but I found myself not as annoyed with Jackie Mason, and enjoying Randy Quaid's psychopathic lawyer more than I remember. Jackie Mason's character, a developer of lower-to-middle income housing, going up against the rich WASPs? The culture clash from the first movie is revived here, but with a social concious, a social commentary besides the original's "nouveau riche vs old money". I'm not sure I like it more than the first, but my opinion of it climbed precipitously.

Weird note: Did you know that Bill Murray was on the set for only six days and had no scripted lines?

For the record, and from the films I've seen, Tin Cup, with Kevin Costner, Rene Russo, and Cheech Marin is my favorite golf movie.

Shhh! Don't tell, but...

I find some weird things on the internet...but that's not interesting or news. What I hadn't heard--ever--but found last night while searching for info on the birthing process in homo sapiens is that something like 20% of ladies have an orgasm while giving birth.

Having a baby is always portrayed in the cinema as a scary and painful process, and that characterization seems to be reinforced by the sterile way our white-male doctor controlled world has set up the hospitals in the real world.

Since humanity spent hundreds of thousands of years just fine with what's called "natural childbirth" nowadays, it seems less novel that an idustry of midwifery, water births, and natural births is becoming more popular.

But, there is a growing awareness of this orgasmic birth phenomena, known as the "best kept secret", with explanations, how-to books and DVDs, all available at this website.

The documentary won recognition at various film festivals.

The Internet never ceases to amaze me with the shiny nuggets of information buried beneath all the porn, scams, and celebrity gossip...

Welcome to the World of Air!

Last night, around 12:45 am, so basically in the first hour of the 3rd of Februrary, the world welcomed another hairless ape to the awaiting arms of his parents, and the Dolman clan grew in number yet again. My brother-in-law Peter and his soon-to-be wife (well, of course most of the heavy lifting was her) Sherri finished up a twenty+ hour stay in the hospital with her relieveing herself of a parasite that had taken root in her uterus nine months ago...

I kid, but seriously, congratulations you two, and now we can call you "you three", as now you have little Colton Wilson to feed and teach and learn from. The future began last night for you.