David was disappointed we were going to miss the total lunar eclipse tonight, but it turns out there will be a webcast.
Yay!!
UPDATE: I don’t know if the webcast sites will be any good, but the moon is visible through light haze at the moment, with a small bite taken out of the lower lleft quadrant. David’s trying something fancy with his camera involving a tripod, a long lens, and a hat. We’ll see if it works.
Yes, the broadcast date of the 6th installment of The Amazing Race is November 16, and the CBS site has been updated with team profiles.
After learning a lesson about not forming too many opinions on people before the premiere airs (that is, I tended to dismiss the TAR4 Klowns until I felt the Klown Luv and realized they were terrific, fun racers), I won’t say much.
However, what’s with the woman in the red pullover and the “lookit my boobs!” pose? Oh, right, she’s a model.
The professional wrestlers kind of bug me, but who knows? They might turn out to be totally awesome, dudes and dudettes. Rawwk!
Surfers outside the US have been unable to visit the official re-election site of President George W Bush (Ed. note: www.georgewbush.com, and hell no, I’m not linking to it).
The blocking of browsers sited outside the US began in the early hours of Monday morning.
Since then people outside the US trying to browse the site get a message saying they are not authorised to view it.
The blocking does not appear to be due to an attack by vandals or malicious hackers, but as a result of a policy decision by the Bush camp.
It may be a bandwidth decision – why should anyone outside the US want to access the official website of the President (and not the excellent parody site, www.georgewbush.org)?
Well, that may be, but it also means Joi Ito can’t access it, and ginmar can’t access it, and kuri can’t access it, and that Kevin Sites guy and his peripatetic hula girl doll can’t access it, and no one serving in the US military, diplomatic service, or living outside the US can access it. Also, international news organizations, NGO’s, and ministers and functionaries of foreign governments.
Earth. To. Duh. Bya.
You realize you’re telling the world “Fuck You,” don’t you?
Weekend? There was a weekend?
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Monday
Whew. Add to that:
Tuesday (Wee Hours)
Bush supporters are in a remarkably stable state of cognitive dissonance according to this study:
“The roots of the Bush supporters’ resistance to information,” according to Steven Kull, “very likely lie in the traumatic experience of 9/11 and equally in the near pitch-perfect leadership that President Bush showed in its immediate wake. This appears to have created a powerful bond between Bush and his supporters–and an idealized image of the President that makes it difficult for his supporters to imagine that he could have made incorrect judgments before the war, that world public opinion could be critical of his policies or that the President could hold foreign policy positions that are at odds with his supporters.”
Or in other words, they truly believe that De Nile really IS just a river in Egypt.
We’ve had the credibility gap, the 18 1/2 minute gap, the fairness gap, the gender gap, the God gap, and now of course we have the Reality Gap.
::eyeroll::
Let’s get real, people. Let’s get really real.
I don’t know. All I can tell you is that for those of us who have felt like we never got to have any fun because the Yankees hogged it all, it was pretty fun. No pinstripes at the World Series? I can get behind that.
I can totally get behind that, too.
Now, I’m a transplanted Seattelite living in the Chicago suburbs. The only baseball team I could ever get excited about is the Mariners, because for one shining season in 1995 everything clicked, even when Griffey was out on an injury. Everyone else stepped up and played their hearts out, and we had a team to get behind. I was playing on a coed softball team, we sucked, but we used to go to Mariners games in the old Kingdome. We’d take mitts and everything. We were girl baseball nerds (those of us that were female, anyway).
And that goddamn David Cone and those goddamn Yankees killed us that season, when it looked like we might go all the way. They went on to the Series, we groused. The next year, slightly different circumstances, slightly different personnel, but we got knocked out of post-season by the Texas Rangers. So I don’t love me some Texas teams either, even though at least one former Mariner got traded there for at least one season and did very well.
Since moving here, I totally fail to get with the Cubbiemania. I work with Cubs fans, I work with White Sox fans, I’ve been to one Cubs game, and I just don’t feel the love.
However, right now, I’m loving the Red Sox, because they killed the goddamn Yankees. I didn’t watch one of their games, because frankly I had other things to do. But every morning I’d hear the news on the radio and snuggle happily down into the covers in the pre-dawn darkness, and hope that the next morning there would be more good happy snuggly news.
These last four mornings have been pretty nice for the happy snuggling thing.
The thing is, I am so rooting for the Cards too, because I can’t stand the thought of a Massachusetts team going up against a Texas team in an election year, when both states have a guy in the World Series of American Politics. On the one hand, how very cool if Boston and Kerry both win. How very, deeply, insufferaby annoying if both the Astros and Bushco win. How symbolic of our deeply divided nation if it’s a split decision.
How totally sha-weet if the Astros get killed by the Cards today.
Apparently, everybody‘s doing it.
So I am too. And no, I wouldn’t run off a cliff if everybody was doing that, too. It makes for a sucky blog entry.
UPDATE: Hey, that didn’t take long, but the logo isn’t as cool as the one Joey the Accordion Guy blogged.
UPDATED UPDATE: So yeah, my new tag line stays for a while. BTW, that wasn’t really “Robin Williams” that commented. David urged me to do a reverse lookup on on the source, and sure enough it led right back to his workplace. He totally cracked himself up. So now I’m
Another reason to vote for Melissa Bean and against Phil Crane: the list of sitting Congresscrittes who took dirty money: Tom DeLay PAC Contributions, By State
Yep, Crane took about $10,000 – amazing. He manages to be a do-nothing at taking graft, too. Lots more Rethugs took way more, and quite a few didn’t take much or gave theirs back. So he’s bumping along in the middle.
Bishop Gene Robinson: “I will not resign.”Well, good on you.
I pray that we may all be one on this issue (oh, don’t look so shocked, it’s in the Prayer Book and everything). It’s interesting how much more conservative the African bishops are, and how naive we liberal Americans were for thinking that everyone else in the Anglican world would be okay with a concept that some of us have struggled to become okay with ourselves. In microcosm, some people still struggle at the local level, but I have hopes that the strugglers can come to terms with their feelings and still be with the rest of us of a Sunday.
I just hope that the larger Anglican church, which I love, figures out how to deal with this issue without splitting apart. Maybe it just takes time for everyone to reach the same conclusion – that in God there is no East or West, North or South… or gay or straight, neither.
Regarding yesterday’s plane crash in Missouri: when this kind of thing happens, the airline inhibits the internal flight information that we can look up in the reservations system. There’s just no sane way to to update flifo with “Plane crashed” and not seem really crude and heartless.
Normal flifo for that flight for today shows that it’s been cancelled, but with no explanation:
2AA5966/20OCT«
AA5966/20OCT
CORPORATE AIRLINES
STL 642P B14
IRK 734P
1FX CANCEL STL -IRK - *1001
Flifo for yesterday’s fatal crash simply comes back
2AA5966/19OCT«
FLIFO DISPLAY AND UPDATES INHIBITED.