Liberal Drinking Link Alert

Quick post to say here's a good list of political sites to read... Even a few off subject links, like, well, to Internet Marketing and Organic SEO. But hey, that's what you get when you're Drinking Liberally in New Milford.

Take a good look at what's going on with this link page. It's a bunch of links, using good anchor text, but as a blog post instead of a separate page. Nice. I like to do even shorter posts like this one with just a few links out, which sculpts more page rank to the intended targets. But that's a lot more work. And takes time. And there's beer to drink.

Links pages aren't so bad, and it's a shame Google discounts them sometimes. I often link to link pages because they're good resources for your readers. For example, if you were going to be looking for a Hawaii beach accommodation like this beach rental house on Kauai, you'd want to know what cool things there are to do in Kauai, and then you'd like to have a bunch of links to cool sites in Kauai.

But I dilute.

Hall of Fame Baseball Outing Called on because of Snow

We were going to Cooperstown today anyway, actually. While there, it was hard to resist taking some pictures of the Baseball Hall of Fame covered in a slushy six inches of new snow. Finally. We were getting jealous of all the southerners getting all the snow.

It was a winter wonderland this morning, and it was already melting when we got there, but it still made for some great Baseball Hall of Fame desktop wallpaper pictures I just posted over at the free wallpaper backgrounds blog.

This winter wallpaper picture was taken not far from the Baseball Hall of Fame Museum. at the south east end of Lake Otsego, where the lake drains into a creek that is the headwaters of the Susquehanna River, it almost immediately becomes this little lake, behind the Cooperstown Waterworks damn. If you look at the big version, you'll see a beautiful stone bridge at the north end of the little lake. Picturesque indeed. Feel free to download all the shots over at the blog, they all make great free desktop wallpaper backgrounds!

More Free Desktop Wallpaper Pictures Taken with the New Lenses!

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that I just love posting pictures that people can download as free desktop wallpaper. Regular readers also know that I've been on a bit of a kick with this subject recently, because we just got some new lenses for the camera.

Well, I just put up a new desktop wallpaper post and gallery of winter wallpaper pictures over at the computer backgrounds photography blog, including this wide angle lens (Canon EF 20mm f/2.8 USM Wide Angle Lens for Canon SLR Cameras) shot of the sunrise through the icicles out our window. My variation of the Erma Bombeck novel, The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank is going to be The Icicles are Always Longer Over the Drier Vent. After a little research into longest icicle ever, I found a rumor that there was once a 100 footer somewhere. These little 8 footers will hit the ground long before that...

If you're really into photography, especially photographs you can use as desktop wallpaper pictures, cruise on over to the computer backgrounds blog and check out the large collection of photography, from abstract to snow, that we offer for free under the creative commons license. We have free desktop wallpaper photo galleries from all over the place, from Hawaii to Maine, including Los Angeles, Yosemite, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, South Dakota, Ohio, New York, and much, much more.

Feel free to borrow, mix, reuse, and post as web page backgrounds or framed photos for your wall. All we ask is that you give us credit (a simple Supak.com) with a link.

Free Desktop Wallpaper Pictures

When we started Supak.com back in 1996, we immediately realized that people loved to be able to download free desktop wallpaper for use as their computer backgrounds pictures. So, we started posting low resolution pictures that still took forever to download at those screaming dial up speeds. When we moved to Hawaii in 1998, we started posting pictures of Hawaii, and people really started visiting our sites in droves.

Over the years, we've added so many different pictures and graphics, from high resolution nature photos to hand-drawn pictures of Pokemon characters sent in by children, that we had to develop a computer backgrounds photography blog to help keep track of it all, and to help people keep up with all our latest computer backgrounds and wallpaper endeavors.

Here's a quick run-down of all the free desktop wallpaper we have available:

• New York City Wallpaper Pictures
• Hawaii wallpaper pictures
• Hollywood photographs for computer backgrounds
• Italy Desktop Wallpaper Pictures
• Maui Hawaii wallpaper pictures
• Cool car pictures of muscle cars for wallpaper
• Big Bear California skiing winter wallpaper pictures
• The Simpsons wallpaper pictures (screen grabs and comics)
• Pokemon free desktop wallpaper pictures
• Computer backgrounds pictures blog (many categories)

If you visit our computer backgrounds site, you'll see that back in 08, we got a new Canon Rebel XTI, right before we moved cross-country and took pictures along they way (like this shot, presented here for the first time, from Robin, using her motion technique for abstract photography, taken in Wyoming). The XTI is a great camera; it takes very high resolution photos, some of which we post, but usually we just put up 1600 pixel wide versions. If you see a picture you love, and you really want a full size version, just let us know and we'll send it (under the creative commons license). We're more than happy to share, we just ask that people give us credit and a link when they use our shots in a public way.

Recently, we got a couple of new lenses for the Canon, one wide angle lens and a telephoto. We've always loved wide-angle lenses (many of the Hawaii pictures were taken with a wide angle lens on a Nikon cool pix).

This new wide-angle lens, a Canon EF 20mm f/2.8 USM Wide Angle Lens for Canon SLR Cameras, has amazing focal depth, which can be adjusted to make the lens work well as a macro, for close-ups. We haven't really gotten out with this lens much, but here's a shot from this morning of our amazing icicles (the icicles are always longest above the drier vent).

The telephoto lens, a Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III Telephoto Zoom Lens for Canon SLR Cameras, is very affordable and takes great shots. We got it because I wanted to be able to get better shots of the birds on our back porch. As you can see, mission accomplished. In the full resolution version of this picture of a female cardinal, you can see the crystals in the snow on her beak!

Be sure to subscribe to the feed at our computer backgrounds blog, so you can keep up with all the latest photography for use as free desktop wallpaper. We're sure there will be something for everyone!

"...follow me without question"

This fun post today plays with the idea that the old Testament God seems awfully insecure.

Honestly, if you were an all-powerful, omnipresent being and creator of the entire universe, why would you be worried that people would doubt you. You could just smite them and be done with it.

If your answer is that God is a loving God who is trying to help us lowly humans with fatherly advice, then what's with all the smiting and smoting?

Which, of course, leads me to a Homer Simpson quote:

"O spiteful one, show me who to smite and they shall be smoten!"

But seriously, this is a Good post from Thomas D. today, extending his thought experiment that the Bible was written by Satan.
in reference to:

"This is very important. I have found the truth and I will reveal it soon to the world. You who read this simple little blog will be the first to know what it is and my true identity. I use a pen name now because my real name is probably known to you. The most important thing I want to impart to you today is that when I reveal myself and the truth, you must follow me without question."
- Satan Wrote the Bible - I Am The Greatest (view on Google Sidewiki)

...and a bottle of tequila!

Watched The Simpsons Season 3 episode Homer Alone (Rancho Relaxo) today and grabbed a few screens to post as Simpsons wallpaper at the Simpsons sounds and pictures site at our free desktop wallpaper home page. Truly great episode, one that we quote all the time. Of course, there's a Simpsons quote for everything.

In fact, a lot of them are available as Simpsons sound clips on our fun little Simpsons site I made years ago, from scans of Simpsons comic books.


So, please, follow those links, have some fun, and when you're done, click an ad or buy some Simpsons merchandise. It helps us keep all this stuff going.

Besides, when it comes to livening up your desktop with  fresh computer background pictures, I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Aye Caramba!

Underwater Photography from Hawaii

We've been posting free desktop wallpaper on the web since 1996. We have some new Hawaii pictures over at our computer backgrounds photography blog, courtesy of Mike Eilers, a friend of a home sharing friend in Hawaii. Ha! Those links could keep you busy for a while!

Freedom of Speech Goes Only to Those Who Can Buy the Volume

Reading these opinions on what The Ruling means, and I'm intrigued with the ACLU lawyer Joel Gora's argument that this is a first amendment victory. Since money does pay for louder speech, I foresee even more deaf ears as a result of the cacophony of screaming that will result from this ruling.

Oh, wait, I just thought of the Republican staffers that were flown down to Miami to do some "impromptu" hallway screaming during the Florida recount, but that gets way too complicated to think about. And it was so long ago...

No, in this case, reading Gora, I see he goes out of his way to point out that unions can get in on the money = speech thing. But let's think about the economic logic here: large and very rich (stupendously rich as compared to unions) companies like Wal Mart will be able to bombard the airways with advertising for anti-union candidates, spending a small fraction of their profit on 10 times the ads any union could buy with a large fraction of their budget (unions are non-profit).

Is that fair? I suppose if you advocate other forms of campaign finance that would somehow make up for that difference in spending ability, then yeah. But I can't think of one offhand, at least not one that we can get passed in the Senate now that we only have an 18 vote lead.

Maybe Republicans, noting that many corporations actually prefer Democrats these days (it's all about Branding), will get on board (I'm looking at you, McCain) and pass something decent to make free speech equal.

Oh, and by the way, freedom of the press, on the other hand, goes only to those who own one. I can set up a blog for you. It's what I do.

I Get Along with Pain Relief from Building a Civilization

Computer games don't affect kids, I mean if Pac Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music. --Marcus Brigstocke

As a former stage electrician who loves to tinker with lighting, I sit in a bright room most of the time, munching pills for the pain, and I hate repetitive music (new favorite band: The Libertines). But my computer game, Civilization, does affect me, by relieving my pain.

Playing Civilization affects me in other ways, too, mainly in terms of interactive education about civilizations in general. In a recent John Robb review of The Evolution of Civilizations by Carroll Quigley, Robb points out that Quigley charts out the evolution of civilizations much like other historians:

These levels of cultural development play a roll in how a civilization advances through Quigley's model (very similar to Toynbee and other historians) for a civilization's development.  These are:  1) Mixture, 2) Gestation, 3) Expansion, 4) Age of Conflict, 5) Universal Empire, 6) Decay, and 7) Invasion.  His analysis confirmed that all civilizations progress on this path, with an occasional jump from stage 4 (conflict) to 6 (decay).   At the time the book was being written, our current level of development was 4, an Age of Conflict (the Cold War) and he was unsure about the final outcome.  

 I'd like to see the Civilizations computer game go a little further into the future (it ends in 2050, before steps 6 and 7). Having the challenges of maintaining a Universal Empire grow exponentially would be a more pertinent and fun way to end the game, which would provide the kind of challenge that would keep my brain busy enough to relieve even the worst pain, while maybe teaching me a few things about resilient communities that could prove valuable someday.

This Place Owes Me Some Degrees Again

Tonight it's going to be -5 degrees (F), or, as we call it up here, Bar-B-Que weather. The thing about BB-queing  in this kind of weather is that, even if you close the lid, the upside of the meat starts to freeze while the bottom side is cooking. So, you have to build a really big fire with lots of coals (I don't have a propane grill, yet) and throw some hickory in there for lots of smoke. Gives us a chance to smoke some cracked black pepper for the upcoming batch of grass-fed beef jerky.

I put little bits of hickory around the edges so there's a circle of extra hot around the outer edges, which then circulates up to the domed lid and keeps the top side of the meat hot, without burning the bottom. Minus five degrees means your charcoal fire barbeque skills are really put to the test.

If I had a hot tub, this would be hot tub and BBQ weather!

Don't Let Them Eat Cake or They'll Breed

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better." -- South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Bauer (R), quoted by the Greenville News, comparing poor people to stray animals.

Via Josh, from The State:

In South Carolina, 58 percent of students participate in the free and reduced-price lunch program.

Bauer is running for Governor. He supports mandatory drug tests for anyone receiving public assistance. I support drug tests for politicians (just another form of public assistance). He supports mandatory attendance of PTA meetings. I support mandatory civics schooling for Republicans who apparently don't realize that under the welfare reforms, people on public assistance have to get jobs, which are subsidized (cheap workers for corporations: see Dick Clark segment from Farenheit 911). Many of them have two jobs, and their bosses wouldn't be too happy with them missing work for a PTA meeting.

But this guy was just getting warmed up!

"You see, for the first time in the history of this country, we've got more people voting for a living than we do working for a living."

According to the BLS, there were 131,997,000 non-farm workers in the US in 2009 (note that there were 131,785,000 at the end of Clinton's term--way to go W, guess those tax cuts didn't trickle down after all...).  In November, 2008, the unemployment rate was 6.7%, with 10.3 million people being listed as unemployed.  According to the New York Times (note the information about having to work for the money after the Welfare Reform Act), the number of people getting cash assistance in November 08 was about 4 million. The number of people getting food stamps (which is the main way you get free or reduced lunches) was about 30 million.

Now I'm going to do a little math (note, I was a free lunch kid for a while). There were about 212 million voting age people in the US then. I'm not going to spend all day on this finding obscure exit polling data on how many people who voted actually work, but let's do some basic math here with some assumptions that are fair to Mr. Bauer.

Just over 130 million people voted in the 08 election. Even if only half of them had jobs (and this is unfair to homemakers, farmers, etc), then that's 65 million people with jobs who voted. Even if all unemployed, public assistance recipients, and food stamp recipients voted, then only 44 million "welfare recipients" voted, so, Mr. Bauer, even with these very generous assumptions, is full of shit.

No word on whether this asshole got free lunches when he was a kid.

Long Live the Robber Baron

Russ Feingold says (regarding the supreme court decision that says corporate spending on speech is the same as individual spending on speech):

"Such a ruling, Feingold said in a statement Monday, would unleash a flood of corporate money into elections and take the U.S. "not just back to a pre-McCain-Feingold era, but back to the era of the robber barons in the 19th century."

Whadya mean "back to the era of robber barons"? We've been back in the era of robber barons since GW Bush gutted regulation, cut taxes on the rich, busted every union they could, robbed and depleted retirement accounts and pensions everywhere, let corporations go hog-wild on the environment, and pumped the military industrial complex neo-cons full of war-raging steroids.

So, this ruling really just solidifies the corporate-fascist state that we've had for a while. Hell, you can go back even further, really, to Reagan, or even Nixon, for the roots of this vast expansion of corporate power and the corrosion of the nation-state. Hell, you could argue that we never really left the era of the robber barons.

Of course, you can go back to the beginning of the Corporation, an idea actually created by the mistake of a law clerk, and find the birth of the robber baron, and you'll find a great little Abe Lincoln quote about Corporations:

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed."-- U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864 in a letter to Col. William F. Elkins. Ref: The Lincoln Encyclopedia, Archer H. Shaw (Macmillan, 1950, NY)

Grover Norquist of the very corporate friendly Americans for Tax Reform famously said that he'd like to shrink government down small enough to drown it in a bathtub. That would make it much easier for his money powered friends to work upon the prejudices of the people and aggregate the wealth in a few hands, and succeed in destroying the Republic (government).

Instead of getting government small enough to drown in a bathtub, they just got a really big bathtub. And now they'll all be drowning in cash. As someone who just spent the last year well below the poverty line, I'd say that sounds like a pretty good way to go.

Would I be willing to destroy the Republic for my cash-filled tub? Not a chance. I'm not a treasonous bastard who cares more about wealth than the the USA.

Time to pull the drain plug. Maybe we'll see some real campaign finance reform come out of the Senate now, or has John McCain become just another corporate lackey in this department too?

From Feingold wary of upcoming ruling on campaign finance | htrnews.com | Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter (view on Google Sidewiki)

We're Getting More for Our Money with Obama

Recent Republican lies aside, Obama is still well below the 5 trillion that GWB added to the debt in his 8 years.

The intriguing thing in this list of numerical interest regarding BHO's first year is the vacation time. Looks like Obama took "all or part" of 26 days in 4 trips. W Bush took 9 trips and 69 days, all in Crawford. You know, that eco-house set they built out there for him, where he was when they delivered the PDB, er, historical document, about Bin Laden being determined to attack inside US.

So, for the money, we have gotten a better worker now, at least. Less than a month off, instead of over 2.

in reference to:

"VACATIONS: All or part of 26 days over 4 trips • George W. Bush spent 69 days at his Texas ranch over 9 trips to his ranch his 1st year."
- Obama's First Year: By the Numbers - Political Hotsheet - CBS News (view on Google Sidewiki)

Who Would Jesus Draw a Bead On?

This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while. -- George W Bush

I think a hippie-looking dude walked around preaching peace and anti-poverty messages about 2000 years ago. The Historical Jesus, so to speak, probably did actually exist. Thomas Jefferson cut all the "miracles" out of the New Testament, creating the Jefferson Bible, and wound up with a pretty decent account of a liberal preaching compassion, socialism, and love.

Now we get this fun story of Christian Fascists in the military industrial complex inscribing "JN8:12" (among others) on a rifle sight that we're using to train Iraqis. Problem is, that is against the law.

U.S. military rules specifically prohibit the proselytizing of any religion in Iraq or Afghanistan and were drawn up in order to prevent criticism that the U.S. was embarked on a religious "Crusade" in its war against al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents.

Hey, but when has the law ever mattered to these Crusaders?

Tom Munson, director of sales and marketing for Trijicon, which is based in Wixom, Michigan, said the inscriptions "have always been there" and said there was nothing wrong or illegal with adding them. Munson said the issue was being raised by a group that is "not Christian."

Oh, I'm pretty sure there's some Christians that would not take kindly to attaching the name of Jesus onto an implement of death, especially when you remember all the backpedaling George W Bush had to do after letting the world know what he really thought of the war in Iraq.

The group that Mr. Munson might be referring to is the MRFF.

"It's wrong, it violates the Constitution, it violates a number of federal laws," said Michael "Mikey" Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group that seeks to preserve the separation of church and state in the military.

See Constantine's Sword for a great historical review of this subject, and for more on the MRFF and Mr. Weinstein.

Ooooo.... the big bad gays are coming to harass us!

What a bunch of hypocrites! I wonder if a bunch of people signed a petition to take away the tax exemption for churches. I wonder what kind of harassment the signers of that petition would get from the right wing?

I mean, liberals don't exactly have a record of lynching, now do they? Or saying blacks can't marry whites, or saying blacks are 3/5ths of a person... Really, it is not the particularly ugly history toward people Not Like Them.

Furthermore, I find it amazing that these always run and hide when confronted with their bigotry. Murderers of abortion providers, for example, is a position many of them favor, and yet when they actually shoot a doctor, they don't stand there and say, well, he was going to take a life and I stopped him. They run.

Sure, they say it's so they can get away to do it again, but you know that's just crap. They run because they're chicken shits, which this story further proves.

in reference to:

"Protect Marriage Washington, which unsuccessfully opposed the law giving gay couples expanded rights, wants to shield from disclosure the signers of the petition for a referendum on that law. The group says it fears harassment by gay rights supporters, some of whom have vowed to post signers' names on the Internet."
- Supreme Court to decide whether Wash. can release names of anti-gay rights petition signers - latimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Who wrote the Bible

As I note in the comments of this post by my friend Thomas D, who writes the blog Satan Wrote the Bible:

This reminds me of the story that Shakespeare was involved in the translation of the King James Bible. One of the more obvious clues that he was at least one of the translators is Psalm 46. The King James Bible was being prepared for printing in 1610, when Shakespeare was 46 years old. The 46th word in the psalm is “shake.” Not counting Selah (the equivalent of Amen), the 46th word from the end is “spear.”

in reference to:

"This reminds me of the story that Shakespeare was involved in the translation of the King James Bible. One of the more obvious clues that he was at least one of the translators is Psalm 46. The King James Bible was being prepared for printing in 1610, when Shakespeare was 46 years old. The 46th word in the psalm is “shake.” Not counting Selah (the equivalent of Amen), the 46th word from the end is “spear.”"
- Satan Wrote the Bible - Who wrote the Bible (view on Google Sidewiki)

Lying Bigots Can't Even Get the Names Straight

It's bad enough these bigots think they have some sort of God-given right to make everyone else behave like them, but they can't even keep the names of important players straight within their own paragraphs.

So, in this fun little list of bigotry's biggest hits, they have listed me, although they were obviously talking about Rep. Bart Stupak, as being a US representative and anti-choice. Both of those propositions are laughably wrong, although I do represent a majority of Americans on these matters, just not officially.

Not only that, but I'm anti-religion, especially the hateful crap coming from Baptists. I grew up with Baptists, who bribed me with "God Bucks" to ride the bus to Grand Avenue Baptist in Hot Springs Arkansas. Once I got the bike from the God store, I stopped going.

Now is the time we dance.

in reference to:

"Supak says he and 10 or 11 other representatives could vote against a final bill that doesn’t meet his criteria concerning abortion."
- The Baptist Bulletin » World News: Jan. 13, 2010 (view on Google Sidewiki)

Let Them Eat Cupcakes

When I worked in downtown Los Angeles, I got to know a few of the homeless who worked the corners I had to pass. Most of them were mentally ill. Some were surprisingly young. One man, in his 20's, was pretty lucid and my friend Jonathan Cupp started giving him money. Jonathan died shortly thereafter, and I told the homeless guy, who was pretty shaken up by it. Jonathan was good to him, asked him how he was doing, and gave him food.

After that, I started giving the guy food. I couldn't afford much, but I would try to slip him a bagel or something else I could pilfer from backstage, anything that was going to be thrown out anyway... I was always amazed at how appreciative the guy was. It must have been unusual for anyone to give a damn about this guy, who, it turned out once had a decent job and a family, and lost it all.

Apparently, that's not hard to do. It's absolutely amazing how many Americans are just one lost paycheck away from disaster. Considering the state of the safety net in this country, especially for treating the depression that results and then creates even worse conditions, it's absolutely amazing that more people aren't losing it all.

So, this morning when I heard that my Los Angeles Catering client, Emma Tate, is joining forces with a woman from Naples, Florida, to bring cupcakes to homeless people for their birthdays, I remembered that guy, and the look of appreciation on his face for even the smallest gesture of kindness. And I thought, damn, that's a good idea.

As a sufferer of depression, I understand that holidays, especially one as personal as your birthday, are the worst of times for someone who's depressed. And I can only imagine the joy that such a simple gesture must bring to people for whom something as simple as a cupcake is a very special thing. Thank you Emma and Maria, for doing something. Anything. It is so much more than most would do for the least among us.

Auschwitz "Arbeit Macht Frei" Sign Stolen

I can only imagine the kind of sick bastards that would steal that. But I agree with Jonathan Turley that it is unforgivable that it could be stolen. Denial much, Deutschland?

Yes, I know the camp is in Poland, but I'm insinuating that a Nazi took the sign, and I would think that Germany should have to pay to help keep the camp preserved, although I'm not sure that they do.

The job was apparently very professionally done, which would boost the theory that this was someone trying to make big money selling to the underground Nazi market.

British historian Andrew Roberts said the sign would generate huge interest on the burgeoning market for Nazi memorabilia.

I can never hear about that sign, sprawled above the entrance to Auschwitz, that means "work will set you free," without thinking of the Donald Baker poem that uses it in one of the most impressive ways it ever could be. Talk about putting something in context.

Formal Application

“The poets apparently want to rejoin the human race.”--Time

I shall begin by learning to throw
the knife, first at trees, until it sticks
in the trunk and quivers every time;

next from a chair, using only wrist
and fingers, at a thing on the ground,
a fresh ant hill or a fallen leaf;

then at a moving object, perhaps
a pieplate swinging on twine, until
I pot it at least twice in three tries.

Meanwhile, I shall be teaching the birds
that the skinny fellow in sneakers
is a source of suet and breadcrumbs,

first putting them on a shingle nailed
to a pine tree, next scattering them
on the needles, closer and closer

to my seat, until the proper bird,
a towhee, I think, in black and rust
and gray, takes tossed crumbs six feet away.

Finally, I shall coordinate
conditioned reflex and functional
form and qualify as Modern Man.

You see the splash of blood and feathers
and the blade pinning it to the tree?
It’s called an “Audubon Crucifix.”

The phrase has pleasing (even pious)
connotations, like Arbeit Macht Frei,
“Molotov Cocktail,” and Enola Gay.

(Donald W Baker)

Massive Bat Deaths

Just great. More ecosystem disruption... In this case, the local bat population including little brown bats, big brown bats, and the endangered Indiana bats, are all dying at alarming rates (90% of the population dead) from white nose syndrome, a fuzzy fungus that leaves the bats with too little body fat to last through winter hibernation.

Bats are one of the biggest eaters of mosquitoes. Without them, the massive walls of mosquitoes that breed in the swampy areas up here will have one less predator to slow them down.

Of course, people are probably responsible, as this fungus "...looks like an invasive (species) that was introduced," said Coleman. "It was not found previously anywhere in North America, and was somehow introduced here from another location. It is something that our bats never had to deal with before."

Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=879223#ixzz0a3WX0rQN

in reference to: Concerns grow as bat deaths soar -- Page 1 -- Times Union - Albany NY (view on Google Sidewiki)

The Most Important Photograph Ever Taken

Look through space and time and see what the universe looked like 14 billion years ago, via the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. All you creationists can keep your heads in the sand for this one. Those of you interested in facts might want to download the high-resolution version of the photograph. It makes great desktop wallpaper.

Therapeutic Poetry and the Death of John Lennon

I live with pain, depression, and poverty. I worry what affect that has on my son. I am reminded of one of my favorite poets, Phillip Larkin, who has advice for young people on this score:

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

The coastal shelf is pretty deep these days, sinking into the crust like an ocean liner in the north Atlantic. The whole damn planet is rushing toward catastrophe faster than anyone can possibly imagine (except, perhaps, for Dimitri). All the deniers of the impending doom, funded by the deep pockets of the oil and defense industries, seem very happy with the well-furnished sandy hole into which they've buried their heads, and are proudly proclaiming that this awesome vessel called humanity is unsinkable, so they're burning the life boats.

When I was younger, Imagine was a wonderful thought exercise John Lennon gave us. It was full of hope for a more just, reasonable, caring world. Now, imagining just leads to despair, grief, uncertainty, and anger. John Lennon is gone 29 years today, a victim of a reality that is so random, so uncaring, and so dark that his immortal song has become a kind of joke to me, a Medusa I dare not look directly at, lest it kill me. Imagining the world the way he did just fills me with more remorse and grief over the direction the world has actually gone.

Hunter S. Thompson wrote, in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a passage known as The Wave Speech:

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

That high-water mark for me, being a generation behind Thompson, was Lennon's Imagine. It's been all downhill from there. On this sad anniversary of the death of a man who just had to let his ride on the merry-go-round go, I find myself going back to poems that my favorite teacher, Jim Whitehead, loved, like Aubade, by Phillip Larkin, which I read now and see as a metaphor for the whole human race, especially this bit:

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

This dysfunctional family known as homo sapiens have burned enough fuel that we've raced right up close to that "small, unfocused blur" and it's a little clearer now. People like John Lennon and Martin Luther King are murdered, and Dick Cheney is still promoting torture. Deniers of global warming are given the same credibility in the media as the careful scientists who have spent their lives proving that we're screwing this planet up beyond repair.

And I sit and watch the snow and imagine that it could have been different, if it weren't for all the assholes that I hope can't ice skate, because my moat is frozen.

The Polar Bears are Toast

All that crap about permanent ice expanding? Wrong. It's gone.

"Unfortunately, what we found was that the multi-year (ice) has all but disappeared. What's left is this remnant, rotten ice."

in reference to:

""Unfortunately, what we found was that the multi-year (ice) has all but disappeared. What's left is this remnant, rotten ice.""
- 'Permanent' Arctic ice vanishing - thestar.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

This Day, For Thers

My favorite blog is Whiskey Fire, and my favorite blogger is Thers, who's mother just died. In his post about her passing, he links to Donne, Death Be Not Proud, an understandable sentiment from a man who just lost his mother. Since it's my son's birthday ("Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow..."), I'm going to be celebrating today, but I really want to take this little time for Thers who certainly deserves a taste of the beautiful for a moment, if only as a reward for his tireless raking of muck.

I like the Donne, especially after some Bushmills, but I'm more of a modern poetry lover, and I always think of what might just be My Favorite Poem (although that is certainly an even more elusive classification than Favorite Blog or Blogger) on such occasions, which is by Lawrence Raab. Since I couldn't find it on the internets anywhere, I'll put it here, for Thers.

This Day

Watching the beautiful
sticks of trees as they click and sway,
the first green unraveling,

it's easy to imagine I might
remember this day forever.
I say it to myself,

never to others, while the poem
made hoping to preserve it
is changed, then changed again

to fit another order
it happens to discover.
At the end I find myself

in a room by a window, or at the edge
of a field, with the same clear
sky above me wherein later

I will imagine clouds, as if
some movement were required. That,
or a different kind of stillness.

So there must also be
a family circled round
the bedside of someone

who is dying. I place
myself among them.
All of us are waiting

for the little we believe we need
to hold on to and repeat.
But this is not my family

although it is you
who are dying, your words
I am again unable to imagine

as everything continues
sliding together in the light,
that day so easily

changed to this one,
the sky that is so blue, and the clouds
that cross my gaze with such terrible speed.

--Lawrence Raab

George Bush and Most of His Administration Committed Treason

Over at the Bush Treason Blog today, I wanted to answer the question Why Do I Call It Bush Treason, so I took a look at the NYT book review for The Ground Truth. Take a little trip back to the start of the whole damn enchilada that led to Republicans voting to protect rapists. Seems (maybe you should sit down for this) the Bushaviks lied (!) about their response to the 9/11 attacks in order to make themselves (and The Fearless Leader) seem more heroic than they actually were.