Reliving a Day

I got this idea from Bekah, who got it from a radio show host, who got it from someone else.

If you could relive a day or event in your life (excluding your wedding day or the birth of your children), what would you choose to relive and why?

Bekah came up with a Top Ten list, but I'm going to go with five (and maybe a followup of travel moments).

It's hard coming up with days to relive, because so many of the good times are bittersweet or tarnished. In high school and early adulthood I was insecure and feared rejection, and my fears often got in my way. But these five days or events were pure joy, pure pleasure. In no particular order:

1. Dancing with George.
One of the beach cities farther south has a tavern that holds concerts with semi-big names, and they used to have swing dancing Sunday afternoons. Having taken lessons, I went to the tavern by myself to dance. There was this bald-headed man in jeans and a white T-shirt who looked like a stevedore, and he was dancing very intimately with a woman who was obviously his love-interest. But then he danced the same way with another woman, and another. And then he asked me to dance, and I said, "Oh, I'm not ready for you!"

I learned his name was George, and he used to be in amateur competitions with his former dance partner, but she ran off with some other man.

That next Valentine's Day, one of the area churches was having a Swing Dance for their singles group, and I was telling a co-worker about it. She asked me a question, for which the answer was, "I'll dance with anybody. Except George."

Yes, you guessed it. George was at the dance. But he behaved himself, leaving actual air space between himself and his dance partners, so when he asked me to dance, I accepted.

Dancing with George was an E-ticket ride! He was a strong lead, easy for me to follow, and all I had to do was obey his direction and feel the thrill. It was exhilarating, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

2. Northern Lights.
On a high school speech tournament (I did Oral Interpretation of Literature, NOT Debate), we were coming home late at night from another town in Montana. On this trip, we were stuck with a school bus, instead of the Greyhound-style bus with storage beneath the floor. So all our luggage was piled on the back rows of seats up to about window-level.

Somebody noticed the Northern Lights out the back window and mentioned it. But only three of us, out of about 30 people on the speech team, sprawled out on top of the luggage and watched for a long time as the Northern Lights glowed and changed colors and swirled like a filmy curtain billowing in a breeze.

3. The Girls' Long Weekend in Dallas.
Several years ago, after my mom and I had been to multiple Women of Faith conferences, we realized my sister hadn't ever been to one. So we bought tickets to the conference in Dallas (the nearest one to where she lives), made reservations at a nice Bed & Breakfast in downtown Dallas (it looks like she's remodeled since we were there), and the three of us girls spent our time at the conference or trying to beat the 112 degree heat outside. We had a wonderful time. And with the trip my mom and I will be taking--with my sister joining us sometimes--we should be able to relive the Girls' Long Weekend again.

4. Coming to Faith.
I mentioned at the top of this post that I was insecure and afraid of rejection for much of my life, and this led me to believe that God--who knew the real me--wouldn't have me. I won't go into a lot of detail, but when I was 33, I finally had to wrestle with what I knew about God in my head and what I feared in my heart. And I knew that who I was at the core of my being depended on the result of that battle.

Of course, God won the fight (and so did I), and I've never doubted His love for me since. But the contrast from before was remarkable. I felt taller. And cured, as though my soul had been infected all my life, and now all the infection was gone. I learned to say, "No," and I didn't feel guilty, though I did overwhelm a couple people with No until I learned to handle the freedom.

But the biggest difference was that, since I no longer focused on whether people might reject me, I had so much more energy and attention to focus on how the other people felt. I went from self-centered misery to having a heart for the misery of others. All because the Lord finally got through to me that His love was for me too.

I'd relive that joy over and over.

5. Any day with my dad.

Gender Neutral

While I'm on the topic of boys and girls, I might as well add this.

I've heard a promo for Dennis Prager's radio show that has Dennis telling about a man he talked to who was trying to raise his daughter "gender neutral." The man had given his daughter some trucks to play with. "She named them," Dennis said. "Boys would never do that."

On the other hand, I read an email (probably not true, but indicative of "truth") about a woman bragging to her girlfriends that she and her husband were raising their son to be gender neutral. "In fact", the woman says, "he's upstairs playing with his Barbie right now."

All the other women wanted to see this amazing sight, so they snuck upstairs and peeked into the boy's room, where he was indeed playing with his Barbie. She was naked, and he was holding her face-down, with his hand across her back. He rubbed her belly along the carpet over and over, saying, "Vrooom! Vrooom!"

Dangerous Superhero Costumes

This Is London (UK) reported yesterday that British doctors are warning of the dangers of allowing children to wear superhero costumes.

Doctors say the increasingly popular trend of dressing up like superheroes can cause youngsters to hurt themselves as they try to copy the characters' death-defying feats.

They often believe their own abilities have been given a "super-boost" by wearing the costume.

Although risk-taking is normal for children, doctors fear the advent of superhero role models can give them unrealistic expectations.

The doctors are right about one thing: Risk-taking is normal for children. And when kids don't have costumes, they'll improvise.

When I was a kid, the boys in the neighborhood dressed up as Superman by draping a bath towel around their shoulders and fastening it at their throats with a clothespin. Then they got up on the roof of one of the boys' garage and jumped off, hopefully into the iceplant. I can't remember if any of them broke any bones, but there were definitely some sprained ankles.

It's called, "growing up male."

One of my co-workers told the story (forgive me if I've told you this already) of his son and his son's friend who were playing with golf clubs in the front yard. The dad had warned them to be careful, so of course they got a little wild and the friend hit the son with a club and gashed his head. When the dad got the son into the emergency room, he said to his son, "Now, look around and tell me how many girls you see here." There weren't any.

The article continues:

A study describes the cases of five boys who injured themselves while dressed as Superman or Spider-Man.

In one case, a six-year-old boy suffered a head injury and a broken foot when he fell from a first floor window pretending to be Spider-Man. He needed a brain scan and X-rays.

Four other boys, aged between three and eight, hurt themselves while dressed as Spider-Man or Superman.

Three were injured when they attempted to fly "without having planned for landing strategies".

One of the four had a head wound while three suffered broken bones which needed treatment under general anaesthetic.

The report noted that one of the children would have sustained even worse injuries had his costume not been padded with imitation muscles.

I have all the sympathy in the world for the parents of these boys (note how many are girls), and even a little sympathy for the boys themselves. But the doctors doing the study and raising the alarm are a bunch of girlie-men who have obviously forgotten what it was to be a kid.

Let the kids dress up and pretend to be Super-Duper Man. But buy them the costumes with the fake muscles, just in case.

My Little Dog Abby

I had to have Abby put to sleep last night. It was 12:30 am when I signed the papers, so technically, it was today.

Her health was not good, and when I got home from work about 10:30 last night, she was in obvious respiratory distress. She had soiled herself, so I gave her a bath, dried her off as well as I could, and took her to the emergency vet.

They took x-rays, and the vet showed me side-by-side comparisons to the ones they took back in November. Then, her heart was only slightly enlarged, and her lungs were clear. Last night, her heart was enormous, and she had lots of fluid in her lungs. The vet said they could try to get her back out of her congestive heart failure condition, but there were no guarantees, and we could end up right back where we were last night.

I told the vet that Abby's not a fighter. She's just a little sweetie pie.

They had her in a little oxygen incubator, and I got to take her out to say goodbye. I scratched her ears and told her all her favorite things for me to say, but I just couldn't bear to keep hearing the sound of her breathing the tiniest of breaths. So I took her back to the oxygen, and one of the assistants took me up front to take care of the paperwork. The assistant was crying too.

Abby never really made much noise, but the house is so quiet now. I see her empty bed and her dog food dish with food she hadn't eaten, and I know I'll need to do something with all her things. But not right now.

Global Warming Lunatics Leave the Assylum

The AP's Wired published an article today about the Big Four suggestions for reducing global warming. It's utterly flabbergasting that people are taking them seriously.

There's the man-made "volcano" that shoots gigatons of sulfur high into the air. The space "sun shade" made of trillions of little reflectors between Earth and sun, slightly lowering the planet's temperature. The forest of ugly artificial "trees" that suck carbon dioxide out of the air. And the "Geritol solution" in which iron dust is dumped into the ocean.

"Of course it's desperation," said Stanford University professor Stephen Schneider. "It's planetary methadone for our planetary heroin addiction. It does come out of the pessimism of any realist that says this planet can't be trusted to do the right thing."

That's the crux of the matter. Even though the earth's temperature has been fluctuating for millenia, quite without our help, these scientists trust only themselves and their like-minded compatriots to make sure the earth behaves properly. The fact that during the Medieval Warming period, people prospered (eg, Erik the Red established two colonies on Greenland that lasted until the next global cooling), doesn't improve the alarmists' ability to trust the earth.

Here are the Big Four ideas for saving the planet from itself:

The Geritol solution

A private company is already carrying out this plan. Some scientists call it promising while others worry about the ecological fallout.

Planktos Inc. of Foster City, Calif., last week launched its ship, the Weatherbird II, on a trip to the Pacific Ocean to dump 50 tons of iron dust. The iron should grow plankton, part of an algae bloom that will drink up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Tim Barnett, a marine physicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said large-scale ocean seeding could change the crucial temperature difference between the sea surface and deeper waters and have a dramatic effect on marine life.

As I recall from grade school Science class, too much algae kills the other life in ponds. That's why we banned phosphates from laundry detergent. Why would we do this to our oceans?

Man-made volcano

When Mount Pinatubo erupted 16 years ago in the Philippines it cooled the Earth for about a year because the sulfate particles in the upper atmosphere reflected some sunlight.

Several leading scientists, from Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen to the late nuclear cold warrior Edward Teller, have proposed doing the same artificially to offset global warming.

"It's an issue of the lesser of two evils," [Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research] said.

Scientists at the Center for Atmospheric Research put the idea into a computer climate model. The results aren't particularly cheap or promising, said NCAR scientist Caspar Ammann. It would take tens of thousands of tons of sulfate to be injected into the air each month, he said.

Scientists also complained about all the pollutants Pinatubo spewed into the air, not to mention the acid rain... But that's different. It's not a problem to pollute, when it's for the right reasons.

And if Mt. Pinatubo only reduced the temperature for a year, how long do the advocates of this approach plan to keep up the sulfer pollutants in our atmosphere? And what will be the long-term consequences?

Solar umbrella

For far-out concepts, it's hard to beat Roger Angel's. Last fall, the University of Arizona astronomer proposed what he called a "sun shade." It would be a cloud of small Frisbee-like spaceships that go between Earth and the sun and act as an umbrella, reducing heat from the sun.

About 800,000 of these would be stacked into each rocket launch. It would take 16 trillion of them - that's million million - so there would be 20 million launches of rockets. All told, Angel figures 20 million tons of material to make the discs that together form the solar umbrella.

I tried finding out the byproducts of rocket launches, and it's unclear whether carbon dioxide is one of them. Solid propellants may be able to produce CO2. But even if it's just the "immense volume of steam" put out by the space shuttle rockets, twenty million immense volumes of steam over the course of 30 years may have other side effects on the planet that we're not expecting.

Artificial trees

What's wrong with real trees?

Scientifically, it's known as "air capture." But the instruments being used have been dubbed "artificial trees" - even though these devices are about as treelike as a radiator on a stick. They are designed to mimic the role of trees in using carbon dioxide, but early renderings show them looking more like the creation of a tinkering engineer with lots of steel.

Nearly a decade ago, Columbia University professor Klaus Lackner, hit on an idea for his then-middle school daughter's science fair project: Create air filters that grab carbon dioxide from the air using chemical absorbers and then compress the carbon dioxide into a liquid or compressed gas that can be shipped elsewhere. When his daughter was able to do it on a tiny scale, Lackner decided to look at doing it globally.

It would take wind and a lot of energy to power the air capture devices. They would stand tall like cell phone towers on steroids, reaching about 200 feet high with various-sized square filters at the top. Lackner envisions perhaps placing 100,000 of them near wind energy turbines.

Even if each filter was only the size of a television, it could remove about 25 tons of carbon dioxide a year, which is about how much one American produces annually, Lackner said. The captured carbon dioxide would be changed into a liquid or gas that can be piped away from the air capture devices.

This is a great idea. We can put all the "radiator on a stick" devices with all the windmills in front of Ted Kennedy and Walter Cronkite's houses in Martha's Vineyard. All their hot air will keep the windmills spinning.

*

The fact that some in the scientific community are seriously considering any of these options is evidence of how far off the deep end the global warming alarmists have gone.

Good News From Iraq

Mohammed at Iraq The Model has this post tomorrow about Iran's adventure in Iraq and the direction it's headed.

Iran’s “project” in Iraq has recently been facing one setback after another. There are an increasing number of signs that the “project’s” prospects for success, for realizing Iran’s ambitions in Iraq, do no point upward anymore. It simply isn’t having much success lately in undermining Iraq’s emerging democracy through politics and force.

In the past Iran has employed several tracks to interfere directly and indirectly in Iraq. The mullahs celebrated several achievements in the project. They rejoiced when pro-Iran powers took over a big part of the Iraqi government. In this they saw the real chance of a satellite Islamic state in Iraq offering them a strategic extension into the western front. It seemed as if the project of exporting the Islamic revolution designed by ayatollah Khomeini was reaping fruit after decades of planning. The dramatic fall of Arab nationalism in Iraq and the potential transformation of Iraq into a Shia theocratic ally would mean the fall of the last geographic wall between Iran and the allies in Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian territory. It would make the dream of Tehran’s dominance in the region a reality.

While Iran couldn’t secure a majority support in Iraq’s political arena, it definitely secured enough clout to impede the secular democratic project. This costly -in lives and treasure - policy could, in the minds of the mullahs, force America to forsake her goals in Iraq.

That, at least, was the plan. But a number of interesting developments in Iraq in the last few weeks may mark the beginning of failure for Iran’s plan. The developments listed here were collected from both large and small stories in local Iraq newspapers. Perhaps none of them are significant alone, but putting the pieces together allows one to sense that a sea change is underway in this country and the tide is moving against Iran.

I'll leave the details of the sea change for you to read yourself.

At the same time I've heard reports out of Iraq (Christopher Hitchens on Hugh Hewitt's radio show is one) that attitudes among the Iraqis has changed since the announcement of the Surge and the change in tactics that accompanies it. Hitchens reprted that where the American and Iraqi armies used to clear an area of insurgents and then leave that area, now they're staying to patrol, much like beat cops. The residents have become cautiously optimistic, where they used to be pessimistic.

It's not a full-blown success at this point, but it seems the tide has changed in Iraq, and that's good news. Here's how Mohammed ends his post:

All in all, things are not going the way Khamenie or Nejad were dreaming of just a few months ago. Overall the course of events recently in Iraq indicates the beginning of a severe fall for Iran’s stocks in Iraq.

Of course we shouldn’t expect Iran to just sit back and not respond. I think an escalation in attacks by militias loyal to Iran will take place soon, especially outside Baghdad.

UN Predicts Mass Migration

The Telegraph (UK) reported today about the UN's latest population prediction.

At least 2.2 million migrants will arrive in the rich world every year from now until 2050, the United Nations said yesterday.

Britain's population will rise from 60 million to approaching 69 million by 2050 - almost entirely because of immigration.

The latest figures from the UN's population division predict a global upheaval without parallel in human history over the next four decades.

There will be billions more people in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Of these, tens of millions will migrate to Europe and America, while the indigenous populations of most countries in the rich world will either stagnate or decline.

By 2050, India will have the highest population in the world, totalling almost 1.7 billion people. There will be 292 million Pakistanis, giving their country the fifth biggest population. Nigeria will have 289 million people - making it the world's sixth most populous country - and Uganda's population will rise to 93 million, comfortably exceeding the totals in both its larger neighbours, Kenya and Tanzania.

This massive population growth will lead to land degradation on a huge scale and place an immense strain on the limited water resources of poor countries. Malawi cannot feed its present population of 13 million - and every year its soils become more degraded and yields steadily fewer crops.

I find it ironic that the UN publishes reports like this, without seeming to recognize the hand they had in shaping these conditions.

What has the UN done about Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe? They've honored him with invitations. They've ignored what he does to his own people. And he's just one murderous dictator-thug out of many.

No, the UN has bigger fish to fry. They have almost-daily condemnations of Israel and the Unites States to write and deliver and vote on. The rest of the suffering world be damned. And they will be if the UN population prediction is right.

Get the US out of the UN, and then get the UN out of the US! Let them set up their headquarters in Darfur.

Bird News

I've been neglecting the animal kingdom for a while, but I've been saving the news. Here are a couple items that have caught my eye:

Stumpy the Duck:

Photo credit: AP Photo

When this little cutie was hatched, the owner noticed something amiss right away: Stumpy the Duck has four feet, not the usual two. The AP reported the story February 17, 2007.

A rare mutation has left the eight-day-old duckling with two nearly full-sized legs behind the two he runs on. Nicky Janaway, a duck farmer in New Forest, Hampshire, 95 miles (150 kilometers) southwest of London, unveiled the duckling to reporters on Saturday.

"It was absolutely bizarre. I was thinking 'he's got too many legs' and I kept counting 'one, two, three, four,"' Janaway said.

Stumpy would probably not survive in the wild, but Janaway, who runs the Warrawee Duck Farm in New Forest says he is doing well.

"He's eating and surviving so far and he is running about with those extra legs acting like stabilizers," Janaway said.


Remote-Controlled Pigeon:

Photo credit: 28 Feb 2007 REUTERS/China Daily

This is more in the line of science news, rather than freak show, even though the picture looks freakier than Stumpy.

This was one of the Reuters "Best Pictures from the last 24 hours," with this caption:

A pigeon with micro-electrodes planted in its brain is seen at Shandong Science and Technology University in Qingdao, east China's Shandong province February 27, 2007. Scientists in eastern China say they have succeeded in controlling the flight of pigeons with micro electrodes planted in their brains, state media reported on Tuesday.

An article in Engadget, February 27,2007, has this to say about the experiment:

While chief scientist Su Xuecheng boasts, "It's the first such successful experiment on a pigeon in the world," they were fruitless in the search for any type of practical use, which was, ironically, the group's initiative when moving forward from similar experiments in mice in 2005.

No practical use? I see this as a favorite new toy of young boys, especially boys with younger siblings. They'll keep the pigeon circling their target sibling until the bird lets the droppings fly. Great for hours of fun! The scientists should start talks with Mattel before another Christmas season goes by.

Earthquakes and Tornados

I keep an earthquake detector at my desk at work. I've done that at the last several jobs I've had here in Southern California, ever since the Newport Beach earthquake back in the early '90s (working from memory here, so don't quote me on the date).

I was working in Irvine (the next town inland from Newport Beach) on the fifth floor of a building with rollers. The earthquake happened during the workday, and so did the aftershocks. My desk was near the middle of the floor, away from the windows, so I couldn't check the miniblinds to see if they were swaying (a symptom of earthquake). Because of the distance from the windows, I installed my first earthquake detector.

It was a pink highlighter hooked through a loop of yarn, with the yarn taped to the bottom of the overhead cabinet. If there was an earthquake, the pen would sway side-to-side.

Being out in the middle of the floor, I learned quickly that the floor had some flexibility. Whenever someone really heavy walked by, or someone pushed a loaded cart down the aisle, the floor would bounce up and down, and people would look around to see if we were having an earthquake. But my handy-dandy earthquake detector would hang still as could be. No swaying, no earthquake.

Now that I'm going to get retrained as a medical person, I'm also considering moving away from California to somewhere with four seasons (and I don't mean Warm, Gloom, Heat, and Rain). I won't need my earthquake detector there.

If I end up in Tornado Alley, what will be my tornado detector? Clearly a pen suspended from the underside of a cabinet shelf isn't going to tell me much.

Maybe if I keep a cow in the front yard, that might work. If the cow starts to lift off the ground, I'll know to run for shelter.

New Hope for Medical Life

After I got over being discouraged (or maybe it was before I got over it) about the long, long wait to get into the ultrasound program, I started looking for other options. My fellow "mature" students said there were programs at some of the other community colleges in the area (which are farther from home than the one I'm attending right now). But if a longer commute could get me into a job a few years sooner, then I might be willing to put up with it.

So I went online and found an accredited ultrasound program in Michigan where the entire thing is conducted online. They arrange with a hospital or clinic in your area for you to do the clinical work, and you do the academics over the internet, and you never have to go to Michigan for any of it.

Of course, it would mean paying out-of-state tuition, but the difference between that and California's in-state tuition is about $10,000 over the two years of the program. And that's only half of the difference in expected annual pay between ultrasound and the other program I would be able to get into right away if I stay here.

I haven't decided for sure yet, since I haven't finished checking out the relatively local schools. I'm leaning toward the Michigan program, but I want to let the idea percolate for a little while. Tomorrow night's Intro to Medical Occupations class is when we get the presentation of the Ultrasound program, and I'll try to find out what I can about licensing and all the rest of the information that is generic to the field.

If I decide to go with Michigan, then I'll have to take several prerequisite classes while my mom and I are on the road, so I'll be ready to start in May a year from now.

In the meantime, I've got just a few days more than a month until my last day at work. Then I'll have to scramble to get my house ready to sell (silly me, I thought I could do that while I was also working and going to school), and play it by ear if the housing market has tanked. It's exciting (the trip), and it's scary (cutting the ties to a home), but it's in God's hands, and that makes it good.

Democrats Cancel Nevada Presidential Debate

Barbara Simpson in her WorldNetDaily column today calls John Edwards a "Democrat Wuss" over it. Patrick Ruffini's post at Hugh Hewitt's blog Saturday was titled, "Democrats Wuss Out." I'm detecting a pattern.

Politico's article today didn't use the "W" word, but I presume that's because it's more of a straight news story.

The Nevada State Democratic Party is pulling out of a controversial presidential debate scheduled for Aug. 14 in Reno and co-hosted by Fox News, according to a letter released late Friday from state party chairman Tom Collins and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev).

The letter said Nevada Democrats had entered into the agreement with Fox, despite strong opposition from Democratic activist groups such as MoveOn.org, as a way of finding "new ways to talk to new people."

But Collins and Reid wrote that comments on Thursday by FOX News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, when he jokingly compared Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, to Osama bin Laden, "went too far," and prompted Nevada Democrats to end the partnership.

Riiiight.... The Obama/Osama joke was just a handy excuse for the Democrats' leadership to cave in to their far-left constituents and bow out of the debate. The fact that the Dems can't handle Fox News is indicative of their general lack of toughness. And hypocrisy.

When left-leaning news organizations host debates for Republican candidates, the Republicans don't cancel. The GOP is apparently more ready for hard questions than the Democrat Party.

I hear journalists over and over on Hugh Hewitt's radio show declaring that they're able to keep their own personal views out of their reporting and be objective on the job. These are lefty journalists, for the most part. And most politicians are willing to accept this journalistic belief at face value.

Unless the news organization is Fox News.

Barbara Simpson points out John Edwards' (and the rest of the caving-in Dems') ridiculous position:

The person in [the presidency] is supposed to be tough and resilient. He's supposed to embody courage and fortitude. He's supposed to be strong and resolute.

It's clear now that John Edwards isn't any of that and never will be, no matter how well his hair is styled.

Think of it. Our president must have what it takes to face the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-il, Mahmoud Abbas or even Osama bin Laden.

How can we believe that Edwards could do that when he's spooked by the potential of being questioned by television reporters?

She's absolutely right.

This morning Laura Ingraham read a quote by Dennis Kucinich (Update: Link here - HT: Michelle Malkin), in which he stated that he'd be happy to debate his views on the war, the environment, and all the rest of the issues, with any of the candidates before any news organization, anytime and anywhere.

If I were a Democrat, at this point Kucinich would have my vote, because he's the only Democratic candidate who has the courage to face Fox News.

God help us if the Scaredocrats win.

Groundhog Day

When I left my house for church yesterday morning, my car said the outside temperature was 48 degrees. By the time I left church, about three hours later, it was 90 degrees.

Maybe this year the groundhog was right about winter...

Ann Coulter on Legal Issues

Ann Coulter (who some are trying to excommunicate from conservative circles and inflict other punishments for having said a bad word about John Edwards, and they're doing it mainly because she had the nerve to be Ann Coulter--but that's another story) had an excellent column in Wednesday's WorldNetDaily.

Lewis Libby has now been found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice for lies that had absolutely no legal consequence.

It was not a crime to reveal Valerie Plame's name because she was not a covert agent. If it had been a crime, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could have wrapped up his investigation with an indictment of the State Department's Richard Armitage on the first day of his investigation since it was Armitage who revealed her name, and Fitzgerald knew it.

With no crime to investigate, Fitzgerald pursued a pointless investigation into nothing, getting a lot of White House officials to make statements under oath and hoping some of their recollections would end up conflicting with other witness recollections, so he could charge some Republican with "perjury" and enjoy the fawning media attention.

As a result, Libby is now a convicted felon for having a faulty memory of the person who first told him that Joe Wilson was a delusional boob who lied about his wife sending him to Niger.

This makes it official: It's illegal to be Republican.

Since Teddy Kennedy walked away from a dead girl with only a wrist slap (which was knocked down to a mild talking-to, plus time served: zero), Democrats have apparently become a protected class in America, immune from criminal prosecution no matter what they do.

As a result, Democrats have run wild, accepting bribes, destroying classified information, lying under oath, molesting interns, driving under the influence, obstructing justice and engaging in sex with underage girls, among other things.

Meanwhile, conservatives of any importance constantly have to spend millions of dollars defending themselves from utterly frivolous criminal prosecutions. Everything is illegal, but only Republicans get prosecuted.

She gives examples of the double standard. Plenty of them. But she seems subdued, not quite as full of her usual invective, though there are detectable traces of it.

In the end, what stands is her point that what we've suspected is true. Not only are Democrats given more of a pass in the press than Republicans are, but that pass carries over into our court system as well.

Handwriting on the Wall

It's there, and some of it is clear, but I can't quite read all of it.

I'm taking my prerequisites for the Allied Health program I want to start, which I plan to do after my mom and I finish touring the country in her motorhome. One of the prerequisites is a half-unit class that consists of showing up and listening to presentations about each of the Allied Health programs the school offers. There's no other homework besides sitting in your assigned seat by the time they take attendance. At the end of the class, they'll let us apply for the program we want.

I want Diagnostic Medical Sonography (Ultrasound). It's the most interesting to me, because it would let me do prenatal ultrasounds. Plus, it pays the best starting salary out of all the Allied Health programs. But because of that fun work and high pay combination, the waiting list to get in (if you have all your prerequisites finished) is 3 - 4 years. And then the program itself is two years. I just can't bring myself to wait that long before I start living like a grownup again.

The medical procedure that really rang my chimes when I was getting my Psychology degree was PET scans, where they inject radioactive sugars into you and then track where in the brain the sugar goes as you do or think things. That's Nuclear Medicine, and they teach it at Loma Linda (translation: expensive), but only if you've already finished Ultrasound or Radiation Technology training (Rad Tech is the other program with a 3 - 4 year wait).

So that's the handwriting on the wall: If I want to get into a medical field soon, it won't be in Ultrasound.

I'm disappointed. And frustrated. And I wish I could read the part where it tells me what to do instead.

North Dakota Goes For The Record

Photo credit: Will Kincaid, AP

The AP reported March 3, 2007 (as near as I can tell), that Bismark, North Dakota, is trying to reclaim its record.

More than 8,900 people flapped their arms and legs on the state Capitol grounds Saturday in an attempt to reclaim the record, which was snatched away about a year ago in Michigan.

The Guinness Book of Records still must confirm the number. The snow angel category was created in 2002 when 1,791 people made snow angels on the Capitol grounds in North Dakota.

Among the thousands of people frantically flapping in the snow Saturday in an attempt to set the record for the most snow angels ever made were parents, children, even snowplow drivers.

And then there was Pauline Jaeger — who on her 99th birthday, was making her very first angel.

"It's fun," Jaeger said. "I feel just like a kid."

Edna Arvidson, 84, of Bismarck, said she participated in the city's record-setting event in 2002.

"It's fun and puts us on the map," Arvidson said. "People think there's nothing going on up here."

Yep. People think that.

But let's hope for the sake of the folks of the happening place, Bismark, that justice will prevail with the Guinness confirmation team.

Wussification of World Opinion

The Canadian Press reported yesterday on a poll taken of world opinion about twelve different countries.

The survey for the British Broadcasting Corp.'s World Service asked more than 28,000 people to rate 12 countries - Britain, Canada, China, France, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, North Korea, Russia, the United States and Venezuela - as having a positive or negative influence on the world.

Israel was viewed negatively by 56 per cent of respondents and positively by 17 per cent; for Iran, the figures were 54 per cent and 18 per cent. The United States had the third-highest negative ranking, with 51 per cent citing it as a bad influence and 30 per cent as a good one. Next was North Korea, which was viewed negatively by 48 per cent and positively by 19 per cent.

Canada had the most positive rating in the survey of 28,389 people in 27 countries, with 54 per cent viewing it positively and 14 per cent negatively. It was followed by Japan and France.

Oh, please! Canada has the most positive influence on the world? Most of its energy on the world stage is spent making sure the other countries know it's not the same as the US.

If I had to choose, and wasn't allowed to pick the US, I'd probably go with Japan for all the lovely cars and toys (though I believe the iPod is a US invention).

"It appears that people around the world tend to look negatively on countries whose profile is marked by the pursuit of military power," said Steven Kull, director of the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes, which conducted the research along with pollster GlobeScan.

"Countries that relate to the world primarily through soft power, like France and Japan and the EU in general, tend to be viewed positively," he added.

"[C]ountries whose profile is marked by the pursuit of military power" really gets to me. And Israel is listed as the worst.

Let's see... Israel's military power is defensive. She's been attacked since the day she became a nation (under a UN directive, no less), and when she's not being attacked, she's being threatened with attack. But for Israel to have a strong military makes her the most negative nation in the world. Some people are just wilfully stupid.

It's encouraging that the US is viewed less negatively than Iran. I guess they didn't poll quite enough "Great Satan" believers to overcome Ahmadinejad's bad press.

America's "pursuit of military power" is not for selfish purposes. We have a responsibility--because we're just about the only country left that's willing to take that responsibility--to defend the defenseless against the aggressors. And our military power allows countries like France to ignore their own military defense, while they sit on their butts eating fromage and drinking wine and talking with disdain about American power and how great the French are for wanting peace.

Well, America wants peace too, but unlike the Europeasers, we understand that sometimes you have to beat the aggressors to a pulp before you can get real peace.

What would the world be without the "negative influence" of America? Let me refresh your memory with just a couple items:

Peter Brookes at Real Clear Politics

British group 18DoughtyStreet.com

God bless America!

European Invasion

I read the news, reported Saturday by BBC News, about the recent invasion of Liechtenstein by the Swiss Army, and I didn't think much of it. It was all glossed over, very hush-hush, as though it were nothing.

But that was before I knew the background behind the story.

Charlie, at Another Think, has the whole sordid tale spelled out in shameful detail. He tells the history, and he names the names.

With all the Euro-carping against the US over Afghanistan and Iraq, no doubt the Europeans are ashamed of their own aggressive tendencies. Read the whole sad story for yourself.

Possum Problem

This morning I took out a heavy trash bag and nearly dropped it on this wretched creature in the garbage can. I have no doubt it would have killed him.

It's been over a decade since I've seen a possum in a garbage can. When I was married, we used to get them now and then on the day after Garbage Day, because they came from the big, empty field by our house. They'd climb in from the steps by the back door, and then they couldn't get back out. So we'd call the animal control people, and they'd take the possum away for us.

One time, I asked the guy where they took the possums, and he said, "Oh, we have a restaurant down the road...." Animal Control Humor! Then he said they take the critters out to a field away from houses and let them go there.

So I called the animal control people today, expecting the same, but the service has deteriorated since then. The lady told me to tip the garbage can over and let him wander away, which he'll do tonight, since they're nocturnal beasts.

Great! Won't he just turn around and rummage through the garbage again? Nasty things...

Mars Has Global Warming

National Geographic reported Wednesday that Mars is experiencing warming and the subsequent melting of its ice cap.

Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural—and not a human- induced—cause, according to one scientist's controversial theory.

Earth is currently experiencing rapid warming, which the vast majority of climate scientists says is due to humans pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures.

In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.

Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.

"The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said.

No, Abdussamatov can't be right. The warming has to be man-made, because most scientists agree we're causing it here on earth. It's probably those rovers we left on Mars. Driving them around is heating up that planet, just like here.

Rats in the UN

The Telegraph (UK) reported today about a problem at the UN.

The United Nations headquarters in New York is infested with rats, mice, worms and even salt-water eels, according to staff members.

An insider told the New York Post: "In some instances the rats have beaten the UN staffers and delegates to the daily buffet. All of this has been reported to Aramark [a food supplier], which has done nothing."

The source said that infestations of mice and worms had been found throughout the UN campus, in offices and restaurants.

Security officers told the newspaper that leaks have developed in the subterranean levels that allowed river eels to wriggle through.

Rats and eels attract other rats and eels...