Ivanhoe

I just finished reading the TOR mass market paperback edition of Ivanhoe (ISBN 0812565657). I must say that there were typos to distraction.

It was an amusing little story; doesn't have much to do with Ivanhoe, though. *shrugs*

I really don't get the animosity expressed towards the Jews. Just don't get it. Talk about ignorant! How can you see someone as less than human, just because of race or religion? I was never raised to hate or despise anyone. Sure, I have the prejudices common to the region, but I would never consciously act on any of them to be cruel to someone for no reason other than their race or religion.

Ratboy Napping

pic 1) That's it! I'm done! I'll go no further!

pic 2) Cozy.

Sicko reprise

I got this link from Anomalousdata.com.

Employers grab accident victims' cash

Wal-Mart's health plan sued an ex-worker, brain-damaged in a crash, to collect money from a settlement she'd received. It's part of a trend in which companies aggressively try to recoup insurance costs.

A collision with a tractor-trailer seven years ago left 52-year-old Deborah Shank permanently brain-damaged and in a wheelchair. Her husband, Jim, and three sons found a small source of solace: a $700,000 accident settlement from the trucking company involved.

After legal fees and other expenses, the remaining $417,000 was put in a special trust. It was to be used for Deborah Shank's care.

Instead, all of it is now slated to go to Deborah's former employer, Wal-Mart Stores.

The woman stocked shelves for a few months and because of signing on to the health care plan, she's lost out on all of the settlement money that was meant to go towards her continued care.

Well, that is just one more reason for needing some variety of universal health care! I'd rather be paying more in taxes and be assured that I will be taken care of, should something horrible happen, than be paying insurance premiums to an insurance company that will do everything in its power to avoid paying out, and then seek reimbursement after the fact!

And more: Walmart takes out life-insurance on its employees.

I'm definitely tired...

I decided to put on the classic White Christmas to run in the background and keep down the monotony of counting prepositions.

I must be tired! I started getting all teary-eyed at the scene where all the old soldiers have come together to honor the old general. I'm usually not so sentimental!

I highly recommend this movie for those looking for a simple musical comedy, without any sex or violence (except for when the guy's are smacking each other with the feather fans).

On a side note, I'm in just such a mood as to feel sad that the folks all young, alive and well in that film are all either old or dead now. They live on in the film, but are never to be known in person again. Such is life.

OK...back to working on my paper...which movie shall I put in now?

Wrestling with the squeaky toy

Chaos was rather energetic today. We spent a good ten minutes running (well...I walked, he ran) back and forth in the building hall. We got back to my apartment door and he sniffed at it, so I opened it and took off the leash. The little brat ran back down the hallway. I caught him at the first doormat that he stopped to investigate and put the leash back on him. He ran until he was done, and then he lay down in the middle of the hall, determined not to move a paw further. I carried him back to my apartment and fed him. When I went out to visit my neighbor, Chaos was ready to run back out into the hall again.

Most recently, he has been teaching the squeaky toy a thing or two about who's boss.

Just what happened to Izzy

Well, it wasn't just that she go wedged between the wall and the bookcase. It was one of those self-assemble bookcases with the paperboard back on it. The books on the bottom shelf were pushed back in such as way as to pop out the bottom corner of the back. She got stuck on that and it worked like a barb, preventing her from going forward or back.

Izzy died

I'd been having to force feed her the last few days. Then she got caught between the wall and the bookshelf and went into hypothermia, likely from low blood sugar and the draft from the window. I took her to the vet and he tried to save her. He gave her glucose and subcutaneous fluids. He also wedged her between a couple of socks full of microwaved dry rice to try to get her temperature up again. She started to warm up and it looked like she was coming back. Her heartbeat got stronger. And then she stopped breathing at about 7:30, about an hour and 45 minutes after bringing her in.

Sicko

Man...my neighbor and I are watching Sicko. Our country sucks. Even 9-11 rescue workers aren't getting covered.

If Canada, Britain, and France and CUBA can pull it off to cover everyone, why can't we???

WTF???

Let's hear it for socialized health care now!

On Ferrets in Arabic

This is my Arabic presentation. Exciting, isn't it??? There are probably some mistakes in it, but I think it's pretty good for only having known any Arabic since the summer.

Step 1 to cut energy consumption: Cut the Christmas lights!

So, there's all the stuff about being environmentally aware. People drive the Prius in droves now. They turn off the light in the hall when done and even shut down their computers at night. However, many can't part with their Christmas lights. And Christmas is coming earlier and earlier, so lights are on longer and longer. The next time you think about giving back to the world during the holidays, switch off your Christmas lights. Some people don't even have electricity to heat or light their homes!

Does anyone out there have figures on how much electricity could be saved if everyone turned off their Christmas lights for a day?

I'm not saying that folks should completely give up the lights; that just isn't likely. However, how about waiting to turn them on until mid December, instead of a month or two before?

Izzy and Chaos are playing!

They're playing! Yay! Chaos isn't afraid to play anymore!

WTF??? When you're done bleeding , we want that money back.

The Pentagon is apparently demanding back signing bonuses from injured soldiers, because they didn't serve out their tour, even though they were wounded in battle.

I'm sorry, but if someone gets shot because they're fighting in the military, then the military shouldn't be able to take back any money. It would be different if the guys had just up and left, but they were wounded! What more could they have done to fulfill their obligation???

I've also heard that widow(er)s don't receive nearly enough money.

If you're going to ask someone to go to war, then you should provide for their orphans and widow(er)s!

Uncannily like Fuzzball.

Izzy likes carrying around balls of cotton string just like Fuzzball, and sleeping in the blankets by the litter box (though Fuzzball concentrated on the ones by the fridge and Izzy prefers the front hall)

Unlike Fuzzball, Izzy took the stringball into the cage and up a level.

Success!

When I got out of the shower this morning, Chaos and Izzy were wrestling! Yay!

You're in America! Speak English!

Señora Gomez* hobbled into the social security office in Arecebo, Puerto Rico, supporting herself on her grandson's arm.

She is an elderly middle-class woman, born and raised on the island. She's done her best to do right by everyone and has slowly sold off her land to cover her daughter's expenses and to pay for her grandson's education in the continental United States.

Upon approaching the window, she was informed by Juan Gonzales*, speaking in heavily accented English, that all official business of the United States Social Security Administration will be conducted in English.

Is there really any good reason for a Spanish speaker to demand that a Spanish speaker speak English, in order to get her Social Security check, which she's contributed to all her working life?

Puerto Ricans are often informed that they are in America and should speak English. However, what the Anglophones tend to ignore, is that the Puerto Rican's were speaking Spanish before the island was obtained by the United States and that most generations since then have been born, raised, and died with their native Spanish language. Why should they have to change?

Bilingualism is a tool for success. Ideally, everyone would be bilingual, but this is not possible, at least not at this time. Even if all of the children in school are taught, and learn, sufficient English, the older people would not be able to change, due to age related issues. Using the language as a barrier to services is reminiscent of the literacy tests imposed in the Deep South after the Civil War.

Also, if we take an example from Russian education in the Eastern Bloc countries, we can see that although all of the school children were required to take Russian, most hated it because of it being the language of the colonizer and never learned it well. Who are we to impose our language on others?

English Only is a bad idea.

*These are not really their names.

USA not founded on Christianity

This just in at Northern Sun:


If you can't see the picture, it's a portrait of George Washington on a T-shirt, with a quote:

"The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine." George Washington

That's pretty definitive; he would know.

If you are in Minneapolis, you could swing by their store on Lake to pick it up, or just order it online. http://www.northernsun.com/n/s/8122.html

More on the Writer's Guild strike

Let's all support the Writer's Guild. It sounds like a good cause. Here's a page on how: http://www.wga.org/subpage_member.aspx?id=2544

Reminiscent of Kafka's The Trial

This experience of a Minnesota woman reminded me of Kafka's The Trial (Der Prozeß).

Is anyone regulating the TSA?

For more info on proposed rules requiring having to ask the TSA for permission to fly ANYWHERE to, from, through, or over the United States, read here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/12/flying_into_data_hell/

And here is a link to the Justia Regulation Tracker.

Robert F. Kennedy (November 20, 1925 – June 6, 1968)

I haven't heard this message from any of the front-runners lately.

On the Mindless Menace of Violence

City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio April 5, 1968

Mr Chairmen,Ladies And Gentlemen

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.

Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lost their cause and pay the costs."

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.

I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

- Robert F. Kennedy (November 20, 1925 – June 6, 1968)

Gratuitous Ferret Photos