I understand I’ve been tagged

And I will get around to responding to that. My problem is that I have no one to tag in return– no one that I can think of, anyway.

 

The other final frontier

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=49750&cl=3958821&ch=68276&src=news

This caught my eye only because I had just been reading The Crazy Years, a collection of essays written for the Toronto Globe and Mail by Spider Robinson (one of my favorite authors).

Jamming on the topic of science fiction futures that no science fiction writer predicted but came true anyway, Robinson notes, among other things, the collapse of the USSR (and how it even took the intelligence community by surprise), the eradication of smallpox (and the complete and utter lack of media fanfare at the conquering of one of mankind’s deadliest enemies), and the VCR (and how some people brag about not being able to program one).

But the most poignant passage deals with having acquired the technology to get humanity off this rock and out to the stars… and us willfully not doing anything with it– effectively squandering it. Regarding an Apollo booster rocket literally left to rust in the rain, Robinson notes, “I have trouble believing in a society that doesn’t know it needs a frontier.”

Which brings us to the video link above.

I hope first of all that gives us all some hope.

Second of all I fret that this sort of thing used to be the forte of the USA– technological innovation, climbing mountains “because they are there.” Never mind whether politics are to blame or a societal shift to knowing ignorance (if that’s not an oxymoron, I don’t know what is).

You used to be able to watch opera on television– and this was before public television came into being. You consulted scientists as a matter of course because they were learned men, more often than not untainted by left- or right-wing stances. Somewhere along the way (as Joe Jackson writes in his memoir A Cure For Gravity) we got the idea that all that elitism was nothing more than a con, a shuck-and-jive perpetrated to make us all feel ignorant.

Now, as a society, we are ignorant. We can’t find Iraq on a map of the world– some of us have never seen a map of the world, nor even wanted to see one.

I’d better stop before I find myself wallowing for the rest of the day.

 

CAPE: listen now

The songs were posted last Saturday and I completely forgot that I promised to provide a link to them when they did.

I have got to say that this might be the strongest batch of songs yet. Twenty teams got songs in, which you would think would dilute the quality somewhat if Sturgeon’s Law holds true, but damn if these don’t raise the bar.

Over to the left you should see a link to The Womb; follow that link to the Collaborations & Connections forum, where all the CAPE V songs live. You can either stream them from Radio CAPE or download them to your hard drive.

My team is Team Resurrection. But all of it is worth your time not just because it’s a proof of concept that nowadays musicians need not even be on the same continent in order to make music together, but because it’s really good, quality stuff that you might just wish you heard more of on the radio.

 

Yeah, I know

I’ve been scarce.

The reason is that I’ve been looking for work. Just minutes after my last post here on May 31 (not the one I just posted) I got an e-mail from my contract company telling me that my contract was over. So I’m on the market again and pondering my options.

It’s possible that I will not work in IT again– the market is just too soft. I expect that I started my Associates’ degree work just in time for all the decent IT jobs to go offshore to Brazil, India,Thailand, Taiwan, etc. Story of my life; in 1994 I sat a Novell curriculum just in time for Novell’s market share to be superceded by Windows NT.

The other reason is that the cover art for the CD is killing me. It’s a matter of not grokking POVray quite as well as I ought to in order to achieve the results I’m after. It didn’t help that my previous work some months ago all seems to have gone off missing and I had to start from scratch– including relearning the syntax.

I will be on vacation next week, which will appear to you to be the same posting frequency as if I hadn’t left at all.

 

Memo To Comedy Central

regarding Lil’ Bush…

Depicting George W Bush as a petulant child is not humorous.

It would be humorous if more people didn’t already get that. As it is, it’s just stating the obvious.

You guys failed with That’s My Bush! a few years ago and I won’t be in the least surprised if this tanks too.

 

While America sleeps

When I was a kid, we only had four or maybe five sources for news of any variety– the Big Three television networks, maybe PBS too (don’t recall whether they were doing news then), and the local paper (morning and afternoon edition).

Now, we have the internet, and a dizzying array of web sites from which to cull our worldviews; we have cable and satellite television, providing us not only with access to the Big Three but also the two or three that came into being in the last 20 years, not to mention CNN, MSNBC, Fox, the BBC, the CBC, the SABC, al-Jazeera….

A lot less escapes notice these days.

And in response to our noticing these atrocities, what does this government do? They get even more atrocious. In response to our protests, what does this government do? They give us the finger– they not only don’t know what their people want, they no longer even care what we want. Witness the Democrats caving in on the latest war spending bill, giving Bush his blank check without even a token effort to send him a message.

Now comes NSPD 51, also known as HSPD 20, readily available here at the White House’s web site.

There are enough holes in the wording of this document to drive a fleet of Peterbilts through. For example, here’s bullet point #6, which seems to be getting most of the attention from certain quarters of the left:

(6) The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government.

The moment it suits the purposes of a current or future President, that wording could conceivably be used to justify the establishment of a de facto dictatorship.

The framers of our Constitution knew from firsthand experience with what has come to be known as The Madness Of King George that no one person can, or should, be entrusted with that kind of power. The time-honored aphorism that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely holds true.

Ah, you say, but it says “ensuring constitutional government”, implying that Bush fils is leading the Government in the name of the US Constitution.

And I say, since when does George W Bush give a damn about the Constitution? How many signing statements has he executed in the last six years that have had the cumulative effect of circumventing the Constitution? Do you honestly think he’s going to defend it once he’s taken control?

And here’s a thought. Would a Democrat?

That we happen to have a sitting Republican President doesn’t mean the Democrats get to point their fingers– because given that chance, a Democratic President would do exactly the same thing. Their selling out the anti-war mandate they received in November proves that they would.

And America sleeps. This doesn’t even rate a mention in any of the major outlets like those I mentioned earlier. Why should it? It’s like Cindy Sheehan said in her Memorial Day valedictory to the anti-war movement– this country is much more occupied with the next American Idol. Bread and circuses anyone?

 

Carma

That’s not a typo.

Yesterday morning on my way to church I noticed that I was running on fumes and the grace of God. I pulled off the highway at the next exit where I knew there was a station handy to the exit– EZ off, EZ on.

I pulled up to the pump and noted the different grades available: premium, roughly $3.50 a gallon, mid-grade $3.40, regular grade $2.30.

That isn’t a typo either.

I figured it had to be a mistake, but on the offchance it wasn’t I opted to fill my tank with it. Sure enough, I got ten gallons-plus of gas for a little over $23.00. I haven’t paid that little for a tank of gas in two or three years.

With a slight feeling of getting away with something, I pulled out and got back on the highway, half-expecting a fleet of Crown Vics with lights a-flashing and sirens a-wailing to fall in behind me. There were none.

A bit later, during a short break in choir practice, I thought a little more about it.

Maybe I should have said something.

No, and what the hell for, since Big Oil has been gouging us ever since the start of Bush II’s administration and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

I profited from someone else’s mistake, and given the extent of that profit I will make every effort to run out of gas in that general vicinity again.

But was it a mistake? I don’t know this guy’s attitude toward his supplier, or his customers.

I recall that old quote from Liz Taylor, about getting so much money to star in Cleopatra– that if they were fool enough to offer her that kind of bread, she wasn’t enough of a fool to turn them down.

Clearly this was a test of some sort. Morally, I think I probably failed it.

But given that it is gouging on the part of Sunoco– and Royal Dutch Shell, and ExxonMobil, and everyone else connected with the OPEC cartel– I don’t think that with this act of silence they’re going to be sleeping on a park bench under the Sunday papers anytime soon, and foraging for breadcrumbs with the pigeons.

 

CAPE is done

And I’m pleased with my team’s (and my) work on it. Everyone brought good ideas to the table, and everyone executed.

The Big Reveal was supposed to be today, but the guy who is doing the mastering for our team (and all the others’) ran a bit afoul of Real Life and paying, high-profile gigs. So I expect that will happen in the next couple of days; a link will appear when one exists.

The song itself is a cool little funk-lite jam that wonders aloud whether the singer would have had the sack to do what Jesus did– reaching out to the poor and the infirm, eventually giving up his life to show and bridge God to man and vice versa.

It took me a while between posts, but that’s what happens with job conditions being what they are.

 

My way or the highway to hell

Once upon a time I was a Catholic. I did not have very many positive Catholic role models growing up– my saintly maternal grandmother being the prime example I could cite. (My saintly paternal grandmother was a Methodist, but growing up, my brother and I weren’t exposed to that at all.)

In my travails at the various parochial schools of the area, I met a handful of clergy who were comfortable enough with the choices they had made that led them to that point in their lives– and bushels full of others who clearly feelt that they had received a raw deal from the bargain they had made with God, and opted to take their frustrations out on the laity surrounding them. (Mind you I did not hear of any child abuse such as one hears about in the lurid newspaper headlines, so I’m not going to comment on tha.)

One of the things they teach you is that the Catholic way is now, has always been, and will always be the sole route to an afterlife in paradise. Hindi, Moslems, and Jews need not apply. For some of the flock, it is enough to be told what to believe; for others, it is necessary to arrive at their faith through reason and soul searching. Most of the nuns and priests I encountered viewed me as an enemy of the state for the fact that I questioned dogma in catechism class; quite literally it was “You will believe what you’re told to believe and shut up.”

Vatican II saw a move toward, if not a softening of the exclusionary stance, at least an acceptance that the Mass as performed in Latin limited its appeal. The Roman Catholic Church seemed to be reaching out, with somewhat more modern language to which the flock could relate, and in too many cases acoustic guitars going jin-ga-jin-ga-jinga instead of a bellowing Hammond or Allen organ in the choir loft. Non-Catholics were still not invited to the communion table, because after all (Catholic legend has it) Jesus had a velvet rope barring entry to the upper room, didn’t he?

I reflect upon all this because I discovered a new translation of the Catholic Mass leaked onto the blog of a parish priest in Southeast England. At the time of my initial draft of this blog entry the link worked; thanks to info obtained yesterday from eagle-eyed reader MacGregor from The Womb, that link no longer works; indeed, all one gets when one arrives at the domain is a home page with no blog entries whatsoever, so it sure looks like someone, er, leaned on the good pastor.

Me, I’ve moved over to the United Church of Christ, perhaps on the more liberal end of the mainline American worship spectrum than the Catholic Church is and more in line with what I understand God to be and to be saying. So it really shouldn’t bother me what the bloody Papists (in the abstract) do.However… this translation, while hewing more closely to the original Latin and a bit more graceful in spots, this translation does bother me. The rest of my family (and my wife’s) are, so to say, bloody Papists (in flesh and blood), and I wonder whether they and other Catholics may yet find themselves at odds with the service that is intended to be the ultimate expression of their faith. Not so much with the sacrament– that of course is celebrated at every service and its meaning for Catholics is immutable across time and space– but with the ceremony, and the attitude, that surrounds it.

I worry that even as ICEL pares the gender-exclusionary language out of the Mass by dribs and drabs, they are adding other language in the course of reinterpreting the canonical Mass, that represents a move back toward a more militantly exclusionary Catholic church, one that more vocally refuses to acknowledge the other ways and means by which a man may come to God. The ecumenical service as laid out by the Vatican II reforms seems like it might be on the way out within the next couple of years. Can the RCC afford that in an age of ethnic diversity and a sense that Jesus isn’t the only game in town?

At my church, by and large we only celebrate Communion once a month, on the first Sunday. But when we do celebrate, everyone is welcome, not just those of the faith.

 

How long can this go on?

Fans everywhere are watching the Bronx with interest these days for two reasons: because the hated Yankees are losing, primarily thanks to some patently abysmal pitching across the board, and because Alex Rodriguez is having an April for the ages.

In the six games remaining this month, he is likely to break Albert Pujols’ April home run record of one year ago. He is already ahead of Pujols’ OPS for that month by 80-plus percentage points: 1.506 for A-Rod versus 1.423 for Pujols at this time last year.

It is whispered that when he packed up all his cares and woe during spring training, and stopped putting on his brave face about his relationship with the guy playing to his left, he managed to exorcise a few demons. That, coupled with shedding a few pounds and shortening his swing, has made a world of difference in his approach to the batter’s box. Add to that the fact that with Bobby Abreu in front of him and Jason Giambi behind him in the canonical batting order, pitchers these days are pretty much compelled to pitch to him, and he’s getting more chances to actually hit the ball.

Is he likely to keep this up, and if so, for how long? Looking at his career splits from month to month, I’d say that if history is any barometer he’s likely to taper off in June– witness what happened to him last year and, if you are a Yankee fan, pray that it’s not quite as precipitous. Historically, in June his slugging percentage drops somewhere between two and three hundred points from May, only to climb again in July and especially August. We should see him find his stroke again then, just in time for the cooler weather of September and, yes, October.

But that’s speaking from a historical perspective. Those changes in his approach may have more of an impact over the course of the remaining five months of the season than anyone realizes.

And as for all the losing… as I write Chien-Ming Wang is scheduled to make his first start of the season tonight. I don’t expect very much from him as it is his first start, but the initial rustiness should pass before too long. Mike Mussina is due back next week, though I’m still concerned about how much he has left in the tank. And one would think Carl Pavano and his finicky arm will be back at some point, given the crowing he had been doing about the long, hard, arduous road he faced coming back at all for the beginning of the season. Hideki Matsui should find his rhythm after his stint on the DL; Jorge Posada had a pretty cruddy night last night after a couple of nights off but is likely to shake that off before too long.

Four games in back of the Sox is not insurmountable at this stage of the season.