Al Qaeda in Iraq Video is Manipulated (at least)

A little more than a week ago I read a posting on The Belmont Club about a video that had been released by Al Qaeda in Iraq that claimed to show an American "Tank" (actually, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle) being destroyed. "Wrechard," the proprietor of the Belmont Club, offered some doubts about the veracity of the video but could offer little proof that it was bogus. There was quite a bit of discussion in the Belmont Club comments for the posting (in which I participated) which finally ended with no clear conclusions.

I must admit that I find the video fascinating. I've watched it dozens of times and I'd like to thank Wrechard for bringing it to my attention and, of course, I'd like to thank Al Qaeda in Iraq for the intriguing puzzle they have given me. And, a final thanks is due to Iraq Slogger for starting the process by posting a link to the video.

Assuming you have the right MacroMedia plugin installed the video should be below. [This should be safe enough for 'sensitive' viewers -- there is no gore or clear suggestion that anything but hardware is damaged -- but you might want to turn your sound down, depending on where you stand on repetitive, annoying martial music sung in Arabic.]



One of the buttons at the bottom of the video player should launch a larger version of the video where you can see things a bit more clearly. (But that's only a bit more clearly; the video quality is only so-so at best and, as I will argue, parts of the images are deliberately obscured.) [if you have trouble getting the video to play try this link.]

Description of the video

The video consists of three segments. The first seqment runs from time 00:00 to 03:20 and is, or appears to be, one continuous take of an insurgent sneaking up on a parked Bradley, placing a bag under it (presumably containing explosives) and also positioning a fuel can beside the explosives. At one point the camera zooms out to a wide-angle shot and a red circle appears on the left to highlight an area, presumably indicating the location of coalition troops, most likely the Bradley crew (all that is actually visible is a palm tree, a bit of wall with an arched window and a vertical feature that might be a soldier.) The camera is mounted on a tripod with the head free to tilt and pan. The operator zooms in and out and pans to follow the stealthy activities of the bomb planter. The presence of a tripod is revealed by the consistent six-degree cant to the camera. At the end of the first segment the operator zooms and pans to a particular view and then locks the tripod head. There is an obvious dissolve to segment two.

The second segment (03:21 to 04:22) is shot with a stable, unmoving camera. It shows a few seconds leading up to the primary explosion (which is looped to repeat four times) and a subsequent smaller explosion that ignites a fire. Before the explosion, in parts of the image (such as the palm tree on our left) there is considerable motion but in other parts there is no movement at all. The white flag on the right side that was fluttering briskly in the wind now hangs limp, contrasting oddly with the palm tree fluttering in the wind on the left. A head pops up behind the Jersey barrier on our left, moves a few steps towards the explosion, pauses and then moves rapidly away and out of frame to our left. Various commenters have identified the figure as a man giving hand-signals and a dog. The explosion itself happens so quickly that the Bradley is obscured in less than a single video frame. That is, there is no frame that shows the Bradley after the explosion -- it literally disappears in a puff of smoke. At no point in this segment after the explosion do we see the effects of the explosion on the vehicle. During the explosion there is also something odd going on in the foreground (in the puddle near the end of the Jersey barrier.) It appears to be the reflection of a bird that flew though an area that has been removed. The bird (if that's what it is) does finally appear, flying up towards the explosion and then back down and disappearing at the edge of the Jersey barrier. It's not clear if the bird(?) went behind the barrier or just disappeared when it reached the edge of the barrier. The bird(?) is easiest to see right after the fourth (and final) showing of the explosion which seems to be even more slow-motion than the first three. The slow motion continues until 03:45 then a more normal speed resumes with seconds 03:45 and 03:47 repeating what we saw in 03:40-03:45, only faster. The second sequence ends with another dissolve to the same scene with something shaped more-or-less like a Bradley visibly burning with lots of thick black smoke.

The third segment (04:23 - 05:02) shows the Bradley (? pile of tires? whatever...) burning in the middle of the street with lots of billowing black smoke. The center part of the image is quite sharp and contrasty but parts of the left and right are oddly blurred. The wall on our right and the Jersey barrier are quite unconvincing if you make a point to look at them instead of the flames and the smoke. We can see what appears to be the shadows of the billowing smoke flowing over the palms, sidewalk and utility poles on the right. The white flag mostly hangs oddly still with an occasional peculiar flap or two that seems to start and stop in mid-motion. The scene finally fades to the logo and animated flames that started the video.

Discussion of individual elements

Red Circle: Here's the red circle. I don't know for sure what we are supposed to see here. A G.I. standing on the porch by a window and a palm tree?



Size of the Bradley: One commenter on the Belmont Club was sure the video was altogether fake since the Bradley appears to be too big. Bearing in mind that a Bradley can easily drive under a ten-foot overhang, how short must the bomber be here?


I've adjusted for the cant of the camera here.

Here is another shot of a Bradley from my archives. I happen to know that this young man is about 6'1". The low angle of this shot tends to make him look bigger and the vehicle smaller but it gives some sense of scale.



For myself, it seems possible that the bomber was that short. But I dunno. If really was a tiny little guy he must have been really strong, too, since he picks up that big fuel can as if it were empty.

The Tracks If you look closely at the tracks of the Bradley you will see that you can't see them. They have been deliberately blurred in each and every frame in which they appear -- especially the center of the track with its distinctive removable rubber shoes that limit road damage. Here is a detail:



I'm not an expert on track configurations but I do know that the tracks on the Bradley have changed several times recently. As the Bradley was deployed into Iraq the Army kept adding additional armor which made them heavier -- which made the tracks wear out faster -- which was a pain in the neck. So the army modified the track to have larger, longer-wearing rubber shoes to improve maintenance intervals. It's possible that the tracks have been obscured to prevent identification of the vintage of the Bradley and it is also possible that the distinctive tracks have been obscured to hide the fact that what is shown is not a Bradley at all but some other tracked vehicle (possibly construction equipment) that has been disguised. Here is an example of what a Bradley track can look like:



The White Flag: There are two elements in the video that indicate generally how windy it is. The palm tree that we saw in the red circle tosses in the wind throughout the video on the left side of the screen and there is a white flag on the right-hand side. The motion of the flag comes and goes making me suspect that some parts of the video are assembled from footage taken at different times. Look for times when the palm tree shows a windy day and the flag is just hanging there. Here's the flag so you'll know what to look for:



The Guy who Might Be a Dog: In segment two a head pops up behind the Jersey barrier on the left from time to time. Various commenters have identified it as a man and a dog. I tend to think it's a guy and that the odd trotting motion that makes him look doglike as he exits to the left after the explosion is an artifact of a reduced frame rate. If he is a man it is significant that he is trying to hide from the camera and not from the Bradley or the presumed location of the coalition troops. Here he is looking like a man:



The Invisible Bird: In the four seconds before the explosion you can see the reflection of something moving from left to right in the puddle at the end of the Jersey barrier. It's only a few pixels and you have to be pretty compulsive to see it before the explosion. It is easier to see in the first frame or two after the explosion where it stands out against the relatively bright reflection of the dust. Here it is with an arrow pointing to it (you are looking for a dark spot):



If you watch that area just after the explosion you can see something (the invisible bird?) that appears out of nowhere, launches itself up and to the left (towards the explosion) and then veers off towards the Jersey Barrier where it disappears. The best time to look for it is just after the fourth replay of the explosion (around 03:32). In the image below you can see a bit of a streak behind the bird and I've added a yellow line showing where it will go.



Shadows on Blurred Palms: The last segment, with the shadows of the smoke of the burning Bradley(?) flowing across the sidewalk and the palms on the right of the screen ties the burning vehicle to the location. Because of the angle of the light and the three-dimensional locations of walls, utility poles, vegetation, etc. it would be fairly difficult to simulate. On the other hand, if one were going to try to simulate it by, say, filming the shadow of clouds over several days and speeding them up one would need to obscure the details of any foliage that would move in the wind and look odd when sped up. The result might look something like this:




I added the yellow dotted outline but I did not blur the area inside of it. Compare the resolution of the flames with the vegetation inside the dotted outline.

S..L..O..W - M..O..T..I..O..N ?

Here is a screen grab from four seconds before the first instance of the explosion.



What struck me about the seconds leading up to the explosion is that there is a big chunk in the middle of the screen where nothing is happening. To our left the palm tree that was in the red circle is thrashing away in the wind and on the right the palm trees overhead are also moving. But near the bradley nothing is happening. It looks like a glass shot from an old movie -- a scene shot through painting on glass with openings for the live-action parts. In a glass shot the painting covers everything but a small area occupied by actors, props, sound-stages, etc.. Think Dorothy skipping up the Yellow Brick Road (sound stage) towards the Emerald City (painted on glass).

If you look closely at the area around the Bradly during those four seconds you might notice that it seems to lack the waver and flicker of low-quality compressed video. Video cameras tend to second guess themselves from frame to frame. A pixel that looked gray before will suddenly seem more tan. The compression algorithm ignores those changes up to a point but will return to the area later and redraw and catch up. This is what makes compressed video look like a reflection in the surface of simmering water -- just short of a boil. The area around the Bradley never appears to attract the attention of the redraw algorithm and never to get redrawn. Or so it seemed to me.

To test my theory I took five screen shots about one second apart (the shot above being the first og the five) and used my image editing program to highlight the pixels that had changed from one image to the next. The changes between the first two images are highlighted in red. Here's T-minus-four:



The red blob behind the Jersey Barrier on the left is Mr. Man-or-Dog popping his head up. We'll see him again at T-minus-one. Here is T-minus-three:



It's rather hard to see at this size but if you click on these images it should take you to a larger image where you can see the red marks from the moving shadow of the invisible bird. Here is T-minus-two:



And here is T-minus-one (Mr. Man-or-dog makes another appearance):



Adding up all the red spots into a single image we get this:



The palm tree moving in the wind is almost entirely red as one would expect but what is interesting is how square the red area around the palm tree appears. Also expected is the speckling of the foreground. An occasional pixel that is on the borderline between two colors will be one color in one frame and another color in the next. What seems odd are the areas where nothing changes -- especially areas (such as the undercarriage of the Bradley and the spot on the sidewalk on the right) where there does seem to be some detail (which would tempt the video compression algorithm to tinker) but nothing changes for four whole seconds.

I have drawn some rather arbitrary outlines around the parts of the picture where nothing much seems to change from second to second. My theory is that the images were assembled from footage shot at different times and played back at different frame rates. The palm tree, for instance, is clearly playing at more-or-less normal speed but the area under and just in front of the Bradley appears to be playing in slow motion. Parts of the right side of the image (where spectators might have been standing) seem to have been replaced with still images. Here are my outlines:



Conclusions

In the end it is fairly easy to convince oneself that the video has been manipulated with a clear intent to decieve the viewer. It's not just a matter of making it more exciting by looping the explosions and playing them in slow motion. Information that would allow the viewer to confirm the identities of objects presented has been removed, as has information that would establish the order of events. The manipulation is clumsy enough that it is easy to document places where information has been removed but, clumsy though it was, the manipulation does prevent us from knowing exactly what has been removed. We can only speculate. So we will.

My best guess is that the object shown in the video was at no time an in-service Bradley. There was something three-dimensional there, at least in the first sequence. The footage of the guy planting the bag of "explosives" and the can of fuel are very convincing. He clearly crawled under something that had tracks and cast a shadow. But, whatever it was, it seemed a bit big for a Bradley and there must have been something wrong with the tracks or they wouldn't have gone to the trouble of blurring them on each and every frame in which they appear. It could have been a bulldozer with a painted picture of a Bradley mounted in place of the blade (or on the back) or it could have been an old, decommissioned Bradley with the old-style tracks. One thing that argues that it was not any kind of a Bradley is that the chain gun is pointing exactly at the camera. The three-foot barrel appears as a circle with a dot in the middle. What are the odds of that happening by accident?

Why do you suppose the Bradley is sitting in the middle of a big puddle? Again, I know it rains in Iraq and there are muddy bits but it is also true that a puddle of standing water won't show footprints or tracks. In particular, as long as you used a hose to keep it topped up, a puddle would obscure the marks one would make while driving a tracked vehicle around the corner and setting up the canvas outline rigged with explosives to disappear in puff of smoke. Similarly, the puddle would also hide the marks you made lugging in your Bradley-shaped pile of wood and old tires and setting it on fire.

That's just my theory. Other interpritations are possible. Feel free to leave comments giving your theories.

Poll Wars

Two polls have come out recently that both claim to reflect the feelings of Iraqis about the current conditions and propsects in Iraq. One poll, of 5000 Iraqis done for the London Sunday Times, finds that the majority of Iraqis think that the current security opeations in Baghdad (aka, "the Surge") are likely to work and tha respondents are generally hopeful about the prospects for their country. (See Iraqis: Life is Getting Better.)

The other poll, of over 2000 Iraqis commissioned by the BBC, ABC and USA Today, finds by similar margins that the majority of Iraqis think conditions suck. (see Pessimism Growing Among Iraqis.)

Quite a bit of the disparity between the two surveys can be explained by observing that the results are not that different, actually. The headlines diverge wildly but, if you read the actual stories you will find that the Times found large numbers of Iraqis who were very unhappy with their current situation but still hopeful, while the BBC found Iraqis to be somewhat hopeful in the long term but very cranky about their current situation. In general, the BBC/ABC survey tends to be slightly more negative, from the coalition point of view, and news outlets that like to write negative headlines will tend to select that survey and view it in the most depressing light possible. The Times survey, with its slightly more encouraging results, is quoted by organizations that like to present a positive view of the war in Iraq. Needless to say, despite the Times' survey's two and a half times bigger sample size, the BBC/ABC survey is much more widely reported.

The rest of the disparity is likely to arise from the wording of the questions on the respective surveys. My take is that Iraqis are, on average, somewhat hopeful about the future of the country but are also painfully aware that the current conditions stink. This makes it easy to get any results you want from a survey. If you tilt the questions to get them to think about the larger context -- where they have come from and where they are going -- they will sound hopeful. Saddam is gone and things might work out OK. But, if you encourage them to think about their current irritations you can get them to vent.

I think Mohammad Fadhil, from the Iraq the Model blog, expressed the sense of this odd Iraqi hopefulness when he wrote --

You look around in Baghdad now and see hundreds of men working in the streets to pick up garbage; to plant flowers and paint the blast walls in joyful colors. Many of Baghdad’s squares are becoming green and clean. The picture isn’t perfect, but it’s a clear attempt to beat violence and ease pain through giving the spring a chance to shine.

Nights in Baghdad now are far from quiet, but the sounds cause less anxiety for me than they did before. I recognize the rumble of armor and thump of guns and they assure me that the gangs and militias do not dominate the night as they once did.

Blast walls painted in joyful colors and the soothing rumble of armor and the thump of big guns at night: I can sympathize with the BBC for not recognizing this as what they would call "hope" but I am glad that it will serve as such for Mohammed and a slight majority of his fellow Iraqis. With any luck at all we can trade it in for a better variety of hope in the future. Or at least that is what I hope.

Starlite

I can't particularly say I know Bob Groves very well. I have talked to him a couple of times as he was cleaning up after the show. On weekend nights when attendance is good it can take quite a while for all the cars to work their way out of his Durham NC Starlite Drive In and I generally prefer to chat with Bob while I wait rather than sit in my car watching the brake lights of the car ahead of me.

The Starlite Drive In is a Durham instiution. The concession stand doubles as a gun shop during the day and on weekends the parking area hosts a flea market. When the screen burned down a couple of years ago a more sensible man would have gotten out of the business. The land it sits on is quite valuable -- a large parcel one block from I-40 a mile or two outside of Durham -- and Bob could have sold it and made more money from the interest on the proceeds than from running the Starlite. But that wasn't what Bob wanted to do. With some help from local moviegoing community fund-raising he managed to scrape together enough money for poles and plywood and he got the place open again.

When I talked to Bob not long after he reopened he admitted that he wouldn't be able to hold out there forever. The land was too valuable and as more people moved in around him these new neighbors were starting to complain about the noise and the traffic. Sooner or later he knew that the local businesses and government would squeeze him out and he would have to sell. As I said, the land was worth quite a bit of money -- enough to retire quite comfortably to someplace warm and sunny -- but that wasn't the plan. When he was ready to sell he said he hoped to find another place a little bit farther from town -- a little bit bigger, too -- and open a new Starlite with maybe two screens and a nicer concession stand. He had no intention of retiring. He loved the drive in business and he planned to run a drive in until the day he died.

And he did.

Bob Groves, R.I.P.

Sadly, the Starlite has closed until such time, if ever, until another madman steps forward to pick up where Bob left off.

Negative Space

A friend of mine posted a piece that leads up to a question for which I will give an answer in due course... but first, a thought experiment.

I want you to think of two movies made in the last ten years. Pick any movies, A and B, that you want, with the following restrictions on your choice: Movie A must have a villain who is a billionaire industrialist. Either he is rich because he was evil to start with and his wealth came from unscrupulous business practices, or he was not bad initially but has been corrupted by his wealth. For movie B, on the other hand, you must pick one with a hero who is a billionaire industrialist. He must be admirable both personally and in his business dealings. He must be sane and sensible and, while he may be a bit eccentric, he must be respected by others in his industry.

I'll give you a minute...

[Jeopardy theme plays three times... de de dee de dee de dum...]

Got them? No? Why not?

Let me guess. Picking movie B is hard, isn't it? There are hundreds of choices for movie A. Almost any thriller will do. But finding movie B is tough. I can think of two, right off hand, that seem to meet the requirements: The Edge, 1997, and Meet Joe Black, 1998. Interestingly, both billionaires were played by the same actor -- Anthony Hopkins. I don't know why he has cornered the market on admirable billionaires, but there you go.

So the point of my thought experiment is to suggest that the portrayals of the very rich in popular films are almost always negative, and unless we believe that almost all real-life billionaires are evil geniuses it is hard to escape the conclusion that we are looking at some sort of bias, at least from a statistical point of view. But many phenomena that are exceedingly clear at the macro level become very difficult to see when one looks at the individual instances and it is very difficult to find a film that, all by itself, is demonstrably unfair to the rich. It is perfectly fair to write a screenplay in which the villain is very rich. There are many real-life examples of evil billionaires (George Soros comes to mind for me but you can substitute your favorite rich SOB) and it is perfectly fair to write such people into a work of fiction.

Bollywood features from India deliberately attempt to have equal portions of everything in each film -- equal amounts of comedy, drama, action, romance, music, etc. -- and with that one possible exception there is no requirement that every movie should portray every possible type of character. This means that one can never criticize any single film for a negative portrayal of the super rich. The filmmaker can always say "Yes, I could do a story about a heroic rich guy, but that is not the story I am doing right now." It's not his job to correct the balance of the industry. He is supposed to give the public a film they will enjoy and to give the production company a film that will make them money. It is not the fault of film A that film B never seems to get made. One will never find proof of Hollywood's anti-industrial biases by looking at individual films or filmmakers. The bias is altogether obvious in the large but it disappears in the particular.

Which brings me to my friend, Calvin, and his posting (also here) about the female Pakistani minister shot dead for 'breaking Islamic dress code.' It has to do with Zilla Huma Usman, the minister for social welfare in Punjab province of Pakistan who was shot dead for not wearing what her killer considered to be proper Islamic head wear. Calvin wonders why her story doesn't get more play.

So far I have not seen any outrage expressed about this. You'd think that someone, some human rights organization somewhere, could put out a press release or something. And given that the fanatic committed this murder in the name of Islam, wouldn't you think that someone in a position of authority in the Islamic faith would speak out against what's being done in Islam's name? So far, I haven't seen any. At least no statements have made it into Google's search engine yet. In the land of free speech, has Keith Ellison, the Islamic member of the House of Representatives spoken out? Nothing on his official U.S. House web site. No press release. No statement. No nothing.

So, why doesn't her story have more legs? Why do you have to read about it here, or in some random LiveJournal page, instead of in the Associated Press? [To be fair, it did make the AP wire but very few outlets picked it up. here is a story from Fox News.]

The news outlets might point out that thousands of people are killed every day, most of them for reasons fully as stupid as not wearing a head scarf, and they can't all be worldwide news. The front pages just aren't big enough and the news media have to pick and choose what they think will interest their customers. One can easily criticize news organizations when they write stories that aren't fair -- but it's harder to criticize them when it isn't fair that they didn't write a story.

In general, if your perspective differs from that of the editors of a news outlet you will find the negative shapes formed by missing stories easier to discern. If you mostly agree with the editor's world-view, this "selection" bias becomes hard to see. And since editors agree with themselves 100 percent of the time, and since they agree with one-another nearly as often, they are genuinely mystified by charges of bias.

I, for one, can't even argue honestly that the story really is that interesting. Pakistan is a long way away, after all, and the guy who shot her was clearly a crank. There is no particular reason why the story should get a lot of play. Its lack of coverage only stands out against the bright background of other stories of even less import that are covered 24/7 for weeks. No one was killed or injured in the scandal at Abu Grahib, for instance, but we heard quite a bit about that... yes, quite a bit... too much, in fact. Please forget I brought it up.

Update: Brent Bozell has a piece on bias via story selection that echoes some of my points.

China Syndrome vs Global Warming

Say what you want about celebrity activists, they do have an impact on public opinion, especially when concurrent events reinforce their message. These days, aside from the always-popular anti-war activism, the trendy issue is clearly global warming, and that is where the movers and shakers among the trendy beautiful people are to be found.

But a generation ago, in the late 1970s, the computer models that predict global warming hadn't been writter yet and other pressing issues lay heavy on the public mind. Actually, quite a few people were worried back then about global cooling caused by particulate pollution in the atmospherere. When combined with the then-also-trendy worries about nuclear weapons you got Nuclear Winter -- a particularly alarming scenario that, as I recall came in second in a poll of issues that the public rated as "most worrisome." To keep this fact in perspective it helps to note that the number one concern was genetal herpes (and, yes, come to think of it that poll might have been taken on college campuses.)

Jane Fonda, one of the most prominent celebrity activists of that era, was looking for a new issue. Her famous and infamous career as an anti-war activist was winding down. The Vietnam war had been over for several years and she was looking for new opportunities. She found her opening in a chance to play a reporter who witnesses an accident at a nuclear plant in Colubmia Picture's film, The China Syndrome. According to a rather nice short history of the film that a Google Search turned up in the University of San Diego History Department, Fonda was attracted to the part because she was interested in doing a film on anti-nuclear activist Karen Silkwood (a role that later went to Meryl Streep). Fonda replaced Richard Dreyfuss in the China Syndrome, who had been cast but had subsequently priced himself out of the role.

The China Syndrome was released on March 17th, 1979 and eleven days later the number two reactor at Three Mile Island had a catestrophic cooling failure, leading to the meltdown of part of the core (see the Wikipedia entry). This came at a time when the US nuclear power industry was slacking off slightly from its peak a few years earlier because of concerns about the rising costs of Uranium fuel. The combination of the publicity for the film -- which had raised public concern about the risks of nuclear power -- and the accident at Three Mile Island, was a perfect storm of bad PR for the US nuclear industry -- a disaster from which the industry still has not recovered. No nuclear plants ordered after the release of The China Syndrome were ever finished. A few projects that were already in the pipeline were completed and commisioned but others were abandoned.

It is difficult to say for sure how much of the impact of Three Mile Island on the nuclear industry can be attributed to the multiplier effect of The China Syndrome. My opinion is that most of the damage to the industry could have been avoided. Without the heightened public concern about nuclear power, the incident could probably have been portrayed as a steam explosion that was successfully contained with no injuries and a minimal release of radiation, mostly in the form of short-lived and quickly dispersed isotopes of noble gasses. The reactor itself was irrecoverably damaged but a whole industry cannot be destroyed by the breakdown of a single machine.

What destroyed the nuclear power construction industry for over a generation in this country was the expense of building and operating a nuclear plant in the post-Three Mile Island environment. Exaggerated public concerns about the safety of nuclear plants allowed the anti-nuclear groups to dictate the regulatory environment in which the nuclear industry operated. The costs of construction doubled and tripled. The compliance costs skyrocketed. Because of these new expenses, nuclear power became expensive compared to generating power from fossil fuels -- a fact that anti-nuclear groups delighted in stressing (while generally omitting their own role in creating the expense). I think much of that increase in expense can fairly be attributed to The China Syndrome. Arguably, hundreds of fossil fuel powered electric plants built in the US in the last quarter century would have been nuclear plants if not for the film.

France gets 80 percent of their electric power from nuclear sources, the US only gets 20 percent. It's not reasonable to expect that, if not for the irrational anti-nuclear policies of the last quarter-century we would be at 80 percent like France. (France is a fossil-fuel poor country.) So, for sake of argument we can split the difference and assume that anti-nuke hysteria explains half the difference. By that reasoning we can thank The China Syndrome for the fact that only 20 percent of our electricity comes from nuclear power, instead of 50 percent.

Let's do a little math. Electrical power plants in the US emit something like 500 million tons of carbon into the air as CO2 each year. None of that carbon comes from the 20 percent that is currently nuclear so 500 million tons divided by 80 percent non-nuclear gives us 6.25 million tons of carbon to generate one percent of the power we use in the US. If we assume that we would be generating an additional 30 percent from nuclear power then we would emit 187.5 fewer millions of tons of carbon each year. It has been 28 years since The China Syndrome/Three Mile Island so we can approximate the cumulative effect by multiplying the yearly emission difference by 28 and then dividing by two. That way we assign one twenty-eighth of the yearly emissions in the first year, two twenty-eighths in the second year, and so forth. So let's see... 187.5 million tons times 28 years is 5.25 billion tons divided by two to allow for our approximation of linear growth gives us 2.625 billion tons of carbon. Assuming each ton is 2000 pounds and bearing in mind that each pound of carbon combines with 2.7 pounds of oxygen to form CO2, we get, lets see... 2.625 billion tons of carbon is 5.25 trillion pounds of carbon -- which is enough to make 19.425 trillion pounds of CO2. Since we are approximating here lets round that to twenty trillion pounds. That's 20,000,000,000,000 lbs of CO2.

So what was the damage done by the accident at Three Mile Island? The number two reactor was damaged beyond repair. Enough radioactivity was released to equal a chest X-ray or two for the operators of the plant. And, thanks to the tireless efforts of Jane Fonda, twenty trillion pounds of extra CO2 were released into the atmosphere over the next twenty eight years.

Way to go, Jane! Who says that celebrity activists never have a real effect!

Magic Feather Year One: The Bony Ass Index

Today marks the one year anniversary of my most recent attempt to do something about my weight. On February 4th, 2006 I stepped on the scale and I weighed 304 lbs. That was down about 30 lbs from my all time heaviest (about 335) but still quite an unhealthy weight. At about 6'4" 304 lbs. gives me a Body Mass Index of about 37 which is well into the "Obese" range which starts at a BMI of 30.

I have a large frame and I tend to carry weight well and even at my fattest I didn't tend to strike people so much as a fat man as a big one. But vanity is one thing and health is quite another. Carrying that much weight is not healthy, no matter how stylishly one may carry it, and as I approached middle age I was looking at some real and growing health risks. A little bit more than a year ago, my doctor told me it was time to lose some weight.

While clicking around in a website where I order vitamins online I came across an article that suggested that a particluar fiber supplement might help with weight control. (I'm not sure which article it was, it might have been an earlier revision of this article on obesity from DrMurray.com.) Doing a bit more research I also found this article from the Journal of the American College of Nutrition on using viscous fiber to control Type 2 Diabetes. The JACN article was a twofer: in addition to a study on viscould dietary fiber it also reported some success in using ginseng to control blood sugar. Since Diabetes is one of the things my doctor had told me I could look forward to if I didn't control my weight I decided to add some ginseng to my experiment.

Starting on February 4th of last year I have taken a handfull of pills before each meal with at least ten ounces of water. I have used the supplements to support a fairly traditional weight-reduction diet relying on caloric reduction and moderately low-fat food. Most (perhaps all) of the weight loss is can be attributed to the diet, not the pills, but the pills do keep me from getting hungry between meals and they may help somewhat with fat loss. My handful of pills consists of the following: For breakfast, two capsules (1000mg) of PGX fiber (SlimFast or Welbetx) and one tablet (200mg) of Calcium Citrate; for lunch and dinner, three capsules (1500mg) of PGX, two capsules (1300mg) of Korean (Panax) Ginseng and one tablet (200mg) of Calcium Citrate. I also go to the gym three times a week and try to work fairly hard for an hour and a half each time I go.

Five months into the diet and exercise program, when it seemed clear that it was working unusually well (compared to my dozens of previous failed attempts to reduce my tonnage) I wrote a piece about the diet in The Teleoscope. The Magic Feather Diet reads a bit like a telemarketing spiel -- I was quite excited to finally find something that worked -- but it contains good information, I think, for people looking to lose weight.

Here are the results. I weigh twice a month, usually on the 1st and 15th of the month. Here are the results as a graph of my weight over the last year. I lost weight at a moderate but fairly constant rate of between one and a half to two pounds a week and finally leveled off at just under 235 lbs.



Interestingly, when I reached the vicinity of my target weight I didn't do anything different to level off. I still take the pills and still eat more or less the same food in the same amounts as when I was losing but my weight seems to have stabilized once most of my body fat was gone. If you look at the graph it's a fairly sharp corner. On the other hand it did coincide with the holiday food season...

So, one year in I am declaring victory. I plan to go on taking the pills and eating the same food until I find some reason to stop. I eat what I like, only smaller portions than before, and the pills are neither unhealthy nor expensive. Why mess with success?

If you go back to the Body Mass Index Calculator and put in my current weight, 233 at 6'4", it will tell you that while I am no longer "obese" I am still "overweight". The accompanying text will also tell you that the BMI is only an approximation and that for a more accurate assessment you should evaluate your weight based on your percent body fat. I am a good example of why. The BMI calculation says I should weigh no more than 204 lbs to be in the "normal" weight range but at 233 lbs I am thin enough and I have developed my own personal index -- the Bony Ass index -- which indicates that I am perfect right where I am now.

The Cheap Critic: Children of Men

Children of Men is an astoundingly good film... in almost every way. The acting, direction, cinematography, pacing, editing and visual style are all top notch. The film is a textbook example of how to use a camera to tell a story. I could go on for hours singing the technical merits of the film and still not do it justice. My readers are hereby commanded to immediately go out and see it, those who haven't already, because my readers deserve the finest the cinema can offer... and because I am curious how many of you will have the same problem I had with the film -- the constant indecision you feel as a viewer, about whether to rise above the rather flabby writing, or to go ahead and let it bother you.


Children of Men

The easiest way to explain my problem with the film is to ask you to perform a small thought experiment. Please imagine that the "Chairman" on Iron Chef America develops a case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and becomes obsessed with broccoli. Every week when the chest opens to reveal the secret ingredient it is the same thing: broccoli. Week after week, season after season: broccoli.


Battle Broccoli #248

Now there is nothing wrong with broccoli; it is a very healthy, wholesome food -- high in fiber and vitamins, and low in fat -- but it also has a strong distinctive flavor and after a while one could get tired of it. The Iron Chefs may be mighty men of culinary science but after a while even they might start to run out of ways to feature broccoli.

That is more or less the problem I find myself confronting every time I go to the movies these days. The secret ingredient is almost always the same. The "Ominous Parallels" between post-9/11 western societies and Germany between the wars is an interesting enough notion, and one you could do well to explore in a film or two, but it is not an interesting enough idea to serve as the basis for all of the movies coming out of Hollywood year after year.

To be fair, while I do tend to like broccoli when nicely prepared, with the "Ominous Parallels," not so much. I thought Leonard Peikoff overtaxed the notion in his book by that title a quarter of a century ago and I find the most recent resurgence of the concept among the trendy, anti-war left even more annoying.

Alfonso Cuarón is clearly an extremely talented filmmaker and if anyone could make P.D. James’ novel fit into the marxist mythos of Ominous Parellels he is the one. But he couldn't quite accomplish it and arrive at the end with a film that makes any sense. Some people I know (the Teleodaughter, for one) very much admire the book and are rather cross at Cuarón for trying. Me, I haven't read the book so all I noticed was that the film is ultimately hollow at the core -- but Hot Damn! what a surface it's got!

For other views of the film, both better written than mine, I recommend these reviews: Don't blame me for 'Children of Men' by Mark Steyn and Children of Men Gets It All Wrong by my friend, Bill.

So, in conclusion: Iron Filmmaker, Cuarón has labored mightily to produce Children of Broccoli but I say it's spinach and I say the Hell with it!

When Life Gives You Grapes...

> > > > >

...Make Vinegar!!

Considering College a report on access to education featured on WUNC, our local NPR station, tells us that

More Americans are going to college than ever before. But a closer look at the numbers reveals some troubling realities. Low-income students are even less likely to go to college today than high income students were 30 years ago.

Shocking, isn't it? Sure, more people are going to college in absolute terms. And yes, this includes more low-income students (who are half-again as likely to get a BS than their parents were) but today's low-income students are "even less" likely to get that BS than the rich kids were a generation ago. Seems an odd statistic, doesn't it? Comparing one group today with another thirty years ago? And, for that matter, why is it "even less?" Usually the term "even less" is used when something stands out in a world where things are bad or getting worse. But everything in this picture is rosy. Is it just me or are they grasping for any bad news they can find here?

News flash: I have "even" less money in the bank than Bill Gates! *sob*

Cheap Critic: The Fountain

The Fountain is a risky film for which to attempt a plot summary. It cuts back and forth between three stories featuring the the leading couple, Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz, in different (but similar) roles. One story is set 500 years in the past, one in the present and one 500 years in the future. Possible explanations for how the plot spans a thousand years are 1) reincarnation, 2) near-immortality, 3) the past and future scenes are from a book that one of the characters has written, or 4) some other new-age mumbo beyond my ability to understand or care. None of these quite seems to fill the bill so one probably needs to combine them to fully explain the plot -- which I will not attempt.

If you simply must have a plot summary I can recommend one by Ian Dalrymple. Dalrymple tries fairly hard to summarize the plot in his review, No Shiny Pennies in The Fountain, and does a fairly good job at sorting out which parts of the film are merely fiction and which parts are meta-fiction (fiction-within-a-fiction). After laboring mightily to summarize the plot he goes on to pan the film for reasons that are fairly sound although some of his critique comes from his religious perspective which not all readers of this blog will share.

Nonetheless, even leaving out his religious criticism there is quite a bit to dislike about The Fountain which is alternately pretentious, ponderous and dull. Having said that I must admit to having rather enjoyed the film for reasons that have little to do with its artistic merit. I found the film very nostalgic because it does a brilliant job of channeling the year 1970 for which I have very fond memories.

To start with, the part of the plot set in the present is basically Love Story. If you don't remember Love Story it concerns an attractive young couple who frolic in the snow ...



The Fountain



Love Story

... until the girl becomes sick ...



The Fountain



Love Story

... and dies. Our hero is left alone and all he has to console him is the idiotic tag line for the film. Death is the road to awe and Love means never having to say your're sorry, respectively.

In addition to this Readers Digest version of Love Story The Fountain had these really good 1970-style visuals for which we apparently have to thank Brad Pitt. You see, Pitt was originally cast in the male lead but he and the director had a falling out half-way through the filming and the project was put on hold for a couple of years. When it re-emerged with Hugh Jackman in the lead it had about half the budget it had before. In place of the rather expensive computer effects originally planned they used miniature photography of chemical reactions (crystals growing, oil films, etc.) which are visually stunning but give the film a sort of Roger Dean meets Barbarella vibe.




The future sequence takes place in a large bubble zooming through outer space with our hero and a tree inside...



... which rather reminds me of Roger Dean's logo for Virgin Records, not to mention his Floating Islands stuff...

<< Sorry, can't find an image to go here >>

... and even more reminds me of the bubble that protects Pygar and Barbarella from the Matmus.

So, my recommendation: by all means go see The Fountain but get a copy of Barbarella
to see with it. It'll give you a whole different slant on the film.

The Polish Egg...

If you will bear with me, a quick joke to start things off:

Comic: FIve dollars says you can't answer a few simple questions about Polish history.
Straight man: You're on.
Comit: What was the name of the most famous Polish-American baseball player?
Straight man: No idea.
Comic: That would be Babe Ruthski. I'll give you a second chance. How about the pole who invented the telephone.
Straight man: Well, I'm not sure...
Comic: Alexander Graham Bellski. One more chance; are you ready?
Straght man: Yes, I think I am.
Comic: Ok, here's your last question: Name the Polish egg that fell off the wall and all the kings horses and all the kings men couldn't put him together again.
Straght man: HAH, I've got it! That would be Humpty Dumpski!!
Comic: Your'e close. It was Humpty DumBROWski!

My more perceptive readers will have noticed that the joke is only mildly funny. To the extent that it is funny at all it is because we can see that the rules are rigged so the Rube can't win. No matter what he says the rules can be changed so he is wrong.

On the other hand, despite not being particularly funny it is a very servicable joke. I'm not sure how long ago I first heard it; It's been at least a decade, maybe more than one, and I think about the joke frequently and tell it occasionally. It's a joke that everyone should know for reasons of cultural literacy. It installs itself in your brain and gives you another way to see the world as a funny place.

Recently the joke whispers to me while I am listening to critics of the President's new plan for Iraq. Many of them are on record as having recommended key features of the new plan prior to it's announcement when they were complaining about the old plan. But now that they hear Bush say it they don't like it. "Yes, yes," they seen to say, "more troops, clear and hold, pressure Maliki to get tough with the militias, more focus on controlling the borders. You're close Mr. President, but you still have it tragically wrong. It's Humpty DumBROWski."

Cheap Critic: Santa Clause 3

Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause is not exactly a "great" movie in any way, if you catch my drift, but you gotta give it credit for not being the real stinker that we had every reason to expect. The first film in the series had a presentable enough premise: Whenever Santa Clause dies the next person to put on his coat will magically assume his office. Our hero, Tim Allen, is a likable ordinary, everyday workaholic who has neglected his family. He sees Santa slip, fall off a rooftop, expire and disappear -- leaving only an indentation in the snow and an empty Santa suit. When Allen picks up the red coat and tries it on he has set himself on a course to a new life with lots of lessons to learn along the way -- mostly lessons about what a useless schlub he has been all his life and how he has ignored the people who ought to have mattered.

Like I said, a presentable premise, one that is markedly similar to Piers Anthony's On a Dark Horse -- the first book in his Incarnations of Immortality series -- where our hero becomes the incarnation of "Death" by being the closest person when the previous holder of the office died. The parallels between the worlds presented in Anthony's Incarnations and in The Santa Clause are so close that it is difficult to believe they are accidental. And while it took Anthony seven books to run out of ideas, The Santa Clause was overdrawn at the concept bank by the middle of film two and there just wasn't anything left, by way of new ideas, in the third film.

So the film should have stunk, but it didn't... for the most part. What it lacks in plot it makes up in amusing "bits" and grim determination on the part of the cast. Everyone did a good job: Allen is always reliable. Alan Arkin might have wanted a bit more to work with but he did a very workmanlike job as the father in law and Ann-Margret was perfectly OK as the mother-in-law. Martin Short worked very, very hard to do something with his role as Jack Frost (the villain) and Liliana Mumy (the daughter) was endlessly cute (and yes, she is Billy Mumy's daughter.)



There is one sequence in the film where one cannot help but notice that it is not just the series that is getting old, but that the actors have not escaped the effects of the years since the release of the first Santa Clause in 1994. (God, has it been 14 years?) The latest film has a sideways-in-time, alternate history sort of plot and there is one scene where they use footage from the orignial film to establish the different events that lead to the film's dystopian alternate present. While it is fun to contrast the younger and the grown-up versions of Eric Lloyd (who play's Allen's son) at the same time on is struck by how young Allen seemed in the first film compared to the latest one.

On the other hand, growing older generally beats the alternative. Santa Clause: the Escape Clause may turn out to be the last film for the great and immensely good-looking Peter Boyle who was in all three films. (Yes, people do tell me I look like him; why do you ask?) According to IMDB Boyle has one more film in pre-production, due out this year, but it's difficult to know if they got the footage they needed before he passed.

So, in conclusion, Santa Clause 3: the Escape Clause is a pleasant enough film with very little about it that is new or different. This makes it a perfect film to watch with small children and autistic adults, two groups who find repetitive entertainments reassuring. For the rest of us... well... there's no particular reason not to watch it if you have a spare 98 minutes.

Christmas Letter 2006

Every year our family writes a Holiday Newsletter to insert into our Christmas cards. Here is this year's letter formatted as a blog entry. I have previously blogged on several of the topics mentioned and clicking on the links will bring up additional information even longer and more dreary that the letter itself.

Your faithful corespondent has been told, quite clearly, that this year’s Christmas letter is to be completed in time for Christmas. I think last year’s went out in February (or was it March?) Please check the date on the postmark for this letter: if it doesn’t say December, 2006 please pray for me -- I may be in big trouble.

This year has been good to the North Carolina branch of the Haslup clan… for the most part. It did see the passing of Irene’s father, Allan Croft, in August. He had been diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1998 and was given less than two years to live. He managed to add five more active years to that span and he passed away comfortably, having beaten the odds, at least for a while. His ashes were scattered at sea at his request. He is remembered by the Winter Haven, Florida, Little Theater and Public Library, two organizations for which he did years of volunteer work.


Lee – aka. “faithful corespondent” – is working on a contract at the North Carolina Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources. With a team of other programmers, he is working on a system to track the environmental impacts of DOT road projects to make sure they are offset by comparable environmental cleanup projects in the same part of the state. Irene compares it to the medieval church selling indulgences, an analogy which Lee does not altogether support.

After struggling with his weight for forty years Lee has finally found a way to control it and he is down 75 pounds from this time last year (over 100 pounds from his heaviest). He must now resist the urge to stop random strangers on the street and give them advice about weight control. “Hello,” he is tempted to say, “I can’t help noticing that you are really fat. Let me tell you about the viscous fiber supplement that – when combined with a sensible diet – has helped me lose a hundred pounds.” It is an ongoing disappointment to him that such valuable advice is so often badly received. So… he has learned his lesson and there will be no mention in this Christmas letter of PGx fiber (a blend of Glucomannan, Xanthan Gum and Sodium Alginate) nor will there be even the slightest suggestion that readers visit http:// haslups.com and follow the link to his blog entry about his diet. That would be tacky.

The Hot Flash
Photo by cspowers.

In that spirit, no mention will be made that Irene has recently joined Lee in the diet and has lost 20 pounds. Instead, we focus on her prize-winning Halloween costume – The HOT FLASH: Mistress of Thermal Incongruity – which edged out Lee’s OBSTRUCTO: The Human Roadblock to take first place at a Halloween party hosted by our friend Calvin. The theme of the party was “Your Inner Superhero” and Irene’s costume needs no explanation. Lee is convinced that this is how she beat him since his costume tends to require rather a lot of explanation.

Obstructo
photo by cspowers.

In her secret identity – Irene Haslup, mild-mannered cheese specialist at Harris Teeter – the Hot Flash has also enjoyed a good year. She was chosen as one of six outstanding cheese sellers, and was flown to Wisconsin in the corporate jet to tour several cheese factories and be schmoozed by management. Apparently they have their eye on her as someone who might be tapped to run the cheese department in one of their new superstores. This is quite a feather in her cap, especially since her super powers are only occasionally useful for selling cheese – when she has to go into the cooler for another wheel of Brie.

In her other poorly-kept secret identity – docent at the NC Museum of Art – she is giving tours of the Monet in Normandy exhibit which is the biggest, most highly attended show ever at the NCMA. Irene will continue to do several tours a week until the show closes Jan 14th. If you hope to attend you might contact Irene for advice: the show sells out every day, usually before noon.



Our children continue to do well. Chris is a Junior at the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, does a weekend a month with the Army Reserve and works as a barista in a local coffee shop. He formerly worked at Barney’s – a large chain coffee shop – but when Barney’s sold out to Starbucks Chris finally yielded to the requests of the owner of his favorite local coffee shop to come and work for him. As a Junior he has been talking to recruiters who visit the campus. The two he has mentioned are Hallmark Cards and the CIA. If next year’s newsletter has random parts crossed out with black markers you may feel free to conclude that the Hallmark thing didn’t pan out.

Amber works at the Carolina Living and Learning Center, a home for adults with Autism in Pittsboro, NC. She is currently applying to medical schools where she hopes to specialize in psychiatry. Her scores on the MCAT test were good and she is hopeful about acceptance but, as of now, she hasn’t heard back from most of the schools. She lives in Chapel Hill with a roommate, her two ferrets, and a cat she found as a newborn kitten in the middle of the road on her way to work. I suggested that she should name the cat “Speedbump” but Amber let her roommate pick out the name: Annie Teacup.

This past summer included two family reunions. The first was the 100th annual Fahl-Motts family reunion in Canton, Ohio. (see this and this and this) The Mottses are Lee’s paternal grandmother’s people and the reunion gave us an opportunity to catch up with second and third cousins. The Carlisle Inn in Walnut Creek, Ohio, is run by the Amish and was charming. The furniture in the hotel was all locally-made Amish work and was beautiful.. The site of the hotel is quite picturesque, in the middle of an Amish agricultural area outside town. One young lady stepped out onto the balcony to check out the view and asked her Aunt Irene: “What’s that smell?” Irene grew up on a cattle ranch in Florida and she knew. “Those are cows,” she said.



Dad and I with assorted nieces at "Beach" Week.

The other reunion was the Haslup family “beach week” reunion, held at Disney World (with no actual beach time this year). We stayed at “Pop Century” – one of the more reasonably priced Disney hotels. It was very enjoyable and Irene was able to get away to spend some time with her father. (See this and this.)

I will not mention of our two dogs, Cello and Jaxon, this year. They simply haven’t done anything interesting. But please don’t tell them. They are quite content with their humdrum lives. Why spoil it for them?

Most of the topics mentioned here – reunions, Halloween costumes, etc. – are covered in more length in my weblog. Links to the postings are available at http:// haslups.com. I’ll be glad to provide paper copies to anyone who asks.

With warmest wishes for a Merry Christmas and the Happiest New Year,

Lee, Irene, Chris and Amber

A Toast

Unless you act quickly you will probably miss your opportunity to purchase the wine pictured above from Woot.com since they are having a "woot off" and things sell out fast. By the time I post this the wine may be gone.

I occasionally post quotes in my blog from Woot's ad copy which has a quirky sense of humor that I love. I was struck by their description of the white:

The 2005 Summertime White captures the fading luminescence of the season with a blend of old-vine French Colomard and Viognier. Sweet, sexy notes of nectarine and peach are spritzed with a metaphorical squeeze of lime to create the perfect counterpoint to spicy south-of-the-border cuisine. As the label illustration indicates, Jepson 2005 Summertime White is best consumed in a deck chair, under an umbrella, amid the orange hills of Mars.

I like to think of that deck chair among the orange hills of Mars as being occupied by science fiction writer Jack Williamson, who died this week at the untimely age of 98. Perhaps he is accompanied by The Girl From Mars and by Robert Heinlein, author of The Green Hills of Earth.

CandyGram

A number of people I know are conservatives who either sat out the recent elections or voted for the Libertarian candidates (the libertarians were write-ins in NC this year.) They did so to send a message to the Republicans that they were fed up with them. My position is that you should vote in such a way as to maximize the likelihood that the actions of those elected will be beneficial for you, your family and your community -- and that any messages you want to send to the candidates should be sent through some other channel. All of which is to say, I held my nose and voted for Republicans.

Now that the election is over -- and everyone and everything for which I voted has been nicely defeated -- I have done my duty and can admit that I will not shed a single tear for any of the losers for whom I cast my ballot. I am deeply worried about the welfare of the country now that the party that cares only for power has replaced the party that cares mostly for power in the House and Senate, while we are at war, but let me make myself clear: It is a bad thing for the country that the Democrats have assumed the majority in Congress -- but that doesn't mean that the Republicans deserved to win. Clearly they did not.

So here is my message that I want to send to the Republicans:

I am tired of the shrillness and the polarization in American politics and I want it to stop. I don't care that the other guys started it or that they are another octave shriller than you are. Someone has to be the grownups in this and I expect it to be you.

Why on earth are you guys so obsessed with wedge issues that split your own base? I stand politically well to the right of 95 percent of the US population and yet, because there are one or two issues on which I differ from other strong conservatives, I constantly find myself lumped in with the "moderate" Republicans and on the wrong side of the Republican message. The campaign felt more like an effort to purge heretical Republicans than an attempt to get anyone but the "select few" to vote for the Republican candidates. As an example, I support a border fence and strong enforcement of the border, and at the same time, I support a guest worker program and a way for hard-working illegals currently in the country to earn the right to stay. We need to crack down on illegal immigration because, at its current level, it constitutes way too much of a good thing. The anti-immigration Republicans seemed to feel that they could "energize their base" by playing on their fear and resentment of illegal immigrants. Maybe they were right with some of their base but they were pumping a dry hole with me. The specter of hordes of Mexicans spreading pine-straw, flipping burgers and picking strawberries just doesn't scare me like it seems to scare some other Republicans.

The mainstream media have a double standard for ethics. When a Democrat takes money from agents of another country and hides it in his freezer with last year's freezer-burned turkey soup the New York Times will talk about how, on the other hand, he has been a champion of the poor and the oppressed. When a Republican appears at a fund raiser for an issue-based organization any funds raised will be suggested to be clandestine contributions to his campaign. When a Democrat goes on a Brokeback-Mountain camping trip with an underage congressional page he is praised for his courage in challenging homophobic Puritanism, but when a Republican sends a creepy and pathetic instant message the press digs their old Jeffrey Dahmer articles out of the archives, changes the name and runs them again. All of this means that life isn't fair. The press sets different ethical standards for Republicans... and so do I. You guys have been acting like a bunch of Democrats. This is unacceptable and must stop. I expect more from you.

And speaking of acting like Democrats, what's with all the spending? It's hard to buy votes from Republican voters. They have a long memory for taxes and when you hand a Republican a dollar that you have snagged for him out of the pork barrel he is likely to be struck by the sense that there is something familiar about it. Say, he will think, that looks a lot like a dollar I had in my wallet last April 14th.

Finally, now that you have p*ssed away your majority please play nice with the Democrats. They are coming into power having made promises, and raised expectations, that they would do a number of impossible and/or foolish things. Many of them are now looking for a graceful way to weasel out of those promises and to disappoint those expectations. Please help them. For the good of the country don't remind them of their agenda -- and for God's sake don't hold them to their promises.

My Halloween Costume Explained.

IMG_1750
Originally uploaded by cspowers.

Have you ever seen someone walking down the hallway carrying a heavy bulky object and when you stepped into a doorway, to let them pass, you found that you have stepped into the doorway that they need to go through?

While you are studying the canned tomatoes in the supermarket does your wife ever point out that twelve other shoppers have queued up behind you waiting to get by?

Well it happens to me. All. The. Time. I have something of a genius for being in the way. I am big. I am absent minded. I tend to be hard to get around.

When my friend cspowers invited me to a Halloween party with the theme of "your inner super-hero" there was simply no quesion of who I should be.

O B S T R U C T O -- The Human Roadblock.

On the back of the flags on my hat it says "WIDE" and "LOAD".

The Teleospouse's Costume.

IMG_1753
Originally uploaded by cspowers.

The H O T F L A S H -- Mistress of Thermal Incongruity