Splish, splash

flip, flop ... 180-degree-shift ... U-turn ...

Check out Obsidian Wings for a detailed (and sourced!) look at John McCain's decision to change his position on Afghanistan and adopt Obama's.

Hat Tip to TPM
who wonder if a news story like John McCain's recent shift in position on troop levels in Afghanistan doesn't fit in with the dominant narrative of the campaign, will any news organizations pick up on it?

One step forward...

The Washington Post's "Federal Insider" feature today has an example of stupid policy. Really stupid.

Although gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts and California, census officials say that same-sex partners in both states who list themselves as spouses will be recorded as "unmarried partners" -- just as they were in the 2000 census.

Census Bureau spokesman Stephen Buckner cited the Defense of Marriage Act, approved by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing as a marriage the union of anyone but a man and a woman. The law "requires all federal agencies to recognize only opposite-sex marriages for the purposes of administering federal programs," Buckner wrote in an e-mailed statement. "Many of these programs rely on Census Bureau statistics." Census officials have said the agency will retain same-sex spouses' original responses but will edit them for the published census tabulations.

The policy will, for example, require that the couple's children be listed as having single parents, Gates said. And it will cause the census to undercount families, defined as two or more people in the same household related by birth, adoption or marriage, he said.

So much for the states' right to set policy, which so many bleeding-heart conservatives insist is the way to go. And so much for any hope of accurate data.

Happy Birthday, Erle

Born today in Malden, Massachusetts, in 1889, the creator of America's most famous fictional lawyer. Erle Stanley Gardner qualified as a lawyer himself without attending law school, only working in a law firm. After passing the bar, he made his living defending poor immigrants in California, and writing an enormous number of stories. He finally settled into the Perry Mason novels, and wrote more than 80.

Happy Birthday, Peter

It's the birthday of Peter Schickele (1935)! A Julliard-trained musician who writes good stuff under his own name, he's probably most famous for his "discovery" of JS Bach's youngest son - the incomparable PDQ Bach, composer of such works as Oedipus Tex, Iphigenia in Brooklyn, The Abduction of Figaro, and innumerable shorter works. I saw Schickele in concert last year - he's still got it!

Aston--- well, no.

I was going to say that it was astonishing that fundamentalists in North Carolina would rather let kids be bullied than protect gay kids. But it's not, really.

People like that have already made it clear that kids are better off lost in foster care than with gay parents. And moving away from gays, they've made it clear they'd rather their daughters get cancer and die than have sex before marriage.

So it's not astonishing at all that they'll sacrifice "good" children in order to promote their own twisted, hateful sexual morality. It's just very very sad.

Carnival of the Liberals #69

The 69th edition of the Carnival of the Liberals is up at Stump Lane (and as Montag says, "let’s all be studious and earnest in our attempts to not giggle about that.") The posts should entertain and outrage you, so check it out.

What's Important 29

Twenty-ninth in a series.

From the McCain campaign, via the Boston Globe:

McCain's advisers say that if he becomes president he would build on President Bush's decision to rely on NATO forces - which now have about 20,000 troops in Afghanistan - and would prod Pakistan to take on Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters camped inside its borders.

"There is no easy answer, but clearly Pakistan needs to do more to crack down there," said Scheunemann.

Meanwhile, out in the world, Pakistan is refusing to do as much as they have been, let alone more. Our relations with Pakistan are at their lowest since 9/11 (when almost everyone loved us, remember?), due to our habit of firing missiles across their border. This plan doesn't look so good to me.

What's Important 28

Twenty-eighth in a series.

From John McCain talking to the New York Times:

Q: Do you think religious organizations that get federal funding to deliver social services – faith based organizations – should be permitted to take faith into account in deciding who to hire. You saw Obama’s proposal.

Mr. McCain: I support faith-based organizations and I support a lot of the things that the president did. I was in New Orleans after Katrina and I went to their Resurrection Baptist Church and I saw volunteers from all over America working and helping in the clean-up, and the work that they did and talking with people like Governor Jindal, he said they did great work. I would continue along the model of what the president has done. And I certainly applaud Senator Obama’s, what I heard of his position basically the same.

Q: I think the one difference is whether or not as a condition of getting these monies, that these organization say they will not take into account religion or other factors in hiring decisions.

Mr. McCain: Obviously it’s very complicated because if this is an organization that says we want people in our organization that are Baptists or vegetarians or whatever it is, they should not be required to hire someone that they don’t want to hire in my view. Listen, this is the kind of the issue that goes on with the Boy Scouts, it goes on with a number of other issues. I think the president’s faith-based organization has been successful and I support what he has done

Q: I guess the way opponents describe it means that these groups are allowed to discriminate in hiring.

Mr. McCain: I can only answer it to say that I think faith-based organizations have been one of the more successful parts of the Bush Administration and I would continue it.

While I would have to agree with him that "faith-based organizations have been one of the more successful parts of the Bush Administration" (if only because the rest of it has been such an unmitigated disaster), the answer isn't to keep them going. The answer is to do other stuff properly! And Obama's position (not one I entirely agree with) isn't "basically the same" because Obama does believe that if you take federal money you adhere to federal standards.

McCain never addresses that part of the equation. He only says "should not be required to hire someone that they don’t want to hire". I don't disagree with him. If organizations are so picky, though, they shouldn't take federal money - and the government certainly shouldn't give it to them.

What's Important 27

Twenty-seventh in a series.

From John McCain talking to the New York Times:

Q: President Bush believes that gay couples should not be permitted to adopt children. Do you agree with that?

Mr. McCain: I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no I don’t believe in gay adoption.

Q: Even if the alternative is the kid staying in an orphanage, or not having parents.

Mr. McCain: I encourage adoption and I encourage the opportunities for people to adopt children I encourage the process being less complicated so they can adopt as quickly as possible. And Cindy and I are proud of being adoptive parents.

Q: But your concern would be that the couple should a traditional couple

Mr. McCain: Yes.

Because obviously the foster care system is so wonderful it's better for kids than loving parents who happen to be gay. What next, I wonder: taking kids away?

Oh, Reuters...

Er, what?

Reuters has this headline:

Ian McKellen says used to get gay death threats

I'm not even sure what a "gay death threat" is. One written is fabulous handwriting?

Actually, to be serious, I thought he meant death threats from gays, which seemed odd. But on reading the article I found that they are "death threats due to his homosexuality".

I don't think that's what the headline conveys.

Monday Science Links

This week's sciency goodness - super-sized for your enjoyment!

• Darren at Tetrapod Zoology gives us a week's worth by himself - of sea monsters (start here and read the whole series):Welcome to sea monster week. Yes, a whole week devoted to the discussion and evaluation of photos purportedly showing marine cryptids, or carcasses of them. Why do this? I'm not entirely sure, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. We begin with a fantastic image that - hopefully - you've seen here and there yet may know little about (again, to those who know the cryptozoological literature, I apologise for insulting your intelligence). Judging from comments I've seen on the internet, people nowadays assume that this image is a photoshop job unique to the digital age, whereas in fact it's a classic, much-reproduced image, widely discussed in the cryptozoological literature, and first appearing in print in March 1965 (together with others). It's Robert Le Serrec's photo of a huge, tadpole-like creature encountered in Stonehaven Bay, Hook Island, Queensland...


• Chris at Mixing Memory posts on how we adapt to accents: I have this friend from New York who, most of the time, speaks in a normal (that is to say, southern) accent that she's acquired as a result of being surrounded for so long by people who speak the King's English ('cause Elvis was a southerner). Occasionally, though, usually after she's been talking to someone back home, she slips into her old Jamaica Queens accent, and when she does, I spend the first thirty seconds or so just trying to figure out whether she's speaking English, and I don't even bother trying to understand the meaning of those strangely accented words she's uttering. After that period of complete incomprehension, though, I seem to get used to her relapsed accent, and suddenly I can understand her perfectly well.


• Carl Zimmer at The Loom writes about flatfish: Sometimes a species is so complex, so marvelous, or simply so weird that it’s hard to imagine how it could have possibly evolved by natural selection. Among the weirdest is the flounder. Not many animals would be at home in a world made by Picasso, but the flounder would fit right in. It belongs to a group of fish called flatfish, or pleuronectiforms, that all spend their adult lives hugging the sea floor, where they ambush smaller fish. Flatfish are teleosts, a huge group of fish species that include more conventional creatures like trout and goldfish. While they have a lot of teleost anatomy, flatfishes also have some bizarre adaptations for their life at ninety degrees. All vertebrates, ourselves included, use hair cells in the inner ear to keep ourselves balanced. In most flatfish species, the hairs have rotated so that swimming sideways feels normal to them. Many flatfish can camouflage the upward-facing side of their body. The underside is pale, and in many species the fin is tiny. And then, of course, there are the eyes.


• Grrlscientist at Living the Scientific Life tells us about learning the color of fossil feathers which is way cool: When looking at paintings and reconstructions of fossil birds and dinosaurs, people often ask "how do you know what color they were?" Well, we didn't. However, a new paper was just published in Biology Letters that explores the possibility of deciphering the actual color of fossilized plumage and makes a startling discovery: scientists can identify at least some of the original colors in ancient feathers. In sharp contrast to mammals, whose colorations are really very boring, birds are colorful -- many species are stunningly so. But colors are expensive and wasteful to produce if they can't be used to communicate a particular message that can be seen by the intended recipient. In fact, birds evolved colors to send signals to other birds. They also evolved the visual structures in their eyes necessary to perceive those colors and they developed behaviors designed to draw attention to their plumage coloration. Which leads one to ask; what colors were ancient birds and feathered dinosaurs?


• Stefan and Bee over at Back Reaction tackle the question how did the LHC get confused with the Big Bang, anyhow?: With the start of the Large Hadron Collider coming closer, the topic is present in the media more than ever. A commonly used motivation is the alleged recreation of the Big Bang. Peter Woit recently mentioned that Martinus Veltman, winner of the '99 Nobelprize in physics, “described claims that the LHC will 'recreate the Big Bang' as 'idiotic', and as 'crap'. He said that this is 'not science', but 'blather', and that the field would come to regret this, arguing that if you start selling the LHC with pseudo-science, you will end up paying for it.” I am totally with Veltman. But what is behind the story? What does the LHC have to do with the Big Bang?

Enjoy!

Le 14 juillet

Allons enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé !
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L'étendard sanglant est levé ! (bis)
Entendez-vous dans les campagnes,
Mugir ces féroces soldats ?
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras
Égorger nos fils, nos compagnes !

Aux armes, citoyens !
Formez vos bataillons !
Marchons ! Marchons !
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons !


But I feel compelled to add a link to Bill Poser's post which notes

On this day we celebrate the French Revolution, the end of feudalism, the disestablishment of the church, and the promulgation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. For some of us it is also a day that reminds us of Jim McCawley.

From a linguistic point of view, however, the French Revolution was a disaster. The monarchy had been largely unconcerned with what languages its subjects spoke. At the time, the languages spoken by natives of France included six Romance languages: French, Occitan, Franco-Provencal, Walloon, Catalan, and Corsican (a dialect of Italian), the Germanic languages Flemish and German, the Celtic language Breton, and Basque. Some of these, especially French and Occitan, each had numerous divergent forms. ...

Since the Revolution, all French governments have been hostile to minority languages.

Happy Birthday, Woody

Woody Guthrie, born this day in 1912.

He wrote a lot, and he he gave a voice to the unheard.





Dear Mrs. Roosevelt

Dear Mrs. Roosevelt, don't hang your head and cry;
His mortal clay is laid away, but his good work fills the sky;
This world was lucky to see him born.
He's born in a money family on that Hudson's rocky shore;
Outrun every kid a-growin' up 'round Hyde Park just for fun;
This world was lucky to see him born.

He went away to grade school and wrote back to his folks;
He drew such funny pictures and always pulling a joke;
This world was lucky to see him born.
He went on up towards Harvard, he read his books of law;
He loved his trees and horses, loved everything he saw;
This world was lucky to see him born.

He got struck down by fever and it settled in his leg;
He loved the folks that wished him well as everybody did;
This world was lucky to see him born.
He took his office on a crippled leg, he said to one and all:
"You money changin' racket boys have sure 'nuff got to fall;"
This world was lucky to see him born.

In senate walls and congress halls he used his gift of tongue
To get you thieves and liars told and put you on the run;
This world was lucky to see him born,
I voted for him for lots o' jobs, I'd vote his name again;
He tried to find an honest job for every idle man;
This world was lucky to see him born.

He helped to build my union hall, he learned me how to talk;
I could see he was a cripple but he learned my soul to walk;
This world was lucky to see him born.
You Nazis and you fascists tried to boss this world by hate;
He fought my war the union way and the hate gang all got beat;
This world was lucky to see him born.

I sent him 'cross that ocean to Yalta and to Tehran;
He didn't like Churchill very much and told him man to man;
This world was lucky to see him born.
He said he didn't like DeGaulle, nor no Chiang Kai Shek;
Shook hands with Joseph Stalin, says: "There's a man I like!"
This world was lucky to see him born.

I was torpedoed on my merchant ship the day he took command;
He was hated by my captain, but loved by all ships hands;
This world was lucky to see him born.
I was a Gl in my army camp that day he passed away,
And over my shoulder talkin' I could hear some soldier say:
"This world was lucky to see him born."

I guess this world was lucky just to see him born;
I know this world was lucky just to see him born;
This world was lucky to see him born.

Language Quiz

Wow, it's been a while since I did one of these!

Here's a new quiz - though, as always, maybe there's nothing wrong.

From the Writers Almanac, this description of 'Woody Guthrie:

He was one of the only American artists whose reputation never really suffered, though he was openly affiliated with the Communist Party.

The previous quiz was:

From the Cassini-Huygens site, this description of a photo:

Curving wakes perturb the edges of the Encke Gap in Saturn's A ring. The culprit in their creation is the flying saucer-shaped moon Pan, shining brightly within the gap.

This one's pretty simple - not enough hyphens! Pan is not "flying and shaped like a saucer", it is "shaped like a flying saucer". It's "the flying-saucer-shaped moon".

And look here for Previous Quizzes, 41 so far.

The Week in Entertainment

Live: My Fair Lady at the local Playhouse. Excellently done!

Film: Wall-E - and what can I say? It's as good as the hype. As a friend says, "Pure magic - and it irritates the right. Bonus!"

DVD: Behind the Curtain - a very old and badly acted mystery - a 1929 movie badly marred by everyone's being unused to sound. Have you seen the "talkie" in Singing in the Rain? Remember the love scene? Here it is, and worse. Moreover, this is allegedly a Charlie Chan movie, but he barely made an appearance (though when he did, he was played by a guy named E.L. Park - who was Oriental!!!). I loved the way Eve and John made such a big deal of his trip into "the Persian desert" - all alone! "Four months in the desert, away from everyone!" "You know what it means - four months in the desert, all alone!" All alone ... well, except for the forty guys in the caravan, of course. (One of those was Boris Karloff, quite easily the best thing in the whole movie.) Some other Chans (my father has the set and is working his way through): in Panama, The Black Camel, Murder Cruise. Uneven lot - and Murder Cruise has almost the same alibi trick in it as in Paris does, so I guessed the killer right away. Hellboy (I'd seen it before but am preparing for the sequel) - pretty enjoyable, all things considered - stylish, well acted, and feels like it's in a coherent universe that just isn't quite ours. The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, which is extremely funny. "Too much science? Is there such a thing?"

TV: The Ninth Gate - moody, intriguing, well-acted, and compelling. Also beautifully shot and scored.

Read: I actually read nothing this week until Sunday. Astonishing. That's what being on vacation does to you. I'm scheduling this since I'll be traveling Sunday and may not get to post, so I'll note that I'll be reading The Penguin Who Knew Too Much and The Stranger House on the plane.

Carnival of Maryland 37

The 37th Carnival of Maryland is up at Monoblogue. Our host says:

Normally when I put together the Carnival of Maryland I like to have about 10 to 15 submissions, as I’ve found that having that number presents the reader with plentiful and worthwhile reading options depending on their interest while providing me the opportunity to do a writeup of optimal length for my site - not too long (well, in the eyes of most people anyway) nor too short. In this case, counting mine I have 13. I could call it superstition, but in truth I wanted to bring up a couple other posts which weren’t submitted but I thought made for good reading as I perused the Maryland blogosphere.

It's a good, diverse set of posts - you'll like something there for sure, so check it out.

Humanist Symposium

The Humanist Symposium is posted at faith in honest doubt. Our host says:

I wish I could tell you that the postings gathered in this edition of the Humanist Symposium give definitive answers to all of life's enduring questions. I wish I could tell you a lot of things. What I can say instead is that the posts affirm both the importance of the questions and humanists' enduring engagement with them.

Enjoy!It's a good edition- check it out.

What's Important 26

Twenty-sixth in a series.

McCain doesn't understand Social Security (or is a liar).

McCain told a townhall in Denver on Monday, "Americans have got to understand that. Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that's a disgrace. It's an absolute disgrace and it's got to be fixed."

Of course, that's exactly how Social Security was designed to work, and has worked since its inception. Those "present-day retirees" paid to support the generation before them, and those "young workers" will be paid by those who are young when they're retired. It's a generational contract, and it means everyone's parents, not just the rich folks', will survive their old age in some comfort.

Here's Paul Krugman's take on this bizarre statement:

I’d guess that there are three things going on here.

First, McCain has no idea how Social Security works. That may sound hard to believe, but not to anyone who has spent any time in or around the federal government. Politicians, by and large, get where they are mainly by looking and sounding good; this may or may not go along with any actual understanding of governing.

Second, McCain lives in the Washington bubble; and as I wrote a while back,

Inside the Beltway, doomsaying about Social Security — declaring that the program as we know it can’t survive the onslaught of retiring baby boomers — is regarded as a sort of badge of seriousness, a way of showing how statesmanlike and tough-minded you are.

Finally, McCain has surrounded himself with people who hate Social Security. They probably tell him that it’s a doomed Ponzi scheme, and he believes them.

Here's another point to consider: John McCain has most likely never paid into Social Security (when he was in the military we didn't), and he does not (certainly not since his second marriage) depend on it. He could not care less, personally, whether it works or not, or is broken or not; he only wants to sound "serious" and "conservative".

Once the LHC gets going...

Thanks to Bad Astronomy, I found this at The Pain webcomic: a funny cartoon on the LHC and a great essay on science:

Compare the crude Medieval maps that show the earth as a disc divided cleanly into the continents of Asia, Europe and Africa (with the Garden of Eden at the center), with the Hubble's Deep Field image—galaxies like handfuls of jewels, each an unreachable island universe teeming with worlds we’ll never know. A glimpse of this vision, like seeing Zeus in all his glory, is enough to make you fall to your knees and cover your eyes. The human imagination is incommensurate to the mystery we inhabit.

CARLA

I'm off tomorrow for two weeks in Minneapolis, attending some of the CARLA Summer Institutes workshops. I have absolutely no idea how much blogging I'll get done, but I'll try to do at least some! I'm looking forward to the workshops, though - it should be fun and educational!

Images of a Maryland Dawn

Sunrise in College Park, the last Wednesday in June

This is Conocybe lactea, a common and fragile mushroom that pops up in lawns, fruits, and dies. It doesn't have a common name, and is regarded as either inedible due to bad taste, or toxic, or both. But this little mushroom leaps up in 'fairy rings' covered in dew and adds beatuy to the dawn.

A squirrel runs across several lengths of phone lines between stands of trees along Maryland 197 just after sunrise.

This tree stands at the corner of 197 and 198 and catches the morning sun in its branches.

Man Sues Church After Prayer Is Granted

This is funny. This is very funny. As our local news station reports, Matt Lincoln should have heeded that old saying about being careful what you pray for:

A Sevier County man is suing his former church in South Knoxville, after he claims he was overcome by the spirit, fell backward and hit his head.

Matt Lincoln, 57, says pastors at Lakewind Church should have made sure someone caught him. His attorney is asking for $2.5 million to cover medical bills, lost income and pain and suffering. The case stems from a Wednesday night service at Lakewind in June 2007, when a visiting minister was praying for members individually.

"I just closed my eyes. I was just asking God, I wanted to have a real experience. It's like you faint. It's almost like you pass out," Lincoln says. He also says that wasn't unusual. "I've fallen out in the spirit before, but have always been caught," Lincoln says. "I always trusted that the catchers would be there because they always were."

This time, he says, was different. "I hit. I hit full force backwards," he says.

After one year and two surgeries, Lincoln says he still hurts all the time. "It's pain in the back and it goes down my legs," he says. Lincoln says he only decided to file a lawsuit when his claim for medical bills was denied by the church's insurance company. ...

Lawyers for the church didn't want to go on camera, but say in an answer to the lawsuit that Lincoln was observed that night by other congregants to be on the floor laughing, that he failed to look out for his own safety and that court involvement with the ministry of this church would be unconstitutional.

So, to recap: Lincoln prayed for "a real experience," one that makes "you faint" and "almost... pass out". And he got it - he "fell out in the spirit" and "hit full force backwards". A terrifically "real experience". And now he's suing the church, because God cracked him over so hard.

Oh, he says it's because "pastors at Lakewind Church should have made sure someone caught him", but how are they to anticipate the way the Lord will work? Maybe people were 'falling out in the spirit' left and right and there couldn't have been enough catchers to cover them all - I mean, what if the catchers 'fell out in the spirit' too? Sounds to me like it's his God he ought to be suing; his God's the one who slammed him full force backwards onto the floor with nobody there to catch him.

And his pain and suffering? I don't doubt it's real, like his lost income and medical bills. But isn't it the will of his God? Surely if his God had wanted to slay him in the spirit he could have done it without injuring his body. Lincoln should be looking for the purpose here, not seeking someone to blame. God's will, after all, is done, isn't it? This is just another of those mysterious ways, one of those crooked lines with which God draws straight.

Or, deep down, doesn't Lincoln believe? Does he understand how stupid it is to keel over backwards onto a hard floor? Probably he's not starting to agree with those Christians who argue that "being slain in the Spirit" is not Christian, but Satanic in origin - or those who point out that the phenomenon of so-called "religious ecstasy" is seen in many religions around the world - Yoga, Hindi, Buddhism, Sufi Islam, Wicca and other pagan and neopagan traditions - as well as in secular settings.

What's crystal clear here is that he doesn't accept that what happened to him is the will of his God, even though it's pretty much exactly what he prayed for.

What's Important 25

Twenty-fifth in a series.

This one's from TPM:

McCain was asked if he believes we're in a recession, and here's the crux of his answer:

"If we're technically in a recession or not, I would imagine that we are, but the major thing is, Americans are hurting, and Americans don't like it and they think the country's in the wrong direction."

What you have here is McCain's political problem in a nutshell. If he acknowledges that the country's in a recession, then he has to explain why he's basically offering a continuation of Bush's economic policies. If he doesn't, he looks out of touch with Americans' economic pain. Here he tries to split the difference.

On this score, my favorite quote from this interview might be this one: "Eighty-some percent of the American people think the country's on the wrong track. "

And yet, especially as regards economic policy, McCain is for continuing the same policies Bush started, making the tax cuts permanent, and working hard to make sure that nothing much changes.

"Don't give up"

Betty Lennox just gave a post-game interview (for the Dream's second ever win) and said something interesting:

Coach told us not to give up and that's what we didn't do.

"I think "... and that's what we did" would be more usual, but with the "and" and the focusing, this is perfectly clear. Yet, I think maybe it doesn't mean what she meant it to mean - or what anybody would, with pragmatics and context making their giant contributions, understand she meant.

Lennox clearly meant "Coach said don't X and that (= X) is what we didn't do."

But the sentence might (also?) parse out to: "Coach said, "Don't X", and that (= what coach said) is what we didn't do."

(Boy, punctuation does help, doesn't it?)

I don't know. It just sounded simultaneously completely clear and very, very odd. Maybe it's the cleft structure? What is the "that" here? I can easily interpret this exact structure as meaning the opposite. If Atlanta had lost, Lennox might have said, "Coach said not to let Anosike take her shots, and that's what we didn't do," meaning they let Anosike shoot at will, and that would be clear, too.

Hmmm. The more I think about this, the odder it gets. "Coach said not to give up and that's what we did" is just as unclear if you divorce context: it could be said by a winning or losing player.

"Coach said to give up, and that's what we didn't do" is clear (if unlikely). "Coach said not to give up, but that's what we did," is clear - thanks to the "but". So's "Coach said not give up, so we didn't."

Wow.

I'm going to post this in case anyone has some insights. I'll probably revisit it after some thinking, once I get back from dinner and a movie...

Happy Anniversary to I and the Bird!

It's hard to believe - even for me, who hasn't been participating since the beginning - but I and the Bird has just turned three! You can find the Third Anniversary Edition at 10,000 Birds, where it all started. This special edition finds folks answering the question: Why do you (still) bird blog? Lots of good reasons, lots of good posts, lots of great blogs.

Must See TV

Congressman Dennis Kucinich will present a single Article of Impeachment to the House of Representatives sometime between 3:30 pm and 4:00 pm (EDT) today, Thursday, July 10th.

Sessions of the House of Representatives are broadcast live on C-SPAN (check your local cable listings for channel) and streamed live via the Internet (www.cspan.org).

The article of Impeachment will deal directly with President Bush fraudulently obtaining support for an attack on Iraq by creating a false case for war. Full details of the Article of Impeachment will be available after they are read on the floor of the House by Congressman Kucinich.