Tuesday - January 02, 2007

Starting A New Year

It’s only fitting that we start the New Year off with a little humor and a little advice. Before you get to Tom Purcell’s hilarious (depending on whose side you’re on) column below, I’m going to ask you to indulge me for a few minutes while I go over a few blog-related and web-related subjects. Pay attention ....

Registration At This Blog: Most of you know that you have to register and become a member here before you can post comments. Registration takes only a few minutes and then you’re done. If you have cookies enabled in your browser you never need to login again. Just check “Log me in automatically in the future” the first time you login.

There is one simple step that a lot of people just don’t understand though. After you register, the server sends out an automated e-mail to the address you provided. You registration is not complete until you reply to this e-mail. If you enter a bogus e-mail address you’ll never get registered so for those who have been trying this .... GET A CLUE, ASSHOLES.

The reason we do this is twofold: (1) it enables you to receive e-mail notifications when someone responds to a comment thread you are subscribed to and (2) it insures that you are a real person with a real e-mail address and not some dipshit spammer or spambot.

I can assure you that your e-mail address will NEVER be sold or given away to anyone. Period. All member information is stored in the server’s databases and are not accessible to the outside world. You may reveal as much or as little about yourself in your member profile as you wish. Your e-mail address is not made public, even to other members.

Submissions To This Blog: I receive literally hundreds of e-mails daily and quite a few of them have links to articles and/or goofy pictures. I usually post these under the name of the submitter or at least give credit to the person who submitted it.

If you submit something be sure to include valid links to the news articles referenced and if possible to the original creator of any pictures or text you quote. It’s not that I don’t trust you in particular, it’s just that I don’t trust anyone at all out here in the blogosphere. There are way too many mischief makers and just general asshats trying to “put one over” on me.

Plus, if you wish to have an entire editorial or article (that you have written) posted, try to format it in HTML like you want it displayed, OK. I don’t have time to do ALL the work for you. And most importantly, don’t get all uppity with me if I don’t post your submission. There may not be space or time.

Etiquette: For the most part, I generally leave the readers here to themselves when commenting. As long as civility is maintained, you can pretty much say whatever is on your mind no matter how ridiculous it is.

If you start verbally attacking me or another commenter on this blog, you will most assuredly find your comments deleted and you will be banned. Period. Deal with it. If you can’t discuss the issues without launching ad hominem attacks against others here, you’re in the wrong place. Try some of the Lefty, bullshit sites if that’s what you want.

Sense Of Humor: Ask any one of my (four) ex-wives what pissed them off the most about me and they will all tell you that the one thing that most chapped their ass was the fact that about 50% of the time I am just full of shit and they never could tell when I was serious. I prefer to think of it as just having a wicked sense of humor.

For that reason, you will find a lot of satire and parody in my writing here. Before you get all deranged and upset over something I said, make sure I’m not just “pulling your leg.” With that said, I can assure you that I am well aware that no matter what I say, someone, somewhere out there is going to get pissed off about it. You can’t please everyone and I’m not about to start trying.

Blogging: This blog is a hobby for me ... nothing else. I have a full-time “day job” that puts food on the table and keeps me warm and dry. There are some issues that mean a lot to me and I post about those issues in the hope of somehow making a difference. This has never been and never will be a popularity contest for me.

I have been accused of being “egotistical and arrogant” - usually by those who possess those traits in abundance themselves. I have also been called a saint. Neither one is accurate. Neither a saint or a sinner - just something in between.

I enjoy keeping up on world events and writing about them. Developing my writing skills is probably the only reason I keep on “keepin’ on” here. I am working on two books at the present time, one fiction and one non-fiction. I have not been able to concentrate on them as I should have, mostly due to the strain and problems of maintaining this blog. I sometimes wonder if it’s worth it.

Resolutions: That’s pretty much it for this New Years “day-after” bull session, folks. My only resolution this year is to finish at least one of my books and get it in print. Other than that, I intend to just go with the flow and see what happens. My advice to you is to keep your New Years resolutions short, sweet and simple. Nothing fancy but something that stands a slight chance of success.

Oh ... and one other thing .... be careful what you say in e-mails, as Mr. Purcell finds out below. And for God’s sake never, NEVER, NEVER click on that “Reply All” button. You never know where that e-mail may wind up ....

_{Daryl Cagle - Slate.com}

Another New Year’s Resolution – Tech Etiquette
-- By Tom Purcell

Here’s something many of us need to do better in the New Year: Be more civil toward one another, particularly where technology is concerned. I remember reading a Wall Street Journal story last year about a couple of Boston lawyers. One, a 24-year-old woman, sent an e-mail to an older, established lawyer declining his job offer.

The older lawyer, miffed the woman would e-mail her rejection after she’d already accepted the job orally, fired off a reply. He said she wasn’t very professional.

She replied that if he were a real lawyer he would have had her sign a contract. So he replied, suggesting, in so many words, that she was a snot. She sent one last reply that read: “blah, blah, blah.”

Well, the older lawyer e-mailed the exchange to a colleague, who forwarded it to another colleague and soon the entire Boston legal community read it. It was featured on “Nightline” and in the papers, and now you’re reading about it here.

This latest example of technology-enhanced rudeness reminded me of a similar situation that happened to me seven years ago. Just after moving to Washington, D.C., I’d joined a large writers’ organization. Since I was new to town, I decided to start an informal monthly happy hour to meet other writers – or, to be more precise, WOMEN writers.

I got permission from the writers’ organization to send an e-mail out to all 4,000 members. Several folks e-mailed me back, and we soon established a time and place to meet. Nearly 40 folks attended the first event – one that would be the LAST event.

As it went, one particularly attractive attendee caught my attention. I found myself in stiff competition with another fellow in trying to win the woman’s affection. She soon made it clear to us that had no interest in either of us knuckleheads and that she came only to discuss the writing craft.

After she landed her blow, the other fellow and I quickly realized the pickings were otherwise slim. The other women were either much older than we or otherwise didn’t strike our fancy. It never occurred to us that they might have come to meet men.

One woman, a woman of overpowering verbosity, soon had us pinned up against the bar. For the rest of the evening she shoved a dozen opinions at us on every subject under the sun. It was the first time in my life I was happy to hear the words “last call.”

The next morning, I got an e-mail from the other fellow. He thanked me for organizing the event, then said, “and for goodness sakes, for the next happy hour event, do NOT invite any more loud, obnoxious (expletive)!”

I was surprised at the rudeness of the fellow’s e-mail. That should have been the end of it. But it was just the beginning.

You see, instead of e-mailing his response only to me, the fellow unwittingly sent his reply to all 4,000 members of the writers’ organization, some of whom, much to his poor luck, were also women of overpowering verbosity.

I don’t know how many e-mail responses came that day, but they surely topped 100. A story-line quickly established itself. Our heroine, who was so viciously attacked, did nothing to deserve her fate and, incidentally, it’s typical of misogynistic men to be threatened by intelligent women.

As for our villain, he was dubbed an idiotic male rogue. He should not only apologize, the e-mails demanded, but he should resign from the writers’ organization, give up writing altogether, and move to another city, where, hopefully, something bad would happen to him.

In any event, as civility continues breaking down across America, technology is helping us get more efficient at being rude. In the New Year, we ought to be more cautious when we use it.

Here’s one solution: If you wish to say something nasty about somebody, use the phone. You can only offend one person at a time that way.

---

_{Tom Purcell is a humor columnist syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons. For comments to Tom, please email him at TomPurcell@aol.com.}

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/02/2007 at 01:04 AM   
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   Monday - January 01, 2007

Through The Looking Glass

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/01/2007 at 12:00 PM   
Filed Under: • Art-Photography •  
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Mysteries: Part I

I like mysteries ... especially when they make me think. This is the first part of a new series I’m going to start on the blog. I will lay out the basic information and then pose a question. It’s up to you to help me find an answer - if there is one. Today’s mystery question involves the basis of all life (as we know it). Ponder this and see if you can come up with an explanation ....

If (a) cells are the basic building blocks of all life and (b) all cells are the result of a parent cell’s dividing itself in two .... where did the first cell come from?

Cell Division

Cell division is the process by which a cell, called the parent cell, divides into two cells, called daughter cells. Cell division is usually a small segment of a larger cell cycle. In meiosis however, a cell is permanently transformed and cannot divide again.

Cell division is the biological basis of life. This is very important! For simple unicellular organisms such as the Amoeba, one cell division reproduces an entire organism. On a larger scale, cell division can create progeny from multicellular organisms, such as plants that grow from cuttings.

But most importantly, cell division enables sexually reproducing organisms to develop from the one-celled zygote, which itself was produced by cell division from gametes. And after growth, cell division allows for continual renewal and repair of the organism.

The primary concern of cell division is the maintenance of the original cell’s genome. Before division can occur, the genomic information which is stored in chromosomes must be replicated, and the duplicated genome separated cleanly between cells. A great deal of cellular infrastructure is involved in keeping genomic information consistent between “generations”.

-- Wikipedia

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/01/2007 at 11:00 AM   
Filed Under: • Philosophy •  
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Pardoning The Dead

Death Does Wonders For Legacy
-- by Michael Reagan
_{December 30, 2006}

Saddam Hussein is a lucky man – in no time at all he can expect to have his reputation vastly improved. And he can thank the hangman who awaits him on the gallows.

Prior to that moment when he breathes his last, his reputation will be in shreds. He has, rightly, been seen as a monster. The mere act of his dying, however, will enable his supporters to smooth over his role in those troublesome times when he was slaughtering his own people by the hundreds of thousands.

If you doubt that scenario, consider what we are now witnessing with the death of former President Gerald R. Ford. After his pardon of Richard Nixon in September 1974, you would have had to hire a private detective to find anyone who did not consider him a scoundrel for pardoning the hated Nixon, whose foes would have been satisfied only if Nixon had been utterly humiliated, tried, found guilty and sent to prison for life.

Ford robbed them of that satisfaction and they never forgave him, but his foes did take great pleasure out of observing that the pardon was the reason why Gerald Ford lost the presidency in 1976.

His name was mud, yet by dying he rehabilitated himself. All those hypocrites who cast him out into the outer darkness for daring to show compassion to his predecessor—thereby saving the nation from the years-long ordeal prosecution of Nixon would have involved—now heap praise on him.

Ford’s pardon was greeted by a firestorm of criticism, threats were leveled against him, and he was accused of making a shady deal with Tricky Dick to swap a pardon for the presidency. All the hatred and bile the left had for Nixon was then aimed at Ford.

His popularity ratings, sky-high when he took the oath of office, plummeted. He never recovered from the debacle he unleashed with the pardon. And he was driven out of the White House to be replaced by Jimmy Carter, who would become arguably the worst president in American history yet go himself into the honored retirement denied Gerald Ford.

Like most of his Democratic colleagues, Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy was appalled by the pardon, calling it “a betrayal of the public trust.”

Unlike most of his Democratic colleagues, however, Kennedy softened and didn’t wait until Ford was dead to praise him for what the pardon had done for the nation. At the 2001 Profile of Courage award ceremony honoring Ford, Kennedy said: “We now recognize that Ford was there when the country needed him. He was calm and steady at a time of emotional upheaval and disillusionment. When he said our long national nightmare was over, the country breathed a sigh of relief. He was an uncommonly good and decent man.”

In dying, Ford erased all those negative comments and the people who slandered and reviled him came rushing to the microphones to heap praise on him for issuing the pardon they had so vigorously condemned.

Think about the lesson Ford’s death teaches. Once a pariah, he now gets the “de mortuis nil nisi bonum” treatment (of the dead speak only good).

Moreover, he is to be further honored by a book by Bob Woodward who, contrary to his usual practice, interviewed him while he was still alive and conscious. Ford, he is said to be ready to reveal, opposed the Iraq war but didn’t want anybody to know it until he was gone.

Getting back to what all this means to the soon-to-be-dead Saddam Hussein, if the obits are anything like the ones Gerald Ford earned by passing away, we can expect to be told that after all, Saddam did clean up the mess he inherited in Iraq, and keep order and prevent the population from butchering each other by taking on that job himself.

He introduced law and order, and kept the peace, although in not quite the same way Rudy Giuliani cleaned up New York City. Giuliani, after all, left no unmarked mass graves scattered around New York.

But hey, Saddam got results even we haven’t been able to achieve, and as a result the Iraqis have now taken on the job of reducing the population without any help from the government.

---

_{Mike Reagan, the eldest son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is heard on more than 200 talk radio stations nationally as part of the Radio America Network. Look for Mike’s new book “Twice Adopted.” Order autographed books at http://www.reagan.com. Email comments to mereagan@hotmail.com. ©2006 Mike Reagan.}

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/01/2007 at 10:00 AM   
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HAPPY NEW YEAR!

    

Posted by The Skipper     on 01/01/2007 at 01:00 AM   
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff •  
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere

It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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