Krauthammer unfortunately reflects the nearly ubiquitous tendency of Americans to think as if death were something avoidable. Look at the language we use: we speak of "saving lives" by medical intervention. What's really happening in most cases is death delayed; in the best cases, life is prolonged, but in far too many instances it's the painful transition from life to death that is prolonged by medicine.
I ranted about similar issues in my LJ.
delete everything on them that’s crap.
Wait - everything? Without an OS, the device would be pretty useless.
I'm pretty sure Sturgeon's Law wildly underestimates the proportion of crap on my computer. For one thing, I'm running Windows...
You left one out:
* My Birthday, 19 April 1957
Scott @18:
There are vast swaths of history where the heads of families and businesses had power over people (we can call them "their people"), and used whatever power their people afforded the head, to make their lives better rather than just squeezing them.
Examples include: [please fill in]
I tried to read that, but the WashPo site loads so many ads/images/whatever from so many different sources, my satellite Internet took forever to load it, and Norton went crazy scanning all those external links for threats, so my computer nearly froze solid for several minutes just to get the first page. Not doing that five times, I'm afraid...
HP @72: Seriously, zombies are all about Nixon.
Nominated for best line of the week.
Bruce @92,
the boss controls the conversation in a group, and can stop all talk in order to address everyone
Thanks for helping me understand why I hate it when someone taps a spoon against a glass at one of our monthly neighborhood potlucks. I love sharing food with these people, but really resent attempts to dominate the conversations.
Obeying the Law is for Wimps
...who hate America. Don't forget that part.
Every day brings fresh evidence that McCain is personally incompetent, and his campaign is utterly corrupt - yet polls indicate the race is even. People aren't changing their minds.
Forgot to pimp the blog/Web page for my show.
KZYX is my favorite radio station, because it's the only one broadcasting my show. :D They also have a live Webcast!
Folk music shows are on Saturday mornings (Humble Pie, American roots music), Saturday afternoons (Lunch on the Back Porch, bluegrass); Sunday mornings (Oak & Thorn, Celtic music); and depending on your definitions of "folk music," other shows as well.
Their Website is unfortunate, but you can find the schedule if you persevere. Sometimes the Webcast seems to be troublesome - if you have trouble, send a message to rich at kzyx dot org.
I remember my first Chimay! For quite some time, it was widely regarded as the Best Beer in the World (though of course such a claim was also hotly contested). Belgian beers in general used to be hard to find in America, but now they are The Next Big Thing. Maybe Waterzooi will start appearing on restaurant menus... oh, happy day!
SamChevre @98, a glass of Grimbergen Tripel that I had with a bowl of Waterzooi in a little restaurant in Brugge stands out clearly in my mind. Not the best food-drink pairing ever, but they certainly took the chill out of me and lightened the perpetually grey sky.
TomB @ #58 - Thanks for that link! The fires nearest me show up very clearly. Also note that only a fraction of the fires are spotted with red squares - there are 131 separate fires in Mendocino County alone.
As Kathryn from Sunnyvale says, T-storms are unusual here along the coast. We do get one almost every other year, though, typically in March or April, invariably accompanied by (in fact, caused by) torrential downpours. That part was missing this time - the air under the clouds was dry, so the rain evaporated before it hit the ground. I've experienced that many times before - it's pretty common in the Great Basin and the Southwestern desert - but never along this coast.
Watching those big black clouds come up from the south, and those huge forked bolts of lightning hitting the ground, just at sunset... that was a terrible beauty.
While it is true as B. Durbin (#32) says, there's high fire danger in CA every year - the current mess arose from the confluence of two extreme events. One was the extraordinarily dry spring: in Sonoma and Mendocino Counties this was the driest April-May period on record (going back into the late 1800s). There's your first statistical outlier. The proximate cause was a series of "dry lightning" storms, with lots of ground strikes but almost no rain. These do occur somewhere in CA occasionally (and caused a bad set of fires about 20 years ago IIRC). But this time they marched right up the coastline, where such conditions are practically unheard-of. I'm one mile from the surf, and a dry day here is anything under 50% humidity, yet we got hammered as if this were the Sierra foothills. Of course the normally damp climate here fosters vigorous brushy understory growth...
Two of the larger Mendocino County fires (Table Mountain and Flynn Creek) are 4 to 6 miles from me; luckily I am upwind. A lightning strike due west (upwind) did cause a fire Friday night, but it was quickly extinguished. Our VFD is performing heroically, which is pretty much normal behavior for them.
CalFire counts 131 separate fires, of which about half are "unmanned" at present. Wind is picking up. The situation is going to be very bad for some time.
#10 - Thanks for remembering Hans Blix and the UN inspectors. Most people seem to have forgotten they even existed, much less that they were thrown out before they could complete their work. Blix was not finding the evidence the Americans wanted, and was getting dangerously close to coming right out and saying there were no WMDs. The Bush administration got him thrown out before he could spoil their fun. Somehow, Americans have gotten collective amnesia about the whole UNSCOM program; it's easier to claim we were deceived by Bush if we forget there were credible sources telling us the truth at the time.
In a thunderstorm, if you can hear the thunder you are already in range of a ground strike.
What??! The sound of thunder carries for miles beyond the storm itself. But maybe you meant the thunderclap, which generally you only hear if you're close. It's plenty scary when the flash and the clap coincide; been there twice, no fern-like pattern to show for it.
A friend over in the UK suggests the real reason for the procedure is: Blair has gone missing.
Have a great time, everyone. Most of my medievalist buddies will be there (hi Heather! and Hilary, Bjorn, Brion, Bob, Christian...) One of these years I will stop *making* medieval furniture long enough to *write* about it... K'zoo might be a good place to present on the topic.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 7 |
| 2008 | 10 |
| 2007 | 7 |
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