Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

Why Doesn’t NARAL Just Take a Nap for a While?

Salon.com Life | The comeback
Before the Roberts records began to embolden progressives to take a strong stand against the nominee, some pro-choice groups were alone in fiercely opposing him, and Naral’s stumble earned them the back of the hand from some, (mostly male) Democrats. The popular blogger Daily Kos (Markos Moulitsas Zuniga) enraged feminist bloggers like Jessica Valenti (Feministing) and Amanda Marcotte (Pandagon) when he blogged, in the midst of the Naral fuss, not about the ad, but about his frustrations with Naral’s “single issue” politics, and their single-minded devotion to what he called a “pet cause.”

The dustup exposed an ever-deepening fracture in the Democratic party over how important abortion rights should be.

Ha! Good for Kos. He’s absolutely right. Democrats have stupidly allowed the pro-abortion people to pretty much define what the Democratic party is all about and it’s time that changed.

Abortion is a very poor substitute for cheap and effective contraception — which is what people REALLY need and what the Democratic party should be advocating. (For that matter, you’d think the Republicans would be pushing for it too. If abortion is so terribly objectionable, then give people a realistic alternative for Pete’s sake.)

I occasionally get junk mail from NARAL — I suppose because they, like lots of other shallow-thinkers, assume that a person who’s a member of the ACLU would of course be in favor of abortion on demand.

Wrong.

Even though NARAL claims to be working for widely available and effective contraception, pretty much the only thing I ever see from them is pro-abortion stuff. That annoys me. That makes me think they haven’t thought things through very carefully.

Kos is right. Single-issue groups like NARAL are bad for the Democratic party.

On an only marginally related note, I just want to add that those three sure have ugly blogs. Too many ads, too many columns, too, too, too much crap going on. Yuck.

Just Who’s Running Things Anyway?

Washington Post: Sniper Goes on Hunger Strike
According to the court papers, Joan Cappell, a nurse practitioner for the Montgomery County corrections department, said Muhammad [the Washington sniper who killed a bunch of people a few years ago] told her Wednesday that he would not eat until he received proper food.

Well, this is just stupid. He’s already been given a vegan diet as he’d requested. Now he wants to control precisely what he gets for food and when he gets it. The guy’s been sentenced to death and they’re talking about force-feeding him to keep him alive?!? Dumb.

Why not just let him kill himself?

That works for me!

It’d save the state some money.

Gates Foundation Funds Discovery Institute

Salon.com News | Intelligent donation?
Kennock ends his e-mail to Salon with criticism over the inquiry into the groups that finance Discovery’s work. “Finally, I have been asked to advise you that it is unseemly for people who dislike one program at a think tank (or a university — or an on-line magazine, for that matter) to try to pressure funders of other programs there,” he writes. “It is illiberal and contrary to the spirit of free speech.”

Indeed. Though, whether salon.com’s reporting on the funding of programs at the Discovery Institute could be considered “pressure” is a matter of opinion. And, the argument could be made that paying Discovery to investigate transportation issues helps keep their infrastructure intact — making it easier for them to continue with their potentially damaging Intelligent Design work.

In the final analysis, I believe ideas must live and die by their own merits. As has been said before, the answer to speech you don’t like is MORE speech. No one is really served by simply shutting up Intelligent Design proponants like the Discovery Institute. Contrary to what many post-modernists might believe, reality is not created by the person who shouts the loudest. Cultures may embrace nonsense for a while, but the truth of evolution never changes. It simply waits to be rediscovered.

Sweet Jesus! How Long Until The Asshole Is Out of Office??

Bush’s Self Destruction
For the moment, at least, Bush is still able to sign horrible legislation, and even promote it as a sign of “getting something done” (see the Energy Bill, e.g.). But what about when he’s confronted with something as unpopular as , say, drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? A Zogby poll last December found 55 percent opposed to Arctic drilling, and only 38 percent in favor. Here is the albatross, there is the string, yonder is the neck. Can we work it out?

Those of you who live in the Washington DC area might like to join me on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol on September 20th. Thousands of concerned citizens like you and me will gather there to send congress a clear and visible message that drilling in the Arctic Refuge is unthinkable, immoral, and unacceptable.

Crows

I love crows. They’re really smart and funny and, when they’re not molting, quite attractive. I love the sounds they make. They do a lot more that caw, you know. They can make all sorts of sounds.

We didn’t have many crows for a couple of years. West Nile Virus apparently killed a bunch of them. Their population in northern Virginia appears to be on the rebound, though, because we’ve had quite a few of them around this year. I put some peanuts out on the deck rail and there are 3 crows that come in regularly to eat them.

Crows are my favorite birds.

A few years ago, Ian Frazier wrote a wonderful essay about crows and I’ve found an archived version! Here’s an excerpt. Click on the title to read the whole thing.

Tomorrow’s Bird
In order to stay competitive, as most people know, the crows recently merged with the ravens. This was done not only for reasons of growth but also to better serve those millions who live and work near crows. In the future, both crows and ravens will be known by the group name of Crows, so if you see a bird and wonder which it is, you don’t have to waste any time: officially and legally, it’s a crow. The net result of this, of course, is that now there are a lot more crows—which is exactly what the crows want. Studies they’ve sponsored show that there could be anywhere from ten to a thousand times more crows than there already are, with no strain on carrying capacity. A healthy increase in crow numbers would make basic services like cawing loudly outside your bedroom window at six in the morning available to all. In this area, as in many others, the crows are thinking very long-term.

Supernatural Selection

Creationism’s Latest Evolution
Mark Fiore’s got an especially good animation up on his site this week. Check it out.

“I don’t know what happened! I can’t explain it! It must be Intelligent Design!”

Rights Should Follow Responsibilities

Salon.com Wire Story: Justices Protect Children of Calif. Gays
The California Supreme Court has determined that the ex-partner of a lesbian woman must share responsibility for the children they raised together. This is really wonderful news. If gay and lesbian folks are going to have equal rights, they’ve got to also have equal responsibilities. I think most gay people realize this and are quite ready to take on the responsibility part of the equation. (Consider the story of Riley, for example.)

Groups opposing same-sex marriage decried the justices’ actions. “Today’s ruling defies logic and common sense by saying that children can have two moms,” said attorney Mathew Staver of Liberty Counsel. “That policy establishes that moms and dads as a unit are irrelevant when it comes to raising children.”

What a moron. Mathew Staver is in no position to judge logic or common sense when he apparently has none of his own. All the ruling says is that both partners in any couple raising children are responsible for the well-being of those children. It doesn’t say anything about whether male/female couples are better for child-raising. (I don’t believe it really makes any difference. Children need a stable home and, ideally, parents who love one another. That’s it. The gender of the parents is what’s irrelevant.) People like Mathew Staver are such idiots. If “moms and dads as a unit” are so fucking critical, why doesn’t he devote all of his energies to outlawing divorce entirely? Divorcing heterosexual couples leave far more children without “moms and dads as a unit” than do gay couples.

Let’s check out Staver’s organization, Liberty Counsel, shall we?

My first impression is that their web site is a mess. Jeez, what is it with right-wing nuts, anyway? Why do so many of them have web sites that look like they were designed by hyperactive psychotics? Inevitably, they’ve got 3 or 4 columns of crammed-together text with underlined links (consider the Drudge Report as a prime example of this) and marquee text and flashy things and way too many ads and always ALWAYS some kind of red, white, and blue color scheme. They’re ugly. And annoying. And I hate them.

Anyway, back to Liberty Counsel. Their tag line is: “Restoring The Culture, One Case At A Time By Advancing Religious Freedom, The Sanctity Of Human Life And The Traditional Family.” (Yes, with all the words capitalized just like that.) I had no idea the culture even needed restoring! Just goes to show you how out of touch I must be, eh?

Okay, so… religious freedom. Does that apply to ALL religions? Or just Christians. If it’s just Christians, is it ALL Christians? Or only some pre-approved flavor of Christian?

I’m with them on the sanctity of human life. Do we have to stick with just humans, though? Can’t we expand that to include ALL life? No? Okay… if we’re just going to say human life is sacred, does that include ALL human life? Or just Americans? Christian Americans only?? Are the lives of Iraqi insurgents also sacred?

I grew up in a traditional family, so I know all about that. There was so much that was traditional in my family! I had the usual “mom and dad as a unit” arrangement. My dad, though, was an alcoholic and a bit of a run-around. He was so in favor of “moms and dads as a unit” that he began another family, with another woman, before the divorce from my own mother was final. He was definitely into that whole “be fruitful and multiply” thing. And, anyway, the Bible talks all the time about men having children with more than one woman. How much more traditional can you get than that, huh? He pretty much quit paying child support to my mother altogether once his second family began growing, but hey… that’s pretty traditional, too!

But, I digress. Clearly, male/female parenting arrangements aren’t any guarantee of stability or responsibility.

My New Laptop

SonyStyle.com | Sony VAIO® S460P/B Notebook
The ideal mobile companion designed for your busy lifestyle. The S460P/B provides both premium performance and portable convenience. The integrated Double Layer DVD drive24, Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional operating system and wireless LAN95 connectivity help you maximize your productivity.

It’s important for people to have choices, don’t you agree? That’s why — even though I will always love my Mac iBook and will continue to use it very often — I choose to use a Windows machine for some tasks. Sometimes it’s just easier to go that way, okay? It doesn’t make me a bad person. (Does it?)

Yesterday, after lunch at Uno’s (mmm… spinach, mushroom, and gorgonzola pizza without the mushrooms…mmm), I was trying to persuade Mark that we should go home and watch this movie we got from NetFlix where this psycho guy takes instructions from a giant evil bunnyrabbit. But, noooooo… Mark didn’t want to watch the evil bunny movie. He wanted to wander around CompUSA and look at computers.

This is something I can usually get behind — I love computers as much as the next pathetic geek — so I said, “sure!” It turned out to be a good idea for a couple of reasons:

First, I was reminded why my spouse and I are truly a match made in heaven when, while we were strolling down the keyboard and mouse aisle, I overheard him saying to noone in particular, “Pro Wireless Mouse! Mmmmmmmm!”

The second reason it was a good idea to wander around computer stores with Mark was because he was in just the right mood for persuading that we REALLY need new Windows laptop computers. One for each of us, of course, ’cause we don’t want computer envy tearing us apart.

So. We got these new Sony Vaio laptop computers yesterday and, gosh if they aren’t awfully nice. They came with built-in wireless networking and XP Professional. And they’re just really attractive.

I love computers. Don’t you love computers?

Lucy and the Towel Game

Ever since she was a small kitten, Lucy (who is now about 15 years old) has really enjoyed playing what we call “the towel game.”

Here’s how it goes:

1. The towel game is played with the human sitting on the toilet and the cat on the floor.
2. The human takes a large bath towel from the rack and flips it out onto the floor in front of her, half the towel flat on the floor and the other half of the towel being help up by its corners.
3. The cat jumps onto the towel and the human quickly tosses the remaining half of the towel down over the cat.
4. Next, the human must use her fingertips to lightly scratch the towel around the area of the cat’s covered head and front paws. While doing this, the human is required to make a tempting “psh-psh-psh” noise with her lips.
5. The cat then flips on her side, still under the towel, and commences biting and kicking the towel with her hinds legs. Purring may accompany this part of the game.
6. After a couple minutes of this activity — with the human making scritch-scritch motions with her fingers and psh-psh-psh sounds and the cat kicking and biting — the cat will crawl out from under the towel.

Repeat as above until cat becomes bored. This could take as long as a half an hour.

Lucy is a BIG fan of the towel game and I just finished playing it with her for a while. She’s especially cute when she plays because she makes this appealing “brrr!” sound when she’s having fun.

She was doing that a lot just now.

Just this past Friday Lucy was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma. It’s growing over about 2/3 of her lower jaw, though just to look at her you might not notice it. Fur conceals and she’s a kitty who’s never liked people scratching her chin so I didn’t have a chance to feel that there was something unusual.

The growth was discovered during Lucy’s annual exam with our regular veterinarian last week. This week Lucy went to South Paws veterinary specialty clinic and was examined by an oncologist there. They did a CT scan on her and were, thereby, able to see the extent of the tumor without having to put her through surgery.

The cancer is inoperable. There’s no effective treatment for this kind of cancer.

All we can do is watch and wait.

And, while she’s still feeling good, before her illness makes her feel sick and we show her the final kindness, we can play the towel game.

Big Good Wolves

Salon.com Wire Story
A federal judge Friday ordered the Bush administration to step up efforts to restore the gray wolf to four northeastern states, a ruling environmentalists called a major victory.

It will be a major victory if the Bush administration actually follows through on it — something that’s in no way guaranteed. Bush and his cronies have, after all, made it pretty clear they don’t give a shit about the environment. As long as George Bush has a place to ride his mountain bike, he doesn’t care whether the rest of us (human or animal) have nice natural places to hang out.

Mark and I visited the International Wolf Center when we were in Ely earlier this summer. The picture above is of some stuffed wolves they have there. We saw live wolves, too, but my pictures of them aren’t as clear as this. These wolves died of natural causes — old age, most likely. The collars have radio transmitters that were used to track the wolves when they lived out in the woods.

There are wild wolves up in the north woods, too, I’m happy to say. When we were out looking for black bears one day we saw some wolf scat. Interestingly enough (well, to me), it’s not at all like dog poop. Wolf poop isn’t “bulky” and it’s composed largely of fur from whatever it is the wolf was eating. Likely deer.

People in other parts of Minnesota and also around the more rural areas in northern Virginia are always complaining about the damage deer do to their landscaping and gardens. They just need to bring in a couple packs of wolves. That’d take care of the problem — might also get rid of their neighbor’s yappy little dog and the obnoxious kid from down the street, too.

Nothing but good comes from wolves. Big Good Wolves.