I am thankful for...

The elixir of the gods:

Oh yeah. 

Funny thing, I used to run and hide from the stuff as a kid.  Still tastes just as nasty, but now I prefer not hacking up a lung, thank you very much.

Oh and BTW, as I know I got this POS cold from a friend who recently flew on Air France, why can't French germs be cheese-eating surrender monkeys, too?

Ugh.  If you want me you know where to find me.  I'll be the one groaning in between sniffles....

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Evidently I rock!

9/9 Genius You are 90% knowledegable and 96% intellectual.

Amazing! You have an incredible brain (intellect) and a powerhouse of information (knowledge)! Keep up the impressive work-- we all bow to you.

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on knowledge You scored higher than 99% on intellect

Link: The Knowledge vs. Intellect Test

h/t RSM

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The Holocaust on paper

The horror was DOCUMENTED.  On paper.  It's all there.  17 miles of file cabinets containing Nazi records on everything from head lice to mail records to executions...

17,000,000 victims: Jews, laborers, homosexuals, and political dissidents.

The documents are being scanned and will be available within the next year to a number of research programs and libraries.

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Update

I finally had a chance to speak to the next-door neighbor today.  Turns out that the plumber didn't carefully tighten down one of the several connections in the gas line.

However, he did come out in the middle of the night to do it. And then the gas company inspector checked several times after he re lit all the pilots.

So we're gas-safe again.

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Light a Candle for Hope

Hanukkah is a time to light candles and celebrate victories of the past, but it's also a time to remember those lost or left behind.

Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were abducted more 5 months ago.This Hanukkah - the holiday of lights, Ynetnews, in coordination with the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization, invite you to light a Hanukkah candle in their honor.
As individuals our light is weak, but together we will shine brightly and light a huge flame to express our common concern and hope that Gilad, Ehud and Eldad return safely home.

Remember Gilad, Ehud and Eldad. Help bring them home


Clicking either of the pictures will take you to the Candle Site. More than 10,000 have been lit so far. Let their families know how many people out there remember and care.
h/t Linda SoG

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A Tropical Holiday...

You Should Spend the Holidays In

Brazil - with fireworks and huge christmas trees made out of lights

h/t Ktreva, who should be going to Ireland

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Tech Support Hell-- Earthlink SUCKS

Go see what Earthlink made Rachel go through just to NOT fix her problem.

But don't forget to call her first to verify that you are, in fact, reading her page.

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Happy Hanukkah!

To all of you who celebrate, Happy Hanukkah! (or Chanukah or Chanukkah or however you spell it!)

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home, sick

I think I caught a cold.  So I'm working from my couch today, rather than my office.

I like working in my jammies.

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Don't let the door hit you where the Good Lord split you...

Ban Ki-moon was sworn in today as the 8th Secretary General of the United Nations, officially ending the decade-long term of his predecessor, Kofi Annan.

Today, Mr Ban pledged to "be mindful of... loyalty, discretion, and conscience" and to "set the highest ethical standards..."

Even if all he does is remind people that taking bribes is a bad thing, he'll already be miles ahead of Mr. Annan's repugnant term at the helm.

The Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal reminds us of the words and deeds of the UN under Annan's direction:

...When Mr. Annan was named Secretary General 10 years ago, he did so as the U.S.-backed candidate of reform. Jesse Helms, then-chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Mr. Annan that "if you choose to be an agent of real and deep-seated change, you will find many supporters--and even allies--here in the U.S. Congress."

Senator Helms's expectations were not met. Seven years later--thanks to U.S. military action that Mr. Annan did everything in his power to prevent--we learned that he had presided over the greatest bribery scheme in history, known as Oil for Food. We learned that Benon Sevan, Mr. Annan's trusted confidant in charge of administering the program, had himself been a beneficiary of Iraqi kickbacks to the tune of $160,000. We learned that Mr. Annan's chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, had ordered potentially incriminating documents to be destroyed. We learned that Mr. Annan and his deputy, Louise Frechette, were both aware of the kickback scheme but failed to report it to the Security Council, as their fiduciary duties required. However, we haven't yet learned whether the senior Annan illegally helped his son Kojo obtain a discounted Mercedes, an issue on which the Secretary General has stonewalled reporters.

Earlier this year, Mr. Annan was also forced to place eight senior U.N. procurement officials on leave pending investigations on bribery and other charges. Vladimir Kuznetsov, the head of the U.N. budget-oversight committee, was indicted this year on money-laundering charges. Alexander Yakovlev, another procurement official, pled guilty to skimming nearly $1 million off U.N. contracts. The U.N.'s own office of Internal Oversight found that U.N. peacekeeping operations had mismanaged some $300 million in expenditures.

...

Mr. Annan came to office after a stint as head of U.N. peacekeeping operations. The period corresponded with the massacre in Srebenica of 7,000 Bosnians and the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda, both of which were facilitated by the nonfeasance of peacekeepers on the ground. It was later revealed that Mr. Annan's office explicitly forbade peacekeepers from raiding Hutu arms caches in Rwanda just four months before the genocide.

The world's worst man-made humanitarian catastrophes have since taken place in Zimbabwe, North Korea, Congo and Darfur. Mr. Annan has been mostly silent about the first two, perhaps on the time-honored U.N. principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of member states other than the U.S. In the Congo, U.N. peacekeepers haven't stopped the bloodshed, but they have made themselves notorious as sexual predators.

Funny what can happen when a ball-less, incompetent, selfish mis-manager takes over a large organization, no?

These are the facts, folks.  Under Annan's "leadership" the UN has failed.  In Darfur, in Congo, in Somalia.  In Kosovo and Rwanda and the middle east.  And these failures can all be traced to one person: Kofi Annan.

In a global community the objective SHOULD be the protection of human rights and promotion of tolerance and communication.  Under Annan, the UN's objective appeared to be "anything that makes the US look bad". 

By default, that attitude prevents the neediest among us (like the Darfuris) from receiving the help that would otherwise be freely offered.

Ask the Kosovars.

Mr Annan has singlehandedly brought the UN from an organization of hope, that had the possibility of effecting real global change to a mockery of its former self.

Opinion Journal says it more eloquently than I can:

Mr. Annan came to power at a moment when it was at least plausible to believe that a properly reformed U.N. could serve the purposes it was originally meant to serve: to be a guarantor of collective security and a moral compass in global affairs. Mr. Annan's legacy is that nobody can entertain those hopes today.

So Long, Kofi. Please enjoy a very restful retirement somewhere far away from the media. And while you're at it, see if you can convince your buddy Jimmeh to join you.

h/t Lex

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80-some down.....

I finally got the damn cards in the mail today!

Yay!

Some of you should be expecting them within a few days, I hope.

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Passing Gas

Or, How the Very Expensive Plumber f*cked up....

So our next-door neighbor, a lovely woman who I will refer to as "JoAnn" has been having some trouble with her hot water heater. Including a hell of a flood last week. Good thing we have clear drainage. She decided to replace it sooner rather than later, and sooner turned out to be yesterday. As she told me last night, she chose the most expensive plumber to do the replacement simply because he had a reputation for NOT screwing things up.

In any case, JoAnn works strange hours. Like she leaves the house between 10 and 11 in the morning, and usually returns after 9 at night. So in this case, she left them the spare garage door opener to get access to the garage, where the water heater lives, with the understanding that they would bill her and close the door after the new machine was up and running.

One thing about the garage. JoAnn's garage and ours are under our respective houses and are connected by a walkway and a staircase that leads to each of our back doors. So you can enter either of our garages from the other. This, in fact, is why we knew in advance about the repair. She wanted to let us know that strangers would have access to our garage. No big deal, unless of course they like to steal empty cardboard boxes or Army uniforms. Or laundry detergent.

So I leave the house at 6:30 am, husband in tow, and drop DH at work before I go on to my own office. I had meetings and things all day yesterday, culminating with a staff meeting/ party. So I don't get home until 6:30 PM. All I wanted to do was address Christmas cards and veg in front of the TV. And go to bed early.

Did I mention I left here at 5:30? Fucking LA trafffic.

Anyway. By the time I arrived home it had been at least 3-4 hours since anyone had been in either garage. I pull into the driveway and roll down my window for the garage opener (which has a weak ass signal) and as the door opens, I smell something.

By the time I pull in and turn the car off, I know what it is: Gas. Immediately I go into panic mode. I run out on to the driveway and dial the house, meanwhile yelling at DH to pick up the phone. He picks up the phone and I ask him to open the back door and tell me what he smells. He concurs that it is gas and rings off to call JoAnn's cell.

In the meantime I have recovered sufficiently to realize that if I could drive into the garage that there's not enough gas to flash over, so I go over to JoAnn's garage and hit the button to open the door and turn off the light in my garage and then back the car out and park it on the street.

DH then went down to the HOA reps' house and asked about the shut offs, and she brought out the gas wrench, and we turned off JoAnn's gas at the main. Within 10 minutes, all of the gas had cleared.

I'll find out from her this afternoon why this happened, whether it was a blown pilot light or a loose connection or what.

Scary, though.

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Throwing myself headlong at Christmas...

I changed out the CDs in the car today. Now we have the following as accompaniment to LA traffic:

1. Wintersong - Sarah McLachlan
2. Merry Christmas - Johnny Mathis with Percy Faith and His Orchestra
3. Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics (South Park)
4. Beyond the Season - Garth Brooks
5. Love Actually soundtrack
6. Barenaked for the Holidays - Barenaked Ladies

And from that last album, here's what may be my favorite 'new' Christmas song:

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Christmas Shopping With an Attitude

If you don't recognize yourself in this one, you've been doing all your shopping online (good for you!)...

h/t QOAE

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Happy Birthday!

It's the big 4-0 for Jenna!

Go wish her the best!

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This is so wrong, it's funny

Some people should have their license to think REVOKED.  Ladies and Gentlemen I bring you another example of a brilliant IDIOT:

A devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals

"There's a slow poison out there that's severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture. The ironic part is, it's a "health food," one of our most popular.... I have nothing against an occasional soy snack. Soy is nutritious and contains lots of good things. Unfortunately, when you eat or drink a lot of soy stuff, you're also getting substantial quantities of estrogens.

Estrogens are female hormones. If you're a woman, you're flooding your system with a substance it can't handle in surplus. If you're a man, you're suppressing your masculinity and stimulating your "female side," physically and mentally.

... If you're a grownup, you're already developed, and you're able to fight off some of the damaging effects of soy. Babies aren't so fortunate. Research is now showing that when you feed your baby soy formula, you're giving him or her the equivalent of five birth control pills a day. A baby's endocrine system just can't cope with that kind of massive assault, so some damage is inevitable. At the extreme, the damage can be fatal.

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because "I can't remember a time when I wasn't homosexual." No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can't remember a time when excess estrogen wasn't influencing them. "[emphasis mine - Ed.]

No shit, there's more.  Read the whole blasted thing.  It speaks for itself.

I don't care what you believe about homosexuality and its origins in an individual, but this guy has his science completely bass-ackwards. Don't let this idiot scare you off of a very healthy food that is a good source of protein for those of us NOT allergic to it.

h/t Boi From Troy

Posted by: caltechgirl at 08:21 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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Matt and Trey: Prescient or just Damn Smart? You decide.

Shamelessly stolen from Armed Liberal at Winds of Change:

Over at HuffPo, Alec Baldwin, (of the "Film Actors Guild") speaks out on what's wrong, and what we need to do about it. One of these is real, and one is a line from a puppet movie. Can you tell which is which?

Quote #1: "By following the rules of the Film Actor's Guild, the world can become a better place; that handles dangerous people with talk, and reasoning; that, is the fag way. One day you'll all look at the world us actors created and say, "wow, good going, fag. You really made the world a better place, didntcha, fag?" "

Quote #2: "There is an answer to this problem. There is a way to defeat terrorism while building new and better alliances in the Arab world. It will be an enormously complex and difficult diplomatic puzzle. But the first step might be oddly simple. Get rid of the CIA, which has outlived its usefulness and is an embarrassment to this great country, and rebuild and reform US intelligence capabilities to fight this new type of threat. I think our hopes must begin there."

Answer below the fold, in case you didn't know
more...

Posted by: caltechgirl at 09:39 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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I love Tony Blair...

... and I always have.  I will miss him when he steps down.

I wish some people in this country could be this direct and honest:

"People want to make sense of two emotions: our recognition of what we legitimately hold in common and what we legitimately hold distinct. When I decided to make this speech about multiculturalism and integration, some people entirely reasonably said that integration or lack of it was not the problem. The 7/7 bombers were integrated at one level in terms of lifestyle and work. Others in many communities live lives very much separate and set in their own community and own culture, but are no threat to anyone.

But this is, in truth, not what I mean when I talk of integration. Integration, in this context, is not about culture or lifestyle. It is about values. It is about integrating at the point of shared, common unifying British values. It isn't about what defines us as people, but as citizens, the rights and duties that go with being a member of our society.

Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and other faiths have a perfect right to their own identity and religion, to practice their faith and to conform to their culture. This is what multicultural, multi-faith Britain is about. That is what is legitimately distinctive.

But when it comes to our essential values - belief in democracy, the rule of law, tolerance, equal treatment for all, respect for this country and its shared heritage - then that is where we come together, it is what we hold in common; it is what gives us the right to call ourselves British. At that point no distinctive culture or religion supercedes our duty to be part of an integrated United Kingdom.

...

We must respect both our right to differ and the duty to express any difference in a way fully consistent with the values that bind us together.

So: how do we do this?

Partly we achieve it by talking openly about the problem. The very act of exploring its nature, debating and discussing it doesn't just get people thinking about the type of Britain we want for today's world; but it also eases the anxiety. It dispels any notion that it is forbidden territory. Failure to talk about it is not politically correct; it's just stupid.

Partly the answer lies in precisely defining our common values and making it clear that we expect all our citizens to conform to them. Obedience to the rule of law, to democratic decision-making about who governs us, to freedom from violence and discrimination are not optional for British citizens. They are what being British is about. Being British carries rights. It also carries duties. And those duties take clear precedence over any cultural or religious practice.

Here's the MONEY QUOTE, though:

Our tolerance is part of what makes Britain, Britain. So conform to it; or don't come here. We don't want the hate-mongers, whatever their race, religion or creed. If you come here lawfully, we welcome you. If you are permitted to stay here permanently, you become an equal member of our community and become one of us. Then you, and all of us, who want to, can worship God in our own way, take pride in our different cultures after our own fashion, respect our distinctive histories according to our own traditions; but do so within a shared space of shared values in which we take no less pride and show no less respect.

The right to be different. The duty to integrate. That is what being British means. And neither racists nor extremists should be allowed to destroy it.

h/t Cop The Truth

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The Motel 6 of Heaven....

Ilyka and the boyfriend have a theological debate....

" "What happens," my boyfriend wants to know, "if you leave the Mormon church? What's supposed to happen to you when you die?"

"I think it depends. Like if I had a real testimony of the church, and then I left it, that's very bad, and I think in that case I go to something they call Outer Darkness, which is like hell. But I don't think I really ever got around to getting a testimony. I never quite advanced to the rank of True Believer, you know? So I think the worst I could possibly get is the lowest rung of Mormon heaven. It's like the Motel 6 of heavens."

"So no jacuzzi."

"No."

"Probably no room service, either."

"Definitely not."

"But you still get free HBO."

"See? That's what I'm saying. How bad is that, really? They're going to have to come up with a grimmer vision than Motel 6 to scare me back into three hours of church on Sunday."

Heh. I guess they'll have to take a page from Matt and Trey, then.

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Not everyone in Hollywood is a prick... UPDATED!

You Firefly/ Serenity fans will enjoy this one.

"...[L]ast year a group called Booster Events held this massive Firefly/Serenity convention in California last year called "Flanvention." A lot of the cast shows up, there were panels and dinners and photo shoots and whatnot, membership was limited, and it was a lot of fun, a way for fans of the cancelled-too-soon show and because-we-demanded-it movie to talk to their favorite stars. This year's hotly anticipated event sold out months ago and it's happening this weekend, right now.

Or it would be. The organizers cancelled it. On Thursday."

Sucks, right?  Not so fast....

"As stunned and betrayed fans began to arrive the California Browncoats jumped up to meet the frantic challenge of organizing a convention during, you know, the actual convention. Fans settled in to party among themselves anyway, mutter dark things about Booster Events, and make the best of it of the newly formed Browncoat Backup Bash.

Then the stars started showing up.

Adam "Jayne" Baldwin showed up Thursday night, knowing the con was cancelled and fans were left hanging. He hung around chatting with fans for hours and mentioned others would probably show up.

Friday Nathan "Mal" Fillion, Alan "Wash" Tudyk, Mark "Badger" Sheppard, Jonathan "Dead Guy From 'The Message'" Woodward, and Christina "Saffron" Hendricks came by for autographs and pictures and mainly just to say hi. Without appearance fees or the autograph cash that usually get stars to show up, they came anyway. Alan Tudyk wan't even supposed to be at the event due to prior commitments, and he came anyway. They knew their fans had been shafted and they stepped up to make it worthwhile. Fillion brought a box full of Firefly memorabilia and other personal loot and started passing it out to fans who had come from Australia, the UK and other far-off places."

And people wonder why the fans are so loyal to a one-season cancelled show!

h/t DeDoc

UPDATE: Cranky Beach was there! Go over for a first person account!

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