Chamblee54

Today is the first Monday after the New Year. A day to get back to what occupies us for most of the year. It is also the 11 day of Christmas, with 11 pipers piping, and the end of the NFL regular season. The Falcons had back to back winning seasons.
PG found a story about the Christmas season at another blog a few minutes ago. It is a feel good tale, even if you don’t completely agree with it. Much has been made recently about the “true meaning” of Christmas. This story says that Christmas is about being good.
Some atheists put up a sign, encouraging people to “be good for goodness sake”. While this is a *good idea*, it is also a line from a silly Christmas carol. It was written because it rhymes with “he knows when you’re awake”. Maybe we should just leave it as a silly rhyme in a song, and not make a rule for living out of it.
As we said, PG does not totally agree with this story (written in first person). Or maybe he wants to argue about the words, but agrees with the spirit behind the words. Sometime the spirit is what is important.
PG is a practice kind of guy. Belief is all well and good, but what is do is what is important. A gram of practice is worth a pound of belief.
I just said goodnight to Granny and turned off the lights in her room. After getting her settled in, I sat next to her on top of the covers. We propped ourselves against the headboard and watched TV for a while.
She got tired but wanted to hear the story of the nativity before she fell asleep. As you all know, I’m not the most religious person in the world, but I’d have to be a downright heathen to refuse to do that. So, I grabbed Granny’s Bible off the night table and read from the second chapter of the Luke. No room at the inn. Shepherds and their flocks and all. But no Wise Men. No kings.
At first I thought maybe I was reading from one of those contemporary editions or something. But when I looked at spine, it said “King James.” I asked Granny about it and she told me, “That’s Matthew.”
Then she told me she prefers Luke, which is why I guess that’s what she asked me to read. I asked her why she preferred Luke since it was essentially the same story. “Luke is more for regular folk. Matthew is too…too…” She searched for the right word, then finally finished her thought with, “too Republican.”
We both chuckled about that and I made a mental note to tell the Attorney, who has been known to have Republican tendencies.
Apparently there are differences in the facts of the Christmas story, depending on who told it. Luke talks about the manger and shepherds. Matthew talks about the kings. The shepherds heard from an angel. The Wise Men followed a star. Isn’t it kinda ironic that the Gospels are not necessarily the gospel?
So, I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that even now, 2000 or so years later, that Christmas is a different thing to different people. But whether your Christmas includes shepherds…or not. Kings…or not…Jesus, Santa, Angels, Rudolph, presents, trees, or stars…or not, we’re all celebrating the same thing. The easy answer is “the birth of Christ.” But the bigger answer is “goodness.”
You may not believe a baby was born in a manger to a virgin. Or, if you do, you may not believe that babe is the Messiah. But, if you celebrate Christmas at all, surely you can believe in the goodness that the story represents. And, if you don’t celebrate, surely you can believe in goodness nonetheless.
It’s all mankind truly has to give. Happy Holidays, dear friends and readers.

The dialog on bloggingheads today is between Charles Johnson and Conn Carroll. Mr. Johnson is Mr. “Little Green Footballs“, who recently had a post on why he is leaving the “right wing“. Mr. Carroll is connected to the Heritage Foundation, which is a conservative thingamajig. Mr. Carroll is fond of saying “fair enough”.
One of the tipping points in the past for Mr. Johnson was the memos in 2004 regarding the service of George Bush in the Alabama Air National Guard. When the memos came out, Mr. Johnson saw them, and immediately realized that they were fake. Dan Rather was fired, and George Bush won the election.
PG was puzzled by this controversy. Mr. Bush had served in the Air National Guard rather than go to Vietnam. His opponent, John Kerry, served in Vietnam. There was controversy about Mr. Kerry’s service. Nonetheless, no documents, real or faked, changed the basic facts…John Kerry went to Vietnam, and George Bush did not. People who are under 40 and reading this might not realize why this is an issue, but it is.
One of the issues that LGF has changed sides on is climate change. At first, LGF had doubts, but began to read a few reports, and changed his mind. Mr. Johnson made a connection between those who would deny the reality of climate change, and those who support the teaching of “creationism”. It seems as both sides make their judgment first, and then look for evidence to support their opinion. There was a controversy recently regarding climate change and doctored statistics, which was not mentioned in this discussion. PG suspects there is a comparison between “climategate” and the forged Bush memo.
The debate goes on for nearly an hour, until Mr. Carroll gets a call from his wife at the pediatrician. As the discussion goes on, Mr. Carroll says “fair enough” less, and plays rhetorical games more. A discussion about abortion morphed into one about doctor assisted suicide. Mr. Johnson is a cool debater, and does not fall for the gimmicks trotted out by Mr. Carroll.
PG has never been a conservative. The first time he heard the expression, a conservative was someone who was opposed to civil rights legislation. To PG, the terms liberal and conservative are meaningless labels, intended to divide and confuse. The so called conservatives were calling for smaller government, while supporting an expensive war on drugs… it just didn’t add up. When the small government crowd was calling on maintaining an army of 250k in two wars, eight time zones away, it got plain silly. Unlike Charles Johnson…actually a great deal like Mr. Johnson…PG was never a part of a “movement”. You can’t quit something you never joined.

PG looked at facebook, and saw the quiz results. OK, it was only one this time, but quiz results are a mainstay on facebook. The only trouble is, you have to click away personal information to who knows who if you click on that link to see what famous poet YOU are.
The good news is that Google (which NEVER collects personal information) has a never ending list of questionnaire. PG started this sunday morning by asking “what farm animal am I?” The result was “yoor a person not an animal! but if you were you would be a ~pangwin~ “
The next step was “what zoo animal are you?” The ad above the fold was for a vampire quiz, with a white pasty faced woman drooling a red liquid. The answer is “monkey..You are clever and sneaky you are nice but you can sometimes betray them. Be careful! Because you aren’t a Quibblo member yet, we aren’t going to save this result for you, so make sure to grab it now! If you’d like us to save your results, please become a member.”
From farm and zoo animals, it is down the slippery slope to rock stars. The first result of the search had “what dead rock star are you“? Party on Duuude. The only problem is, you have to join the site to get your results. Moving down that slope, the next stop from dead rock stars is …ABBA Songs.
This quiz ( which also asks you to join a service) gives you a score, based on how many questions you answer correctly. PG got 6 of 10. One was missed on purpose. The question was, what was the first number one hit in America for ABBA, two words. PG answered Water Lew.
Speaking of ABBA, yesterday was palindrome day. 01022010. Haras Sarah. Racecar. Radar. Madam I ‘m Adam. Egad, a base tone denotes a bad age. The next palindrome day is 11022011.

Chamblee 54 is two days into the new year, and has not been updated. Maybe a repost of blasts from the past will do. Last year, the first post of the new year was about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and a few of his wise words. It seems that sometimes Farsi does not translate well into English.
The year before, there was an essay about Black Sabbath and eating cold spinach for lunch. The first use of the phrase “heavy metal” was in a book by William Burroughs. In “The Soft Machine, there was a character named Uranian Willie, the heavy metal kid.
In 2006, there was a tribute to spell check. Once an exotic technology, spell check is found in almost every digital text device today. This is our repost for today.
Spell check is a wonderful feature. When you misspell a word, you look stupid. It takes away from the message you are trying to present, by focusing attention on your spelling mistakes. (“Profanity” serves the same function, but that is a topic for another day.) It is like the old ad slogan: “Aren’t you glad you use Dial soap, don’t you wish everyone did?”
When spellcheck catches a mistake, it helpfully offers suggested correct spellings. PG began to notice some of the suggested spellings. Some are, well, poetic. It is what you could call a synchronistic connection. Often, the suggested spelling is truer than the real word.
An example of this is inerrant. For those of you fortunate enough not to be baptist, inerrancy is the belief that the bible is perfect. There are no errors, it is inerrant. The spell check suggestion for inerrant is ignorant .
PG started to save spell check suggestions, with the idea of posting them to the blog (blob). A best of list has been thoughtfully made.
blog…blob/// Cheney…teeny/// christian…tearstain/// crockpots…crackpots/// elvis…Elvis levies elves pelvis envies olives selves elsie/// i ching….chink///inerrancy….ignorance/// jesus…Jesus jests guess gases gooses guesses disuse disease/// Latino…lotion/// mens…mess/// rupaul…rural/// Saddam…sadism sadder sad sadie sodium sodom/// Satan…stain

Those fun lovers at Lake Superior State University, in Sault Ste. Marie MI, have done it again. They have released a list of fifteen words, in ALL CAPS, that should be banished. LSSU does this every year. As a public service, PG has put these words in alphabetical order.
APP–BROMANCE–CHILLAXIN’–
CZAR–FRIEND as a verb–
IN THESE ECONOMIC TIMES–OBAMA-as a prefix–
SEXTING –SHOVEL-READY–STIMULUS–
TEACHABLE MOMENT–TOO BIG TO FAIL–
TOXIC ASSETS–TRANSPARENT/TRANSPARENCY–TWEET —

This item is from an open thread at little green footballs, and the Rapid City Journal in Rapid City. South Dakota
A Sturgis woman had a blood-alcohol level of .708 percent, possibly a state record, when she was found earlier this month behind the wheel of a stolen vehicle parked on Interstate 90, according to Meade County State’s Attorney Jesse Sondreal.
A South Dakota Highway Patrol trooper discovered Marguerite Engle, 45, on Dec. 1 passed out behind the wheel of a delivery truck reported stolen in Rapid City….Checks with local and state labs where blood-alcohol levels are tested suggest Engle’s reading may be the highest ever recorded in South Dakota, Sondreal said. A state chemist recalled a sample that tested .53, but nothing higher, in his more than 30 years on the job.
Dr. Robert Looyenga, who recently retired from the Rapid City Police Department’s forensic laboratory, told Sondreal that the highest blood-alcohol sample he tested measured .56 percent.
Sondreal’s research indicates that a blood-alcohol level of .40 is considered a lethal dose for about 50 percent of the population.”
The header ad for this story features the pillsbury doughboy and toaster strudel. The headline reads, the one kids want to eat. The fine print says “Based on testing comparable strawberry flavors”.
When PG was in eighth grade, his Georgia History teacher was a long winded man named C.D. Puett. One day, the subject of alcohol poisoning was discussed. The story was, if you got above a certain level of intoxication, you were a goner. Someone working at the local hospital said, under a guarantee of secrecy, that seventeen people had died that way in a recent month, some of them prominent citizens.
Once a man interviewed Harry Truman for a biography. The former president (PG’s dad always called him goatsmiler) told a story about Alexander the Great drinking 39 bottles of wine, and dying in his sleep. The writer thought this a bit odd, and asked a friend of his at the Library of Congress to do some research. After much searching, a reference to this was found in the rare books collection. The book had been checked out by Senator Harry Truman in 1939.
John Bonham, the former drummer for Led Zeppelin, drank 32 shots of vodka on his last night on earth.

One of the blogs that sell ads is listverse. It is a series, frequently updated, of top ten lists. The one that sparked this post is “10 bizarre things …about christmas“, but first, there is another one that is too much fun to ignore.
It is “Urban legends that caused a moral panic“. Number ten was the “rainbow party”. It seems that an RP is hosted by a coven of teenage girls, each wearing a different color of lipstick. A boy at this party can expect to have receive oral sex from a variety of these girls, and his manhood will look like a rainbow. Through empirical forensic study, this story was determined to be a hoax.
“10 Bizarre Things You Didn’t Know About Christmas” promises much, but delivers little. Number ten is “Incest, corpses, and Jesus”. No, this did not take place in Alabama. It seems like some mythological era girl was doing the dirty with daddy. Once papa was wise to the scheme, and got his cigarettes back, he tried to kill his little girl.
The G-ds took pity on the girl, and turned her into a tree. The girl’s name was Myrrha, the tree is the Myrrh tree, and the dried sap of this tree was given to the baby Jesus by the visiting wisemen. The presence of wise men and a virgin is more evidence that the story did not happen in Alabama.
“10 Bizarre Things…” has three ads at the top of the page. The top and bottom are “GA attorney prepared wills” and “Living trust wills”. In the middle of those lawyer things lies the query, “Is your husband Gay?”. Apparently the wrong answer on number two will lead to the need for one and three.
The downlow about hubby takes you to a site called “My Daily Moment”. The first question of the quiz is “How often do you have sex with your man?” The ad next to this question is “Desperate to lose weight?” The illustration is a painfully white woman, who is about to break out of her bra and panties.
The header ad at this page seems to change. When PG went back to write this feature, the paid player was AT&T…something about bundling telephone and internet services. The lady(?) in the weight loss ad could use some bundling services.
When PG first saw this endeavor, he made a screen shot, with another header ad. It is for a stop- smoking concoction called CHANTIX. This product is advertised on NFL broadcasts.
CHANTIX has the most spectacular side effects of any new product in memory. ” Some people have had changes in behavior, hostility, agitation, depressed mood, suicidal thoughts or actions while using CHANTIX to help…” The way some NFL teams are playing this year (Eight teams lost to the Falcons) might reinforce these concerns.

The Georgia Bulldogs beat somebody’s Aggies in Shreveport, Louisiana last night. The affair is something called the Independence Bowl. The Fishwrapper has an ad for a casino-hotel-spa above the fold. Athens can go back to creating a school that the football team can be proud of.
This is the season of bowl games. A few years ago, any town with a stadium, and a chamber of commerce, could get a bowl game. Any school with .500 season could go to a bowl, many of whom now had grafted on corporate names. There was, literally, the poulon weedeater bowl holiday classic. Amateur sports, with student athletes, is a beautiful thing.
What follows is a story PG read in Sports Illustrated when he was a kid. There is no source, and there is a slight possibility that it is not true.
In the sixties, NBC had a new years day triple header of bowl games. The sugar bowl was followed by the rose bowl was followed by the orange bowl. Hangovers and national championships were fixed in one day. NBC made handsome profits.
An Olympic committee had a meeting one day, to determine who would telecast the upcoming games. The man from NBC went in, with charts and promises of money for the amateur athletes. The presentation from NBC centered on the january first triple header, the sugar bowl, the rose bowl, and the orange bowl.
Another network won the bid to telecast the games. After the meeting, an Olympics official had a private conversation with the NBC man. The committee felt that their emphasis on the bowel games was in bad taste.

The vanquished know war. They see through the empty jingoism of those who use the abstract words of glory, honor, and patriotism to mask the cries of the wounded, the senseless killing, war profiteering, and chest-pounding grief. -Chris Hedges, journalist, author, and war correspondent (b. 1956)
This weekend saw massive protests against the government in Iran. Many saw the situation their through the lens of Israel, which is calling for war with Iran. The notion is that nuclear armed Israel cannot abide to have a neighbor with nukes. This is more important to many than the future of the Persian people. ( PG suspects that Israel is fussing about Iran so as to divert attention from the shameful treatment of the Palestinians.)
The three way family feud between Jews, Jesus Worshipers, and Muslims gets more religious every day. Muslims are seen as somehow less than human. If killing a million Persians will make Israel more secure, then lets do it.
PG has been carrying the following story around for six years, and now is as good a time as any for telling. It is about the way we see war in a far off land, where the people dying are a different religion from us.
When America invaded Babylon, PG was working at Redo Blue, with a professional Jesus worshiper. PJW had betrayed the trust of PG many times by this point. PG tried as best he could to ignore PJW, who would sound off whenever he felt like it, and expect PG to be deaf.
I hear the people in Baghdad are partying down right now. They are happy because they know they are going to be liberated. I tell you, they are partying down.

After eight years of killing in Afghanistan, PG had no clue that the border with Pakistan is disputed.
The United States is spoiled by the acceptance of our international frontiers. The Rio Grande is obvious. While the Canadian border was a matter of contention at one time, it has been accepted for many years. (Of course the human traffic from Mexico is an issue, but that is another story). In many parts of the world, where one country ends and another begins is casus belli, or reason to start a war.
When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, an argument could be made that they were reclaiming their own territory. Many of the boundaries in the Middle East were drawn by the British, often with little concern for the unfortunate people who lived there.
In 1893, what is now Pakistan was known as India, a part of the British empire. The Foreign Secretary of this government was a gentleman named Mortimer Durand. In 1893 a border was drawn between Afghanistan and India, which became known as the Durand line. There are stories of British dirty deeds. Much of what is today Pakistan arguably  belongs to Afghanistan, or even an independent Balochistan.
Iran is in turmoil. The protests that erupted over the contested election have returned with vengeance. Andrew Sullivan, as in the past, is presenting a flood of information. This quote caught PG’s eye: “Past all the amazing things that were captured on the footage that leaked out of Iran today, perhaps what was most interesting is what was missing: any mention of Ahmadinejad. The abundance and veracity of anti-Khameini chants on Ashura should not be overlooked. The Supreme Leader (with the doctrine of velayat-eh faqih which vests him with power) has become public enemy number-one.”
The media-government cabal in America enjoys demonic leaders. When the issues behind a controversy are complicated, and often not complimentary to America, a photogenic bad guy is a good distraction. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an example. He is short, and rumored to have poor personal hygiene. He says things that seem outrageous, and almost no one challenges the translation. And Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is, apparently, without power.

The following story might be a satire.
Egyptian grooms can now complain to the Consumer Protection Agency if their brides “are missing a hymen, or are otherwise faulty,” according to the new law.
If the marital product, also known as “woman”, is found without the highly-prized tissue still intact, bride consumers can return the damaged commodity within 7 days of trying it out, in which case they will then receive compensation from its manufacturer, or “parent”.
Contrary to unpopular belief, Egyptian women are expected to preserve their hymens at least until their wedding day.
The new law is a response to a growing trend of more and more marital products falsely presenting themselves as first-hand goods, when in fact other consumers had tested them out secretly before. “Imagine spending LE200,000 on a new car then finding out some other prick had taken it for a ride before you?” says Moneer El Modage3, an avid car collector and Middle East hymen expert.
This sentiment is shared by a majority of Egyptian bride consumers and manufacturers, known for often violently disposing of marital products if the treasured bubble wrap goes missing before the so-called “entry night”.
“The manufacturer of my ex tried to tell me my purchase was damaged only due to frequent horseback riding in its past,” said one disgruntled bride consumer, “but in the end I got a refund and bought a new model with a longer expiration date.”
Saudi conservative leader Imar Wekhimar, a frequent visitor to Egypt, praised the new law, though with some reservations. “Quality control in marital products is long overdue,” he said between sips of fermented grapes, “I just wish they extended it to young boys too.”
Not all Egyptians are happy with the new law, however – particularly the XX-based gender. A minority of extreme “liberals” are arguing that the so-called marital products are in fact conscious, claiming that consumers should be more concerned with what’s inside the head-shaped region, rather than obsess about the one time-use tissue.
“Ha!” says El Modage3, “What’s next? Stop sexually harassing them in the streets?!” Justifiably, El Modage3 and other consumers are worried that attaching any real value to “women” themselves may interfere with the ongoing 7000 year old plan for men to rule the universe.

PG was editing pictures, and listening to a discussion on “Bloggingheads” about aid to poor people abroad. Two academics with books to promote did the talking.
Peter Singer opened the show with a call for people to donate more to help the poor. He tells the tale of seeing a child drowning in a pond. Do you jump in and save the child, even if it means ruining your expensive new shoes?
William Easterly counters with a call for more accountability and effectiveness. He praises the child in the pond story, but says that it really doesn’t relate to the situation in the real world. In the pond story, it is obvious what needs to be done, and you can see that you are doing it yourself.
PG had another thought about the pond story. Lets say you save the child from drowning. Do you give the child back to the parents? These parents, or whoever was watching the child, allowed the child to get in this pond and almost drown. Do you want to give them another chance, or is there anything you can do about it?
Mr. Singer and Mr. Easterly go back and forth on the giving vs accountability issue, and agree a surprising amount of the time. This is not a debate for fans of intense verbal conflict, but rather a discussion about how tricky it can be to help poor people abroad.
Two issues from Mr. Easterly illustrate how tricky good deeds are. (He has a blog called “Good intentions are not enough“) There are food donation programs from the USA. By law, the corn must be purchased from Nebraska farmers, and shipped in an American ship. It can take up to six months to reach the hungry, by which time it is often too late.
The other issue is the attitude of those in the west that “we know what is best for you”. Many aid programs may look good in a Washington office, but don’t work in Africa.
Mr. Easterly calls for donors to aid programs to be more skeptical, and demand proof that the money is going to help the poor. PG sees a bit of a problem here. The donor here has to take the word of the organization about the utilization of the money. These organizations can lie, even if the donors knew what questions to ask. An audit of the relief agency is one possible answer, but an audit costs money that could be used in Africa to feed to hungry.
The issue of fighting world hunger is complicated. Often, local warlords will demand payment before the food shipments can be released to the people. Starving out the population is a tactic in the wars that seem to be endemic in Africa. While the idea of helping people by a donation is appealing, the reality is often ugly.