Opining Online

Most of the people I know who drink beer don’t need any excuse other than beer exists. However, at least for the first link, having a beer or two makes some things more palatable. Or not.

“Could it be the worst food product ever?” The answer is in the comments.

What better place on the web to visit while having a beer than Behind The Stick? To make it even better, What are the odds? comments contain a nice list of movies to put on your Netflix list for future Friday nights.

There is not enough beer in the universe for this — The Ontology Of Voltron, not Transformers — to make sense to me.

Tea Party first. Save the beer for the after party!

Do you doubt sometimes whether drinking beer is useful? Do you doubt the aesthetic effects? Here’s proving you have nothing to worry about: The Beer Can House.

I learned to drive at a fairly young age, taking my Mom’s car for a joyride when I was 12. I likely would NOT have been caught if I hadn’t stopped to replace the gas I used. Yeah, I scraped the post heading to the pump, but my Dad found another excuse for that. He just shrugged it off when the car started so easily the next morning (winter, Colorado). But it was the nosy attendant at the service station that was my downfall. Why, oh why did he have to mention to my Dad the next week that he was surprised I was old enough to be driving????

After I served my sentence for that foolishness and actually got a driver’s license, my adolescence was spent driving my Mom’s Lincoln or my Datsun station wagon with no radio or A/C.  It’s funny, considering my history, but when I was 16 my parents were far more likely to let me go somewhere if I was the driver instead of a passenger.

Just for fun, a list of the cars I’ve owned:

1969 Datsun station wagon (it actually belonged to my parents, but it was MY car!)

1972 Chevrolet Corvette convertible. A wedding present from my husband. I wrecked it (and it melted) about 3 months after we were married.

1971 Cadillac – shared with my husband. Yuck, no fun sharing a car!

1964 Mustang – my Dad bought it cheap for my little sister and I can’t remember why she wasn’t driving it. No A/C, standard transmission, and fun to drive. No longer sharing a vehicle!

1975 Mercury Monarch. Don’t laugh. It got me where I needed to go.

1976 Buick Lesabre. It was brown. It was boring, but also reliable.

1980 Buick Regal Turbo. My second go at horsepower.

1983 Chrysler New Yorker. A great car on snow and ice, low and heavy.

1988 Ford LTD – a great car in water, high and light.

1993 Ford Taurus SHO – see previous post.

1993 Cadillac – the V-6 hulkmobile

1998 Cadillac – mmm… Northstar!

These were *my* cars. My husband owned different vehicles, and some of the above were kept for a while instead of traded in. We have a 4 door 1966 Pontiac sitting in the back yard that I hope will someday be running again. I want to wear a polka-dotted shirtwaist dress and straw hat while I’m riding in it.

At my age, I think it’s appropriate to create a new category – nostalgia.

Leadfoot is likely a genetic disorder found in most humans, though it’s precise location has not yet been documented. However, humans have much more information about the genetic code of a 1993 Honda Civic and it’s generally accepted that without unusual genetic alteration, you won’t clock one at 137 mph. (via Drudge, via Althouse)

I once owned a 1993 Ford Taurus SHO, a pretty red one. I’ll have to look through my photos, but I don’t remember one of the car. But I loved that car. 220 HP compared to the 160 HP of a 1993 Honda Civic.

If I remember correctly, the highest speed on the SHO’s odometer was 140 mph. (NOTE: My children and any law enforcement officers must stop reading at this point.) I never pegged it, but only fear stopped me. There’s a great stretch of I-49 where you can see a long long way and it ends in a very steep exit. When there were no other cars in sight, I would floorboard my little red SHO and let her go. I usually got to the exit at around 130 mph and chickened out. The car would definitely have gone faster.

My husband maybe got the car up a little faster racing (again on the then relatively deserted I-49), of all cars, a Hyundai Sonata. At that speed, it didn’t feel like the tires were actually in steady contact with the roadway. We were, um… flying. Anyway, he chickened out then too saying “Our income depends on my CDL and we can’t afford a ticket!” The SHO “felt” best and drove best at 90 mph. I don’t think a cop would ever have accepted that defense, but it was true!

The only reason I’m not still driving my little red SHO is because the AC went kaplooie. We live in Louisiana. The estimate for repairing the A/C was about $4000 which was absolutely frickin’ ridiculous. My Dad was about to trade in his 1993 Sedan Deville which carried about the same Blue Book value as my SHO, so we switched cars and he traded in the SHO.

I’d probably still be driving the 93 Cadillac if someone hadn’t t-boned it in 2003. I’d finally learned that if I wanted to pass someone in that underpowered V6 hulkmobile, it had to be downhill and downwind. It did get excellent gas mileage. It was also difficult to keep on the road because of the strange steering system. Yes, I could make a U-turn on a two lane highway without using both shoulders, but the “drift and float” was horrible.

With the insurance check in hand, I went used car shopping. I almost got a 1999 Audi, but researching maintenance costs made me doubt it’s utility. After shopping for two weeks, I settled on another Cadillac, but this 1998 model has a Northstar engine. Mmm… horsepower! I can pass! I can merge! Oh yeah, baby all that is worth it even if I do have to back up to turn around on a two lane highway. Sixty thousand miles later, I’m still pretty happy with it.

We haven’t bought a new vehicle since 1991 – an F150 with over 400,000 miles on and still running. But… for the first time in AGES, I want a new car – a 2010 Taurus SHO.  I want. Barack, Daddy, anyone?

Our house is on a dead end street. When my youngest was growing up, there were four girls her age who lived nearby. Three of these girls took ballet lessons at the same studio. Being the stay-at-home-mom on the street, I took care of transportation to and fro the ballet studio.

I was also heavily involved in costuming the dancers, so my time while the girls were learning was spent in the costume shed. I learned more about fitting and sewing in those years than all others combined.

This adventure began when my daughter went to see “The Nutcracker” with the neighbors across the street. We’d been living here for less than a month. My daughter came home with brochures, prices, and class schedules that evening. She was in the third grade and took the initiative to approach the dancers and find out what she had to do to become one of them. Yes, I was impressed.

But this was the child who was interested in everything and wanted to do it all. I told her she had to narrow her after-school activities to two things — we could not do it all. She decided on ballet and violin lessons. If only she’d chosen something inexpensive like Girl Scouts or 4-H!!

I’m not complaining. Really, I’m not. We spent a year’s college tuition on a violin, but she had the experience of playing a solo accompanied by a full orchestra.  She played with her orchestra in Carnegie Hall. Really, how may non-professionals can claim that?

Ahh… ballet. My daughter, as a junior ballerina, never had a chance at the role of Clara in ”The Nutcracker”. She would have been damned good in that role… but she was not professional material. I hope that her realization of this did not take too much enjoyment away from her role as one of the core dancers of the company. The star may shine, but if the core is weak, the production suffers.

As chauffeur to my daughter and two of her friends, three times a week to lessons, more frequently when a production was imminent, the three girls often forgot I was there. They were in the 8th grade, when one of them told about a classmate who had done drugs and broken his leg.

The amazing conversation that followed was exclamations of how none of them would be so stupid because if they broke their leg, or even sprained an ankle, Mrs. XXX (ballet teacher) would never forgive them.

I never felt so much a part of a community as I did then. I am by nature a loner, not a joiner. In fact, I had many arguments with Mrs. XXX about costumes. She will always be a hero in my mind because she had such a fantastic influence on my child.

As a parent, I think my child would have naturally had the guts, or whatever you may call it, to resist the path to degeneracy, but I am f0rever grateful to her dance teacher for making it easier for her. And to her violin teacher, who trusted her to babysit her infant. There’s not a better measure of trust of one’s character than that.

This post is dedicated to all the music and dance teachers who instill the best in their students, whether they become stars, or not.

Thanks, Mrs Mills

I’d have been hard-pressed to explain why Jimmy Carter’s win over Gerald Ford caused a few tears to flow in 1976. I was not politically involved at that time. In fact, I had two children under the age of two. I really didn’t have time for politics. I don’t remember paying much attention to the campaign at all. Yet, I was incredibly disappointed that Ford lost.

On my old, now defunct blog created in the fury of Dan Rather’s last hurrah, then continued because I thought defeating Kerry was a good thing, I wrote:

I was wrong

Shocking, I know.

I once said that even though Jimmy Carter was a horrible president, that as a person I’d be happy to invite him into my home because he was a decent man. This was in contrast to Clinton, who I thought was a much better president, but not as decent. Forget it, Jimmy. I rescind the dinner invitation.

After reading that post, my brother (who I identify there as merely a reader) lent me  None But A Blockhead, which contains Larry L. King’s 1976 Esquire article, “We Ain’t Trash No More!” I still don’t find a link to the full article anywhere.

That’s a pity, so my excerpts will be a bit longer than if I could link to the whole thing. (I wonder if the copyright was renewed?)

Jimmy Carter has proved he’s smart and tough; I also suspect he’s about half mean. This conviction is based on more than the observation that his mouth often smiles when his eyes do not. He’s a “born-againer,” an evangelical. You can shake every goober plant and magnolia bush between here and Stone Mountain without finding a group more wedded to its absolutes or less tolerant of dissent. Jimmy may prattle on about love and Jesus, and believe it, but at the bottom that soft spiritual goop is a bedrock conviction that the vengeful Old Testament God, extracting eyes for eyes and teeth for teeth, is what makes the mule plow.

Evangelical proponents of anything make me suspicious, whether it’s politically right or left, spiritualism or materialism, PC or Mac, Coke or Dr. Pepper.

Ain’t no free lunch, you see. You gotta pay the piper for all dances. Jimmy Carter’s creed teaches that what you sophisticated Damyankees often call fun is the sort of sinful mischief certain to be taxed — even to the extent of eternal roastings. Maybe that’s why you’ll never discover more than a nickel’s worth of humor in Jimmy. Fun is for the frivolous, and Jimmy sees the world as a hard and serious place.

A humorless world view is a bleak one. Only a humorless man could have engaged in “the most remarkable exercise in presidential navel-gazing in American history.” [Steven Hayward, Reagan biographer]

That navel-gazing produced the “Crisis of Confidence” speech, called by some the most important speech of the Carter presidency. It was at least equally responsible for his failure to get re-elected as the Iranian hostage crisis. It was a sermon. And liberals today worry about George W. Bush’s religious roots?

…home boys who’ve learned the difference between Pouilly-Fuisse and RC Cola, or who’ve had their tastes for Moon Pies replaced by craving for caviar, may find Carter more a throwback to laissez-faire, simplistic Rotary Club solution or even Nixonian repressions than will comfort them. Jimmy’s talked a fair liberal game, sure. But Mo Udall wasn’t just whistling Dixie when he cracked, “If Carter’s elected he’ll never make Mount Rushmore because there’s not enough room for two more faces.” Jimmy is as hard to get a handle on as a greased pig, which is about as elusive as a lightning bug.

Getting a handle on Jimmy may be easier today, but I think King had a pretty good one in 1976.

Awright. I’m admitting my reservations. My fear is that I’ve seen hundreds like the man, ruling boondock courthouses and marking up prices in their shops on the square, and, yes, I gotta squirm a little bit when a humorless man grins like he’s in a grinning contest. But there’s this history, all this goddam haunting history, of the South having been shut out for so long that even us lontime expatriates defensively feel that should Jimmy Cah-tah prove to be a sumbitch, then at least he’s our sumbitch.

And, dammit, that’s what Jimmy has forgotten about: loyalty to your own sumbitches. He’s already forgotten his own words, “Whenever you have a chance, say something good about our country.”Instead, since at least 2000, he seems to be going out of his way to say not-so-nice things.

Dangit, I have an even worse time trying to figure out where Obama’s coming from. Chicago? Sure, that’s easy and probably applicable. Perhaps someday a political scientist will compare today’s Chicago with yesterday’s Ole South.

Yet, it is as difficult to get a handle on Obama as it was Carter. They are twins in their combination of upper/downer talk. They are, IMHO, twins as far as a mean-streak. Though Carter didn’t (to my recollection) try to remake the entire country and its economic system in the first month of his presidency, both Carter and Obama have different historical and future visions of this country than do most of its inhabitants.

The stimulus bill passed this evening was never read by a single Senator or Representative or by the President and his staff. No one person knows what the hell is contained in the full thing. I expect Obama to sign it Monday, not knowing having a clue what he is doing.

This is the reason for my tears tonight.

Yesterday I downloaded the latest Senate revisions of the stimulus bill. It’s 778 pages long, costs $790 billion dollars — that’s only slightly less than $1 billion a page. And it covers almost every area of spending one can imagine.

I have not read the whole thing (duh!) and can’t help wondering if any of our Sens. or Reps. have. Or, if Pres. Obama has. How could any of them have had the time to do so? It took me an hour to read all the section titles!

This bill is too big not only in $$$ but in its sheer wordy bulk. I don’t think anybody has a clue as to how it will all work out, but it will take years for it to have any effect, IMHO. By then, I think the recession would be over anyway. I’m really disappointed in all our representation.

OH NO! I’ve just checked the latest version… it’s now 1434 pages! To be fair, this version includes all the deleted versions of each section. Page 678 is the first page with no strikethroughs. This version is labeled the “public print” version, but you’d have to a moron to print it.

The latest non-marked up Senate version is apparently this one: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Warning: large pdf file. But, it’s only 759 pages!!

Please feel free to apply any metaphor you wish to my post title.

…and I’ll post if I want to.

Sometimes I have nothing to say, yet feel the need to say it.

Since that phrase was uttered in Obama’s Inaugural speech, much has been written about what that rightful place should be.

My personal take is that science should be near the top. It epitomizes (or should, at least) logical thinking. Logical thinking comes in handy no matter the discipline, so science should be teaching us logic in all things. At least the most important things that impact our daily lives.

Science Blogs took the question seriously and many of the contributors there have offered their comments. You’ll find my comments in several of their posts.

It should be pointed out that I am science junkie. I’ve been one since the early 1980s when my son’s closed head injury sent me to the medical library at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. At that point in time, all I wanted to do was understand the reports of his CT scans, and later, his MRIs.

I learned the parts of the brain, from Wernicke’s area to the substantia nigra quite easily. It’s like reading a map in a way. I understood the reports about the significant and diffuse areas of injury that suggested that he might never speak or walk again. Thankfully, he proved those prognoses wrong. He does not walk perfectly or speak/communicate perfectly and his anxiety at realizing he doesn’t isn’t shown on a CT or MRI scan.

Innate curiosity took over from there. How can one learn just a little bit without wondering what came before and what might come afterwards? And how does this relate to seemingly unrelated things?

Thus began my on-again, off-again subscribtion to Scientific American. It’s recently been mostly off-again because of ScienceBlogs and ScienceDaily.

All of this leads to the most important statement I want to make:

SCIENCE IS IMPORTANT TO ME.

Because it is important, I am disgusted with poor science, science which aims primarily at a monetary result, and woo – science which is just junk – and closely related to making money over advancing knowledge. With all this in mind, I am linking the best of the responses (IMHO) of the ScienceBlogger’s answers to the “rightful place” of science (in no particular order):

Pure Pedantry - Science can tell us what is and in some cases what might be, but it cannot tell us what ought to be. Science can make us intelligent, but it cannot make us wise.

Neurotopia 2.0 – Science needs a voice. A voice of reason, a voice of information. So when the government, or your friend down the street is trying to make a decision, it won’t just be gut instinct. It will be feelings, AND science, AND social considerations, AND economics. And based on all of these factors, a decision can be reached. When science is included, I feel that decision is more likely to be beneficial. The place of science may not be at the very top. But it should at least be in the cabinet. And it should definitely be in the classrooms.

Not Exactly Rocket Science – This difference, between “Science: the Details” and “Science: the Principles is crucial to me. Lacking the former deprives you of knowledge; lacking the latter deprives you of the tools with which to acquire knowledge. The details are what most people think of when they think of science, and they view them as the provinces of geeks and boffins. The principles are a way of thinking, whether people think about it or not, and they are everywhere.

Respectful Insolence - The U.S. still has a healthy scientific endeavor, and the government is not the be-all and end-all of science. Unfortunately, the logo and the concept behind the Rightful Place Project seem to imply that it is, particularly given that President Obama’s statements about science were the inspiration for the project.

Let’s get one thing straight right here: “Revitalizing” science, whatever that means, does not depend upon government. It does not depend upon Barack Obama. There is no doubt that the government is very important as a funder of science, particularly biomedical science, and that the President can do a lot to support science in the U.S., but it is Americans doing science who determine how vital the scientific endeavor in this country is, not the government.

Corpus Callosum - What is being asked is this: help define the rightful place of science in our world.  The answer is this: Literature, Science, and the Arts.  The three noble human endeavors.  Each necessary; none sufficient; each overlapping; none mutually exclusive.

Science is one leg of the three-legged table that elevates all mental sustenance out of the mud. 

AND that, my friends, ends this inquiry into the rightful place of science. However, I’d like to submit an afterthought of my own:

Science is not well served by today’s popular media, be it television, internet, or print. Too much hoopla and too much hype. Were we to listen entirely to popular media, we’d think obesity is caused by a virus and we’re all doomed because of miniscule detectable amounts of mercury in high fructose corn syrup.

Where do you think the rightful place of science is? Could it possibly be in the pages of our newspapers, TV stations, and their websites? Nah… real science isn’t that good for scary headlines.

(formatting changed for clarity and links added)

I’m agreeing with Maureen Dowd. Again. It has me checking the definition of blue moon.

My talent (if there is such a thing) is in responding to others’ superior thoughts or astonishing stupidity.

One would think I’d at least be capable of generating the astonishing stupidity myself. Alas, I’m not even that talented.