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Waterboarding
I find Attorney General-designate Michael Mukasey’s equivication on whether the interrogation technique called ‘waterboarding’ constitutes torture or not to be deeply disturbing. Waterboarding was considered a war crime when practiced against Americans in WWII and in Viet Nam, yet for some reason, Mukasey can’t seem to make up his mind as to whether the treatment involved is equal to torture. This, from Malcolm Nance, a veteran of counter terrorism operations in Iraq: 1. Waterboarding is a torture technique. Period. There is no way to gloss over it or sugarcoat it. It has no justification outside of its limited role as a training demonstrator. Our service members have to learn that…
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Synchronicity
Last night, as Maya was doing her Earth Science homework, she asked me if I had ever studied the Richter scale. “Um…”I thought about it a bit, “No, I don’t think so.” “Really?” Clearly my education has been lacking. Or maybe we DID study it in 6th grade, and I just don’t remember. Then, a few hours later, we were getting ready for bed, and we had an earthquake! (SF Gate is trying to scare us, telling us that it was the biggest earthquake since ’89, and raises the danger of a big one on the Hayward fault.  Should we be scared? Who knows. Maybe it’s time to put together an earthquake…
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Happy Halloween…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq2RXSboWMs[/youtube]
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Man of the Century
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNSIOd9LTh4[/youtube] One of Ted’s coworkers loaned him a very cute DVD the other day…has anyone seen Man of the Century? The premise is that Johnny Twennies lives in the1990s, but he acts as though he’s in the 1920s. He’s a newspaper man who still works on a typewriter, swears like a pre-schooler, sends messages by telegram, and he’s trying to keep his job and get the girl. Very cute. Very clever. We never found out WHY he’s still in the past, but I was glad he was, because I liked this film. Give it a rental/Netflix. You won’t be sorry.
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the curious incident of the dog in the night-time
I loved this book. Again, it was a quick read, which I seem to be getting a lot of lately, so I polished it off in 2 sittings. The first thing I noticed when I started this book was that the first chapter appeared to be chapter 2. Hmmm. Did I get a bum copy? Doesn’t look like a bum copy. The next chapter is 3, then 5, then 7. Oh, OK, prime numbers. Christopher Boone is writing a murder mystery, and he is an autistic savant living in Swindon, England, and loves ‘maths’. He finds great comfort in numbers and the way they work…it helps him to cope with…
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The Almost Moon ~ Alice Sebold
I read The Lovely Bones a few years ago, and it almost broke my heart. If you haven’t read it, it’s the story of a teen aged girl who is raped and murdered by a neighbor, and it takes awhile for her body to be found. The oddly uplifting story is mostly of the girl watching her family from heaven, wanting to comfort them with the knowledge that she is OK now, and trying to come to terms with the transition from her earthly life to the non-corporeal existence where she now finds herself. It’s shattering and very well written. Alice Sebold’s other book, Lucky, is a memoir, and I…
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Seether – Veruca Salt
I’ve decided to post this video today to divert myself from posting a review of The Almost Moon, which I finished a few days ago, and which I wrote the review for on Tuesday, but I don’t want to post it today because I just posted a book review YESTERDAY for crap’s sake, and can’t I just slow down with the books or something? And I had a good excuse with Number the Stars and Ethan Frome, as they are very short and easy reads, but now I’m back to regular grown up books, and I can’t stop. Would it disturb you to know that as a tween, I used…
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Ethan Frome
I read Ethan Frome as part of my 2nds reading challenge, where you read a second book by an author of whose work you’ve previously only read one book. That’s just awkward…I always have trouble explaining this challenge. Anyway, awhile ago I read The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton, for last winter’s classics challenge. I thought it was a sad, tragic tale, and so well written, that I wanted more of Ms. Wharton. So when I saw this challenge, I thought it would be the perfect time to pick up Ethan Frome. If you haven’t read Ethan Frome (wikipedia page, plot spoilers!), it is the story of a man…
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Open Letter to Creepy Guy
Dear Creepy Guy, (Why say “Dear”? You are not dear to me. A better start would be, “Hey Asshat”) Hey Asshat, Just because you get some kind of creepy thrill from giving me the willies every morning on the bike trail doesn’t mean you’re going to stop me from walking my daughter to school. You ride by on your way to work (or wherever you’re going, I assume work because it’s the same time every day), and you stare at me, and sometimes you scowl, and sometimes you smile a skeezy smile, and once you blew me a kiss. Perhaps you think you’re sexy and charming, and I harbor a…
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If All of the ‘Cool Kids’ Jumped off of a Bridge…
Would you? Apparently, for me, the answer is sadly, yes. I had no intention of joining NaBloPoMo this year. Just a few weeks ago, I was considering giving up blogging, wondering if I had anything left to say. My hiatus may have only lasted 6 or 7 hours, but it was real in my head and heart during those long hours. 😉 So, when I saw that it was time again for National Blog Posting Month, with its goal of posting at least once a day, every day, during the month of November, I thought, um, that kind of goes against my new blogging philosophy, my “I have a life”…
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Number the Stars
Number the Stars is the story of Annemarie, a 10 year old Danish Christian girl in 1943. Denmark is occupied by the Nazis, and now they are preparing to deport all of the Jews, including Annemarie’s best friend, Ellen, and her family. Annemarie’s family works with Ellen’s family to spirit them away, and the events occurring around Annemarie do not always make sense. But she wants her friend to be safe, desperately, and is willing to be brave to help. While the characters in Number the Stars are fictional, the events portrayed are very much real. I had never read anything about the rescue of the Danish Jews before. What…
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Thursday 13 ~ Thank God for Showers
The other day when I was climbing into my nice steamy hot shower, I was reminded of Maya donating money to Unicef to bring clean water to children elsewhere. Then I thought of the book I had just finished, March, and how they didn’t have hot steamy showers, either. Pretty much, for the length of human history, no hot steamy showers. Want to take a bath? If you’re lucky enough to have access to a well, you can heat up water on your stove and use that. Otherwise, it’s the creek or river. No fun. And yet, that’s how it’s been for hundreds of thousands of years, and how it…
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Awards…
The lovely Scarlett over at From the Shores of Introspect and Retrospect has awarded me the Nice Matters Award! I like the little picture of the Cheshire Cat in the picture…if you’ll remember, the Cheshire Cat wasn’t truly nice, was he? I mean, he’s not mean by any real stretch of the imagination, but he does have a tendency to go off in his own little direction, and brings up philosophical points that may or may not be especially helpful to poor Alice. I’ve been known to do the same thing myself, though it’s been years since I’ve known anyone named Alice. So…the crux of this award seems to be…
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March
I’ve been intending to read March, by Geraldine Brooks, for awhile now. I first brought it up way back in January of ’06, when I was pretty new to blogging, and was thinking of books I might like to read. Well, I went book shopping, and intended to buy it, but they didn’t have it, so I grabbed another book by the same author, Year of Wonders, which I really liked. Finally, I bought March, but I put it on my bookshelf, and then it got packed away with 99% of our other books, and is now all cozy in our rented storage space, in an attempt to convince prospective…
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Money…
I have a question for you…a ‘what to do’ type question. Here are the specifics: Maya’s girl scout troop is planning several outings this year, including a sleepover at the zoo, and two camping trips. The total cost of these outings is somewhere around $150 per scout. Some of this cost may be deferred by cookie money, but not the majority of it. I kind of feel like Maya should put up some of this cash herself, as these are things she is opting to do, rather than school activities, etc. Maya and I recently split a cat-sitting job for the neighbors’ cats. We went over twice a day…me in…