A brain synapse to nowhere

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) recently proposed a bill that would create a publicly accessible database containing details about government-awarded funds -- who got them, what the amounts were, etc. This was a refreshing piece of legislation that would shed sunlight on a system with much potential for corruption. The legislation was sailing through Congress, as it should have, when an anonymous senator placed a hold on the bill. This hold angered politicians on both sides of the aisle and outraged much of the blogosphere. Porkbusters led the charge in trying to smoke out the anonymous senator who seemed keen on derailing this rare bipartisan effort. The effort to identify this human roadblock was successful as the culprit has now stepped forward. It was none other than Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK), that crusty old piece of political compost.

If you'll recall, Stevens was the pork-loving brainiac who championed the infamous "bridge to nowhere". This was one of two bridges in Alaska that would benefit only a handful of people. This particular bridge had a price tag of $223M. When other senators dared to question this expense, Stevens became defensive and even threatened to resign if he didn't get his way (I'm not sure if he held his breath until they gave in, but I wouldn't be surprised if he did).

Also, Stevens is one of the biggest advocates of the elimination of net neutrality. If Stevens gets his way, his large campaign donors will be able to provide differentiated levels of services on the internet that would likely relegate us second-class users to the slow lanes of the information superhighway. And Stevens' asinine dissertational speech explaining the internet is nothing short of comic genius from a man who has clearly outlived his shelf-stable date.

So what can we do to clean up messes like this one created by temper-tantrum Teddy?

In terms of corrective measures, the first step would involve getting rid of dinosaurs like Stevens. He helps to destroy the credibility of Congress because of his wasteful spending, his shameless political favors benefitting his campaign contributors, and his all-too-frequent displays of stupidity. I hope Alaska realizes how much of an embarrassment this man is to their state and puts him out to pasture as soon as they possibly can.

A second step would be the elimination of this provision whereby a senator can anonymously put a hold on a bill. That's a ridiculous way to govern. Of course, it takes a special person to have the audacity to secretly put a hold on a bill that would provide sunshine and accountability on our legislative processes. Stevens is special in that way, though. His shamelessness apparently has no boundaries.

Finally, I think Congress should adopt one of the practices of NASCAR. You know how race cars are adorned with the logos of their sponsors? Well, we should require that legislators wear logos of their sponsors as well (see the picture of Stevens shown above). The bigger the sponsorship, the larger the logo. Then we can better understand why these scoundrels vote and behave the way they do. If someone votes to give big oil companies a tax break and he has Exxon and Texaco logos across the front of his suit, we'll know exactly what's going on.

I think that's only fair, don't you?

GHSA sets heat policy for athletic practices

According to the AJC, the Georgia High School Association will now be requiring all schools to have a written policy on athletic practices when the heat or humidity is high. Schools will also be required to have some type of validated instrument to measure heat and humidity on the practice fields.

I suppose this idea has good intentions. Every year, you hear about kids collapsing or dying at or after football practice -- whether it's in Georgia or elsewhere. Still, I remember back when I played high school football in the mid-1980's. It was even hotter then. You may think I'm kidding, but I'm not. It got to the 100-degree mark pretty much every year when I went to football camp at South Georgia College in Douglas, Georgia. It was usually held the first week of August and the heat and humidity would hit us in the face like a hot towel when we walked out the door of the dormitories. We would have a practice in full pads at 6am to try to take advantage of the cooler mornings. Then we would practice in shorts and shoulder pads at 11am. The killer practice, however, was in full pads at 4pm. Then we would have one last practice at 7:30pm in the evening in shorts and shoulder pads. Needless to say, the time between practices was spent resting in the dorms with the A/C turned on high and limitless jugs of cold water within arm's reach.

Inevitably, we would have 2 or 3 players get overheated and/or dehydrated during camp. On multiple occasions, players were transported to the local hospital to get checked out and rehydrated. To me, it was a badge of honor that I made it through three years of camp without passing out or throwing up.

I do suppose the new law provides a layer of protection for the schools (legally speaking) and it does provide some peace of mind for the coaches, the parents, and the players. Still, the heat used to be one of the better ways to separate the wheat from the chaff on a football team. If you didn't fall out, you deserved to be on the team. If you did fall out due to the heat, then maybe football wasn't for you. It is football, after all. It's not supposed to be easy.

I guess we'll see how the new law works out.

I see dead people

Two mountain climbers who disappeared seventeen years ago were recently found on Mont Blanc in the French Alps. Apparently, their bodies were preserved in ice and had recently resurfaced as the ice melted (which portends more presents to be unwrapped thanks to global warming). It doesn't go into much detail about the bodies, but you can let your imagination run with that one if you feel so inclined.

I'll be honest here. This sort of thing kind of freaks me out. Not in a scared-to-live kind of way, but in a quasi-creepy, vast-unknown kind of way. I've always felt like we are surrounded by dead bodies. I'm not talking about cemeteries or ghosts. I'm talking about remains of deceased folks, preserved or otherwise, that are yet to be discovered in locations all around us. Just think about all the missing people in the world. Unless they're all living and waiting to be found, then their remains are almost certainly out there somewhere -- waiting to be unearthed or tripped over or unfrozen.

In the article referenced above, it also mentions George Mallory, another mountain climber whose remains were found on Mount Everest in 1999, 75 years after he had disappeared. And then there was the WWII pilot who was identified earlier this year. He had crashed in 1942 and remained MIA until his body was discovered last October in the Sierra Nevadas. It took a few months, but they finally figured out his identity.

And it's not just mountain climbers and pilots who disappear in mountain ranges. A summer reveler found the submerged body of a dead guy at nearby Lake Allatoona last year. A person was just swimming in the lake and then, "Oops...dead guy." I don't remember the details, but I seem to recall that the deceased had disappeared a couple of weeks earlier and his exact whereabouts were not known until this unfortunate swimmer realized that he was splashing around in nature's own impromptu morgue. In another example that hits close to home, I had a first cousin who went fishing off the coast of Florida about twenty years ago. He disappeared and still hasn't been found to this day. Obviously, I'm not optimistic that his remains will be found, but you never know. Stranger things have happened.

So there you go. That should give you a little something to ponder for a while. Next time you're in a thicket of woods or a body of water or on a mountain trail, just remember that you may not be alone -- so watch where you step. It may be you in the news next time as the party who discovered Jimmy Hoffa or DB Cooper or it may be your family who finally finds out what happened to that long-lost relative. You, too, may see dead people -- whether you like it or not.

UPDATE (08/21/07): Apparently, they've found another dead person. This guy was a second airman who went down in the plane crash in 1942 (referenced above). You never know what secrets mountains or lakes or oceans may hold.

It's official: There are now twelve planets

An international panel has now decided to expand the number of planets from nine (as it is now) to twelve. The new planets aren't vagabond or migrant planets that just moved into the neighborhood. They've always (generally speaking) been there. The powers-that-be in the science world just decided to reclassify what constitutes a "planet" based on new discoveries and new thinking. Honestly, I think they probably needed to do something to look busy or justify their budgets. While I'm no enemy of science (I was a chemistry minor in undergrad and took more physics and biology courses than I care to recall), this is one example of why I don't appreciate "proselytizing" by condescending scientists who claim to have all the answers. They are frequently changing their minds or finding mistakes they've made in prior classifications and theories. But I digress -- that's a post for another day.

So we have three new planets. This affects one of my favorite mnemonics from school. While there are variations, it generally goes something like this:

My (Mercury)
Very (Venus)
Educated (Earth)
Mother (Mars)
Just (Jupiter)
Served (Saturn)
Us (Uranus)
Nine (Nepture)
Pizzas (Pluto)

This, of course, represents (or represented) the order of the planets as positioned from the sun.

I guess it will need to be updated now. Hmmm...how about this one:

My (Mercury)
Very (Venus)
Educated (Earth)
Mother (Mars)
Could (Ceres)
Just (Jupiter)
Serve (Saturn)
Us (Uranus)
Nine (Nepture)
Pizzas (Pluto)
Cooked (Charon)
eXcellently (Xena)

Okay. That's pretty weak. Still, I wonder if a consensus on a new mnemonic will be reached. Only time will tell, I suppose.

So, in the spirit of being neighborly, welcome to planethood, Ceres, Charon, and Xena. We've got you on our radar screen now and we'll be watching you from afar (WAY afar).

UPDATE: Apparently, Pluto is now out and the number of planets is down to eight. These "experts" can't seem to settle this issue. Maybe I'll check back in five years and see if they've made up their minds.

Wow. News of the weird, indeed.

This is freaky --

Man Missing After Pulled Into Ocean By Turtle:

A graduate student from the University of Central Florida is missing after he was pulled underwater by a large sea turtle, according to Local 6 News.

The student was apparently tagging turtles as part of a UCF research project.

"The person was onboard a Boston Whaler with other students when a large turtle pulled the victim underwater," Local 6's Bob Frier said.

I hope they find the guy. Man, that would be a tough way to go. It must've been some kind of turtle. If I was one of those other graduate students who witnessed this, I would be rethinking my career choice.

I am happy to say that I was wrong

Back in April, I wrote that Cynthia McKinney was here to stay. I wrote that we were stuck with her. I was wrong and I couldn't be happier. McKinney lost last night in her attempt to retain her congressional seat. In her quasi-concession speech, she (true to form) blamed white voters, Republicans, Bush, Washington, the media, and electronic voting machines (what, the Jews escape blame this time?). As always, her own idiocy and uselessness and penchant for controversy were not to blame. Oh, no. The finger never points at Cynthia, does it? It's always someone else's fault.

Cynthia, you were (it feels so good to make that past tense) an embarrassment to the state of Georgia and you got what was coming to you. I lived in your district at one time and, despite letters and calls from me about various issues, you ignored me. I will now return the favor.

Good bye and good riddance.

Ney is the latest Abramoff casualty

Representative Bob Ney (R-OH) has decided not to run for a seventh term in November. Ney, if you'll recall, has been under investigation because of his dealings with influence-peddling lobbyist Jack Abramoff. While still proclaiming his innocence, Ney certainly has been feeling considerable heat from all directions and he has been amassing huge legal bills in efforts to clear his "good" name.

If Ney does wind up getting charged/convicted for wrongdoing, I say good riddance and I hope he gets prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The sooner we can sweep these sleazy vote-selling politicians out of Washington, the better off we'll be. I only hope that this serves as a lesson to all the other politicians who are eager to sell themselves off to the highest bidder (a naive pipe-dream, I know, but I still cling to it).

So, Bob -- see that sunset over there? Walk in that direction. And if there is justice in the world, a vicious thunderstorm will roll across the horizon as you fade from our sight.

MTV turns 25 today

Yep, MTV debuted 25 years ago today. It was a pretty magical time. If I recall correctly, cassettes were the music format/medium we used back then, though some of us still had some eight-track tapes lying around. Until that time, I had only seen musical performances on TV shows like The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. With MTV, however, a new era started whereby we not only listened to music, but were also able to see it being performed or acted out in a video. Yes, it was whole new ballgame when MTV hit the market on August 1st, 1981.

While we've both grown older, MTV has reinvented itself much more than I have. The MTV of 2006 is a very different entity from the MTV of 1981. In the early days, we were treated to lots and lots of videos from artists like Journey, Madonna, Prince, Michael Jackson, Blondie, and Lionel Richie. Often the videos themselves were strange. They involved strange dances and even stranger-looking dancers. The artists often had long hair or colored hair or puffed-up mall hair. The videos were occasionally shot in real-life locations -- outside, in a boat, in a normal house. Often, though, they were filmed using strange sets or backgrounds. Many had dark backgrounds and mysterious themes. I recall fire being an important prop in many videos. Yes, it was a strange time back then as artists used the visual element of videos to add another dimension to their music.

Today's MTV is quite different. Does MTV even have videos anymore? I guess it does, but it's probably better known now for its specials and series such as The Real World and Room Raiders. Honestly, I don't know that much about the MTV of 2006. I'm probably more a VH-1 or CMT person these days. As I mentioned, MTV reinvented itself in an attempt to stay young and hip. I'm no longer their prime demographic target. That's okay, though. I can still look back at what MTV was 25 years ago today and appreciate the impact it made on me and millions like me around the world.

So happy birthday, MTV. You're not really my cup of tea anymore, but we were close once and I still have some great memories from those early days. For that I salute you and I wish you well.