william.scherk

Typical. Typically, a sweeping claim is accompanied by a retinue of supporting warrants. If I did not know better, I would say the two statements above were drawn from a wishing well. But, let us check the premises: Evolutionary biologists are a set. In the set is Richard Dawkins. Also in the set are/were WD Hamilton, JBS Haldane, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Ernst Mayr, GG Simpson, and of course, many more lesser-known and less influential lesser lights. Evolutionary biology was ushered into being by Charles Darwin, as at its broadest we might say that Evolutionary Biology is that aspect of biology that works within and attempts to explain the effects of, evolution. Personally, I think the revolution in biology began by Darwin is worthy of study by anyone. Objectivish folks, tending to be supportive of scientific endeavors, find great worth (if only a start-off point for debate) in studying and trying to understand this vast field. One annoying part of general science is its urge to 'operationalize.'** In less technical language, this means strict definitions that make part of the thesis and operation of a theory, research question, postulate, hypothesis, and so on. In somewhat allied fields such as history, and in other scholarly or investigatory disciplines (all the way to journalism), operationalizing terms and concepts and behaviour is essential ground. In this case, "Altruism" is defined and operationalized within the text and documents that comprise a field or subfield. Thus, when studiodekadent provides supporting warrants for his assertions about altruism, he can easily find backing -- if the assertions are true and relative to evolutionary biology. So, Schoolmarm said, crack your books, unleash the power of inquiry at your fingertips, and return to the seminar with operational definitions supporting the claims put forward. -- incidentally, does anyone remember Ring Around The Rosie? The operationalization of 'altruism' has been much debated here at OL. Among the stalwarts weighing in were Barbara Branden, who helped me to understand that cold, heartless and/or disempathetic humans among the Objectivish cannot stand for Objectivism (here alluding to the baby-abandoning abandon of Luke Setzer in a very long and disquieting Rebirth of Reason thread). Also attendant on this debate in more recent times was Ellen Stuttle, who contrasted effectively the differences between Comtean/evolutionary biology/'scientific' definitions of 'altruism,' Xray also has joined discussion of the nexus between operationalizing 'altruism' and Objectivist verities -- offering a broad assertion that 'altruism' does not exist in humans. I try to bear in mind that the further one abstracts a term, the greater the danger of reification of the term. Using 'altruism' as the code central to understanding can make of 'altruism' Altruism, an ism, a value-saturated placeholder. In Comtean studies (of which Robert Campbell has done yeoman's work comparing Comtean desiderata to Objectivish/Randian desiderata) of course, we will find that Comte went haywire with his Altruism, in the end constructing Temples to Reason and trying to establish a rational religion. So, the distance between 'Altruism' and 'Randianism' can be measured. But for careful measurement, the thumb is not a good ruler. Better, I say, to start not with "Altruism" a la Comte, but to start with what is the focus in biology that is concerned with the pesky oddities of a 'selfish gene' eyed view of the world. This, I would say is altruistic behaviour. What is altruistic behaviour in the purview of evolutionary biology? This is where Studio can do yeoman's work of his own. This is a fascinating part of the Objectivish project, although Objectivists such as Rand were not interested in defining altruism as anything but an evil imposed by power/philosophy upon the degraded human societies of her age. At my first introduction to this nexus between What BIology Proposes/What Rand Decreed, I thought there could be no possible fruitful discussion here (at RoR, etc). I thought dogmatic enunciators would simply enunciate the doctrine and blink myopically at questions, findings, research squabbles, controversies and reigning hypotheses in evolutionary biology. I was wrong, quite wrong. Six and half years later, I have been part of and facilitator and intrigued observer of many intense and challenging debates/discussions. So, although I might be harsh in mocking the wishing-well argument begun by StudioD, I cannot fault him for taking the easy polemical road. It is road well-trodden, and many have trudged its length. Operationalize or be damned. Define or be damned. Find support for assertions or be damned. This is my reigning heuristic for dealing with any claim. This is a good note -- as in quick sketch of an argument TBA. If Studio has the time or inclination, I will offer him a trade. I will spend as many hours as it takes to find all previous discussion of this issue at OL (resurrecting Setzer, Pinker, Stuttle and Branden) and post them for reference -- if our Ozborn will find support for his assertions. No cherry-picking, no special lenses, no getting faint when facts do not line up with claims ... That is about as benevolent as I can get, since my own altruistic behaviour (having been influenced by Xray) is for the most part a strictly self-interested pursuit. Having escaped the usual net of child-rearing, I have no 'instinct' or applied social diktat to care for my own children, and no experience of whatever raging emotion, impulse or catechism drives crazed mothers to sacrifice for their stupid buzzing little bundles of blankness. _____________ ** 'My references to Operationalization are brief and somewhat crimped. For a survey of the meanings and genesis of this term, see the Wikipedia article.

Hilarious that the Daily Mail invented a 'controversy' where none exists? Yes, perhaps. Since Murdoch was forced to shutter the Mail's foremost sleazeball competitor (News of the World), the Daily Mail competes with the Sun, another media sewage-farm noted for its yellow journalism and its corruption. Adam, the battle at Vimy Ridge is part of the modern Canadian mythos, and the monument was dedicated in 1936. It is both a site of Canadian war history and the birthplace of Canada's independent armed forces. At Vimy, the Canadian (Imperial) forces showed valour, and the monument is an important symbol that Canadians are independent actors in the world of war. The details of the monument's figures are easy to find. That the Mail looked no further than its own sleeve is kind of funny. That American friends would assume the facts as presented by the Mail, is not funny at all to me. Here is an excerpt from the Vimy memorial page at Wikipedia. I quote from the section devoted to the sculptural figures. The memorial contains a large number of stylized features, including 20 human figures, which help the viewer in contemplating the structure as a whole. The front wall, normally mistaken for the rear, is 24 feet (7.3 m) high and represents an impenetrable wall of defence. There is a group of figures at each end of the front wall, next to the base of the steps. The Breaking of the Sword is located at the southern corner of the front wall while Sympathy of the Canadians for the Helpless is located at the northern corner. Collectively, the two groups are The Defenders and represent the ideals for which Canadians gave their lives during the war. There is a cannon barrel draped in laurel and olive branches carved into the wall above each group, to symbolize peace. In Breaking of the Sword, three young men are present, one of whom is crouching and breaking his sword. This statue represents the defeat of militarism and the general desire for peace. This grouping of figures is the most overt image to pacifism in the monument, the breaking of a sword being extremely uncommon in war memorials. The original plan for the sculpture included one figure crushing a German helmet with his foot. Allward later decided to dismiss this feature because of its overtly militaristic imagery. In Sympathy of the Canadians for the Helpless, one man stands erect while three other figures, stricken by hunger or disease, are crouched and kneeling around him. The standing man represents Canada’s sympathy for the weak and oppressed. The figure of a cloaked young female stands on top of the front wall and overlooks the Douai Plains. The woman has her head bowed, her eyes cast down, and her chin resting in one hand. Below her at ground level of the former battlefield is a sarcophagus, bearing a Brodie helmet, a sword and draped in laurel branches. The saddened figure of Canada Bereft, also known as Mother Canada, is a national personification of the young nation of Canada, mourning her dead. The statue, a reference to traditional images of the Mater Dolorosa and presented in a similar style to that of Michelangelo's Pietà, faces eastward looking out to the dawn of the new day. Unlike the other statues on the monument, stonemasons carved Canada Bereft from a single 30 tonne block of stone. The statue is the largest single piece in the monument and serves as a focal point. The twin pylons rise to a height 30 metres above the memorial's stone platform. The twin white pylons, one bearing the maple leaf for Canada and the other the fleur-de-lis for France, symbolize the unity and sacrifice of both countries. At the top of the two pylons is a grouping of figures known collectively as the Chorus. The most senior figures represent Justice and Peace. Peace stands with a torch upraised, making it the highest point in the region.

This retailing is inaccurate: Obama did not tell a story about his parents having been in Selma. In a speech to the congregation of in the Brown Chapel on March 4, 2007, then-Senator Obama said this: Yet something happened back here in Selma, Alabama. Something happened in Birmingham that sent out what Bobby Kennedy called, "Ripples of hope all around the world." Something happened when a bunch of women decided they were going to walk instead of ride the bus after a long day of doing somebody else's laundry, looking after somebody else's children. When men who had PhD's decided that's enough and we're going to stand up for our dignity. That sent a shout across oceans so that my grandfather began to imagine something different for his son. His son, who grew up herding goats in a small village in Africa could suddenly set his sights a little higher and believe that maybe a black man in this world had a chance. What happened in Selma, Alabama and Birmingham also stirred the conscience of the nation. It is a mark of the intense criticism that attends Presidential races, that Obama's remarks were savaged at the time for the murky time-line. Even Snopes has a page on this particular issue. Beck is crawling down the driveway after a story that has long since been made news ... On the details, I think it depends on which side of the electoral coin one finds oneself, whether biased for or against the incumbent President. If one opposes Obama to the bone, it is right and proper (in political terms) to fish out anything and everything that could possibly discredit the prez. Same with the other side -- those who seek a triumphant second term will quite cagily avoid the obvious stumbles along the campaign trail. If your scope is limited to ticking off list items contra Obama, there is a veritable smorgasbord of pre-existing conditions to dress up the list. If you are a Obama==Muslim terrorist, there is material for you. If you hold to a planned destruction of America, plenty of horror has been retailed, from FEMA detention camps, secret deals with USA enemies to deception surrounding his birth. Although Beck's series of exposes may indeed bring down the President just as he destroyed ACORN, Van Jones and um, other bad things, it cannot be assured. I am more interested in how the Republicans sane and insane deal with two issues that Obama's side will play again and again over the next months: gay marriage and women's health. -- we have noted the widening gap in women's support -- especially independents -- between Romney/Obama. Does the President's position (flip flop) mean anything to Beck? Will he comment on gay marriage? Will the libertarian in him battle past the Mormon conservative anti-gay stance he has crafted? Will he take any Republican to task for their aims to Federalize state marriage, or to insert anti-gay marriage amendments to the Constitution (per Romney)? Will Beck get off the Slut Walk long enough to ask about reproductive health, the Transvaginal Express, Republican attempts to curtail and repress abortion 'rights'? I doubt it. The rodeo clown and conspiracy-maven goes where he goes, down the well-trodden path of non-journalism. He is hardly in control of his own editorial staff -- today's Blaze stories include some bullshit about Harry Reid (Mormon) who makes a distinction between a 'civil state' and his religion. Fair enough to charge Reid with pandering. Fair enough in politics to fail to quote his words. Fair to say that Reid's position is incomprehensible. By avoiding the details, the Blaze chugs on its chosen path. As for the tangled Republican mess over women's health (in the lady bits) and its nationwide campaigns to curb and control, will the Blaze take a fair shot at reporting? For sure, without a doubt -- and I am Marie of Roumania. As an advocate for conservative verities, Beck's influence has waned. We can pretend he still commands a nation-wide audience a la Rush, but he does not. Your prognostication is noted. See you at the Election Night Party!

Here is the reverse face of the new bill entering circulation:

On a bad day the Daily Mail sells six million papers. The day the non-story appeared regarding the non-problem with the new twenty (which I featured in the PARC is dead buried goodbye thread) was a bad day. Fallacy of composition. Fallacy of making shit up.

Fallacy of the excluded middle. Fallacy of composition. Fallacy of equivocation. False dilemma. False dichotomy. False analogy. And not as funny as some of the wacko Hormesis-peddlers. Think of hormesis like you think of coffee or nicotine. In less-than-deadly doses, much less than deadly, the agents stimulate. In sickening or deadly doses, they sicken or kill. Like water, like salt, perhaps particular hormetic radiations could be seen as augmenting if not necessary to health, in particular differential doses. Too much water in relation to salt, sickness and death. Too much salt in relation to water, sickness and death. It bears remembering the days following Madame Curie. Her pioneering work with Radium led to all manner of wackaloon nostrums postulated on a garbled generalized hormesis benefit, Radium baths, radium enemas, radium mouthwash and face cream, radium eye patches and toques, radium seltzer and radium tablets. Pricey. 'Promotes and stimulates health.' Some burned out folks' mouths, throats, guts and intestines, others led to the pain of radium poisoning ... and death. So, a little, a little bit of intermittent low level nuclear radiation can stimulate the repair and resist machinery in our cell bodies, perhaps kick the machine into alert. A few too many hard kicks, a blistering sunburn, a bit too much radiation, and ... mutations sprout, cancers launch, and health degrades. ***************** In terms of cranks, crackpots, deranged monomaniacs and one-topic tub-thumpers, if you look closely and examine all their wee knobs and switches, you will usually find that the Sense of Proportion control spins as freely as a top. Wheeee! If the volume and tuning knobs are also fried, the crank's output can be quite as shocking and refreshing as a Sarsparilla & Radium Energy Drink! ****************** From the Wikipedia article on Radithor ('Cure for the living dead') and its inventor (and his death): The Wall Street Journal wrote an article called "The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off". Byers' death led to the strengthening of the Food and Drug Administration's powers and the demise of most radiation quack cures.

Carol, that gun-toting Neo-Hibernian, that socialist, she is right, again. It is plain and right to say comme Napoleon a dit (passé composé) to introduce the thing that the emperor did say, or is said to have said -- as we would say, As Washington has said, 'I lie like a blanket.' However, in French there is a plain and right and elegant usage for each circumstance -- and so there is indeed a perfect time to say, Comme a dit Napoleon. At the end of the phrase: 'Take me off this island,' comme a dit Napoleon. However, bear in mind that there are tenses in French that do not always translate well into English. In English we have the simple past. He said is simple past (against he has said, he would have said, he was saying). In the vast precision of French verb tenses, sadly, the simple past looks exactly like the present tense in the first and third person. So, cranky old Napoleon on St Helena was said to have said: Zut! Zut! Zut! Je m'en fou. Qu'est-ce qu'il dit? Quoi dit-il? S'il m'a dit oui, s'il me dit non, je m'en fou. Dites le lui!

I overestimated the markings. Lots of turned down pages, lots of !!!s, and a few OMGAYFKs ... no actual "R U Nutz" annotations (though I will add them in if asked). According to the Bank of Canada's closing rates, $100.00 Cdn gets you $96.42 US. -- this is our newest Plastic Currency, just entering circulation ... as you may not know, the Bank decided to stop producing pennies ... apparently the Canadian hoard of pennies now weighs more that the combined weight of all of us. Begone, foul copper-coated nickel plug! Remember, Valliant fanatics -- one of these: Gets you one of these ...

Me, I'd taste anything new before the kid got to it. There's nothing that a government can do, that private, for-profit, competing consumer organizations and labs - lending their stamp of approval to product labels - can't do better, faster, and more impartially. All without encouraging the addiction of dependency on the State. I love you Tony, you know that, but your four statements are simply claims hanging like laundry in the wind. If any or all of your claims are true, demonstrating the truth should be easy. Otherwise this is ipse dixit and not convincing ... Perhaps you meant to suggest a private solution to tainted milk, one that you can suggest is better, faster and more impartial?

The easiest solution for the troubled mother of a-few-too-many-for-her-budget is to sell (or rent) her children. Surely there are lovely (capitalist) homes for her spares. Are there no poorhouses? Are there no jails?

Good thing you did not provide a link to the kookiepants "news" site that broke the story. That way we can wallow in ignorance for a while longer (or -- increase our level of ignorant paranoia). As long as Ron Paul continues to march to Victory, all will be well, and one day they will discover the leaks in the sewage system in Galt's Gulch.

I will sell my copy to the first comer at 89 bucks (US, which today works out to 88 Canucki piastres). Has tears stains, and the occasional pencilled-in Are You Insane?

"Products can easily be labelled in such a way that the label is misleading and worse than useless, and this has already been abundantly demonstrated." Oh. I guess this abundant demonstration is so abundant that it would be redundant for you to provide some of same? No? Yes? Argument by unsupported blurt/opinion. Why I love OL ...

Poisoning foodstock is a crime. Like all crimes in Objectivish Wonderland, prevention is left to seek its own level. And the universe is unfolding as it should, benevolently.

Stupid children drink tainted milk. Rise and shine.

I nominate Wendy for an award in the category Sweeping Claims, subcategory No Warrant. Her gush about genius typifies -- for me -- the basement philosopher. State your opinions, obscure the fact that it is an opinion, and then wait for applause from the Echo Chamber. Clap echo boom clap clap. Sigh. Knowing that Wendy is already a hurried, distracted and sloppy shopper in the Truth Warehouse, none of this surprises me. But do we not put her gush to elementary tests? Should we not? Like, my favourite since I became evul at six years old "How do you know?" What the fuck would you know about genius, Wendy, besides what you have cribbed? -- in other news, would anyone like to read my essay on Regimist Lap-Dancers?

<p> </p><p>Like all communities where people join voluntarily, they would not have to deal with dissenters wanting to have no part of it.</p> <p>Even if I were an Objectivist, I'd find it disagreeable to live on an oil-rig like platform in the sea, even I had all kinds of conveniences there. I don't even like holidaying on islands. </p><p>That's just you, Angela. Living on an oil rig is dependent on two things: BIG money (see Newfoundland), good insurance (see Newfoundland disaster), and SHIFTS (see St Johns, Friday night).</p> <p> </p> <p>I am, though, trying to imagine the benefit of 'looser' building codes and few restrictions on weapons -- on an oil-riggish tethered platform. One drink too many, one wife too few, <Ping> <Kaboom> ... and Objectivish County can join its unsinkable friend the Ocean Ranger. </p> <p> </p> <p>Other than that, a GREAT idea. Do they have Paypal? I will send them five bucks to reserve a sub-minimum wage job in the boiler room ... or maybe in the Libertarian Sewer Discharge facilities, or maybe in the 'potable water' research institute ...</p> <p> </p> <p>-- Bob, you helped me guffaw. Thank you. I wonder why all these wall-eyed Utopiacs do not just move to Objectivish County and Make It Happen. Choose some abandoned shithole and presto! Wonderland.</p> <p> </p>

This discussion is like playing cards without cards. Libertarian Muslim, do you want to have a conversation? If so, I am on Twitter yapping with Muslims of all kinds every single day ... @wsscherk If not, enjoy your time responding to the dullardly, one-eyed Commander Infidel.

I resent the implication that, instead of drinking a pint, I wouldn't be out somewhere building a skyscraper, or inventing a alloy of some kind. My fault. I did not underscore that this was Lunch Time (extended version) in Objectivish County. But the aural imagery of Beer Guns, oxygen tanks and so on ... it just overwhelmed me. When we publish it in MSK's MEGA site, I will add in the clunk of your riveter as you stride back to the Hockey Table with a tray of foamy lunch. This clunking of the riveter, strapped like a six-gun to your Galt-like hip, will further insinuate that just beyond Tavern Row, but before the shining pitted hillside of slag, a Tower is rising. PDS Tower, rising, rising, constructed from hand-hewn steel, courage, grit and spunk.

Brant, I feel like I already live part-time in an objectivish county. Think big. Start small. Bicker bicker bicker. In the meantime, the many many tents and booths at the carnival, from the Good Mrs Doctor Doctor's Magic Turnip Lotion to the Unchecked Moralist. As I think you might be trying to say, "Who's buying?" ... My fave carnival attractions? The pillory, the stocks, the Fun House and the House of Horrors.

I will admit I do not comment on every thread in town. But I do eventually get around to dipping in each one. At first, I thought things were calm in this thread. I saw the reads tick up in a stately modest fashion, neither abandoned like the newest lint in the navel thread nor grinding on like goldmine threads started years ago. I saw a consistent growth in numbers; if not a year-long monstrosity like J Neil Schulman and the Ark thread, this one could be big, be a consistent payer once MSK drags us all behind his paywall, as we enter the Objective Universe Meta-site and Communication Forecasting Bulletins future. ** So, there I watched another quiet money-maker, a sleeper, another thread set to be ticking over like a taxi meter. I went back to my Syria obsession*+*. To know that a thread like Objectivist County could come up only on OL. As it marked novice thread signs of longevity, I marvelled at my own imaginings of an Objectivist County without reading anything of the thread. I knew everyone was in there. I mused on my Michael Marotta. He would likely be running for judge or security consultant or registry or peace officer or all three. I knew George was in there agitating for some terra nullius, some free quarter in some desolate corner where the new law would be negotiated among free men over time, starting from scratch. Not a retreat or a FLDS-like compound of seclusion or internal patrol, for sure, but what free men freely understood to be the simplest civil society, the free-wheeling do whatchawantawithoutcoercion edge of the sky. From South Africa tough counsel on bantustan thinking, from Australia a meticulous history of secular free-thought communities and their decline. From the ineffable and beautiful elder Boydstun another stunning document of previous sage opinions on autonomy and utopia. From the grave I there crawls Janet, and her concept of Block Autonomy, a real-estate-centred rooming-house|condo|bawdy house network of free property freely used. No word from Diana Hsieh or the moral-detectives at Invigilation House, but ... I could well imagine the kinds of county charters being proposed and bitched about, the cold-hearted proposals, the mytho-poetic Here and Now we can rule microstate of mind fantasized about by Galtzgulch. Ron Paul would live here in the summer. The county would establish rational relations with other layers and institutions of authority. It would not recognize nationality or passports or have anything to say about orgies or devotions or 72 fire dancers in the canyon, and it might not even have a strip mall office, arranging its puny affairs at the bar of the most ecumenical tavern in County Seat Town. There would be dirt roads and kids on trikes and an abandoned rail line to the abandoned mine and a vista of stripped hillsides pitted with slag, chimneys and smokestacks sparkling in the spring sun ... There at the bar is Ghs, and at the hockey table Carol, Dennis, Ninth, Jonathan, Xray, Adam, Tony, PDS, along with at least three of the actors from Atlas Shrugged 3 Part 3D Saga diamond edition. Although the shouting has subsided for a moment, there is a persistent quiet intellectual scuffle going on near the pool table, where the ghost of Steve and the divine presense of JNS coexist in mutters, creaks, clinks and tight vowels. Nearby, a stupefied WSS, alone in the smoker's room but for the hissing oxygen tank in his backpack, also muttering, but to his Bambuser live audience as he comes to the end of his Friday noon live show. MSK swabs the bar, saying nothing, as usual, smiling, as usual, turning to smooch Kat as she comes through to take the moneybags stuffed with county silver off to their hoard at the Juveniles and Horses ranch high in the mountains. Our banker snoozes by a screen of county news and chatter being broadcast live from the other top tavern's smoking booth, but this time WSS's competition we can see he has his usual audience of shouty lunchers. A shout from the hockey table. A final kiss for Kat and WSS shouts at his tablet's webcam, Ghs rounds up his team for the afternoon's labours, we hear the hiss of the county shuttle jitney brakes as it heads out. MSK laughs, looks around, laughs again and suddenly shouts, "The next FIFTY drinks are on the house!" We hear an answering shout from the hockey table, and a "Do not fuck with benevolence, losers, come here and I will buy you ANOTHER fifty drinks!" roars WSS to his tablet. Another jitney hisses in and it becomes obvious the Ladies are back from their expedition from a great trundling of the boards on the veranda. Kat comes back in laughing, crossing to the safe with the sacks as a great shout and tumult erupts. MSK flicks on the party lights and the happy-hour Fountain of Goodness. Carol and the actors shout at the the sudden thumping intro of HNIK, and the beer guns begin to shoot. You can almost imagine you can hear corresponding shooting, shouts, hisses, dares and exuberant gouts of laughter from one end of town to another, far beyond the buzz and clatter of Tavern Row. (Added:) Somehow, even though departed in MSK's newest jumbo 4X4 truck for the ranch, Ghs's tapping and muttering, his silent shouts and commands, communiques, and adminstrative memos, ringing out to rest of the world (except for Belarus, Cuba, Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, China) live from Free County, were the loudest sound in the room, the quiet persistent fingers pounding County themes to the world, the oxygen tank hissing in strange concert of reply to WSS, who had funded construction of the wink wink Smoking Agora during the protracted Final until the next one Break between him and rancher-philosopher Ghs. Although Ghs had clearly crushed WSS in the dispute, WSS refused for a second month to speak to Ghs directly, instead addressing him in curious televised diatribes marked by oddbin diacrits and copious, possibly delusional *(&)* footnotes and URLs. Ghs, besides his work as Chief Executive, County Clerk, Registrar, Registry Agent, Gunsafe Locker Administrator, Emergency Broadcast Facilitator. Secretary of State, Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Senior Moderator of the Polar Council's 2013NOW 'loya gurja' at Moe's Party Palace And Car Wash, finds time to keep everything rolling right along at Orphan and Dog Pound agencies tri-county Crisis Committee. Since The Flood destroyed his previous rancher, he has lived with WSS and their wives Norma, Jean, and Bette at WSS's lavish 'Refugee Centre' at Doom Prairie ... ***************************************************************** -- speaking of exhuberance, please forgive the sprawl. Sometimes, especially after great laughter and six quite small really cups of coffee, as I am settled to review proceedings at OL, all other obsessive chores accomplished, it just taps itself out. Today I had to publish a very angry communication and this was here above, apparently, an antidote, free range mad turkey. Thank gawd I have never even been looked at with the suggestion I might have to put my money back in my pocket and fuck off from this bar, put my gun in the gunsafe, or that I would ever be here hobbled by constraints of any but my own moral vertebra. -- in other worlds of opinion I speak out in, respect is too often measured in spittle on the floor. Thus, this gush. ) __________________ ** *'*

Do I ever like the octopus of free-enterprise that is Google. Even though I fear they look in my closet while I sleep, and though I am sure they know things about me that I no longer know about myself. Here is a thoughtful little alert from Dictionary.com that popped up in my inline ad space. Like the first splot of rain that heralds spring:

Carol, Gary is fully turned; he said yesterday, "It's a game ... There is always next year .. It's only hockey. " Sounding a bit like a Leafs fan after exit counselling ... (Gary and "Harry" have taught me a Punjabi song that I sing at work with the demented: Holay Holay, hojayga byar ...) And a special treat for you, Carol, in your socialist hell-hole: "A Woman Fights for the Right to Play Hockey." Video courtesy of The Himalayan Hockey Foundation

Carol, another name that takes me back. My best gal friend in High School out here lo these many years ago, was Mariann Brace. I was the campaign manager for her run for Student President (she lost). She then went on to run for Miss White Rock. She lost. She should have won. I take responsibility for the first (imagine me being a campaign manager), but not for the second bitter loss. (she did not win even Miss Congeniality, because, well, although she looked like Greta Garbo (I did her makeup), she was not actually, um, congenial at all. But, you know what stopped her from victory, and the right to be glued to the dolphin on the Sea Festival float? Her sash. Or more correctly, what her sash said: Miss Penguin Meats.

Ho bloody hum, y'all. The Progressive Conservative government was returned with a majority, according to projections from the four national desks. False alarm. Back to Milton and the Transvaginal Republican Express!