Chamblee54

As friends of the calender know, today is April 15. This is normally tax day, the day when staunch patriots turn into raving radicals. The interest on the loans that finance our wonderful wars MUST BE PAID. Never mind that the blood of the Afghan people flows every day, because of our military misadventure. The dittohead patriots celebrate the slaughter 364 days a year. On the day the bills come due, they are not happy campers.
Of course, this year tax day comes on a sunday. The day of reckoning is postponed. If tax day is a Friday, the Muslims have to pay up. If tax day is Saturday, the Jews will write checks. But this is a nation dominated by Jesus idolatry. When April 15 is a sunday, monday the 16th is the magic/tragic day.
Two infamous events in history happened on April 15. Both were triggered by something that happened on April 14. In 1865, the bodyguard of Abraham Lincoln was bored, and went to a neighborhood saloon. While he was gone, famed actor John Booth made a guest appearance. Andrew Johnson sobered up long enough to be sworn in as President of the United States on April 15. 
On April 14, 1912, shortly before midnight, the Titanic hit an iceberg. The location was 41.44n, 56.14w. You probably know the rest of the story. HT to Teju Cole.
In 1898, Morgan Robertson published a book, Futility. It told of the largest passenger ship in the world, which sunk after hitting an iceberg. The boat was called The Titan. At least one contemporary reviewer was not amused. You’re going to be disappointed April 7, 2008 Stanwyck (Texas) “This book has always been said to have been a foretelling of the Titanic disaster, but aside from a few coincidences, it’s not that much. The story is boring and trite, and if you have read a list of the similarities between what happened and what Robertson put in his book, then you have most of it.”
Twelve deceased passegers from the Titanic are remembered by Wikipedia. They are Edward Smith captain of the RMS Titanic (b. 1850), Henry Tingle Wilde, English chief officer (b. 1872), William McMaster Murdoch, Scottish sailor and first officer (b. 1873), Wallace Hartley,English violinist (b. 1878), James Paul Moody, English sixth officer (b. 1887), Jack Phillips, British wireless telegraphist (b. 1887), John Jacob Astor IV, American businessman (b. 1864), Thomas Andrews, Irish businessman and shipbuilder (b. 1873), William T. Stead English author and journalist (b. 1849), Isidor Straus co-owner of Macy’s department store (b. 1845), his wife, Rosalie Ida Blun (b. 1849), and Benjamin Guggenheim American businessman (b. 1865). The story of Archie Butt and Frank Millet is only recently coming out.
The grim reaper has been busy on April 15. Recruits include Jean-Paul Sartre (1980), Jean Genet (1986), Greta Garbo (1990), Pol Pot (1998), and Joey Ramone (2001). The stork dropped off Leonardo da Vinci (1452) and Joseph Seagram (1841). In a curious bit of synchronicity, Nikita Khrushchev and Bessie Smith were born April 15, 1894. Everic J. Dupuy arrived in 1984. In 1985 actress Amy Ried (NSFW) made her debut.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”

In the aftermath of 911, the United States needed to get revenge. Afghanistan was invaded. There was little discussion, and the decision was a popular one. The heroin dealers, whose supply of product was endangered by the Taliban, were especially enthusiastic.
Ten and a half years later, there is plenty of heroin. Other than that, there is little improvement. Thousands of Americans have been killed and wounded. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent, at a time when the Government is going deeper and deeper into debt. Untold thousands of people have been killed in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Dubyatiefstan. The end of the tunnel gets darker, and further away, every day.
There have been a lot of lips moving about this war. On today’s Democracy Now, LTC Daniel L. Davis had a few things to say. The following quotes are from a story published in Armed Forces Journal – A Gannett Company. The story was titled Truth, lies and Afghanistan. (Rolling Stone obtained  the full 82 page report.)
I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy. Over the course of 12 months, I covered more than 9,000 miles and talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces. What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground…
I saw the incredible difficulties any military force would have to pacify even a single area of any of those provinces; I heard many stories of how insurgents controlled virtually every piece of land beyond eyeshot of a U.S. or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base. I saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn’t want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government. From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency…
In January 2011, I made my first trip into the mountains of Kunar province near the Pakistan border to visit the troops of 1st Squadron, 32nd Cavalry. On a patrol to the northernmost U.S. position in eastern Afghanistan, we arrived at an Afghan National Police (ANP) station that had reported being attacked by the Taliban 2½ hours earlier.
Through the interpreter, I asked the police captain where the attack had originated, and he pointed to the side of a nearby mountain. “What are your normal procedures in situations like these?” I asked. “Do you form up a squad and go after them? Do you periodically send out harassing patrols? What do you do?”
As the interpreter conveyed my questions, the captain’s head wheeled around, looking first at the interpreter and turning to me with an incredulous expression. Then he laughed. “No! We don’t go after them,” he said. “That would be dangerous!” According to the cavalry troopers, the Afghan policemen rarely leave the cover of the checkpoints. In that part of the province, the Taliban literally run free.
The second part of our double feature is based on a story at Informed Comment, Afghanistan’s Taliban – a differing view of drones. It seems like the people in Stan Land are used to having our flying death machines overhead. “It’s not like the east where you really feel them as a presence, where everyone will have a photo on their cellphone of a drone they took last week. There’s just not the traffic, at least in the city, and I don’t think in the districts as well from what I hear, compared to the east or compared to FATA. It’s not that visceral a thing really, not a big discussion topic. Sometimes you’ll be sitting outside and there’ll be a drone flying over and it’s ‘Oh yes, there’s the drone, fine‘. There is also this big blimp over Kandahar, and when it first went up no-one would let their wives sleep outside, ‘It’s the Americans trying to view our naked wives’.”
There is a book coming out soon, Poetry of the Taliban. In the mad rush to demonize and destroy, it is forgotten that it is human beings we are fighting. “But this is just really guys who write poetry and are Taliban, and then talk about issues they relate to, in sometimes very artistic fashion, in sometimes very simple language. And on a very wide range of subjects. I think also that the Taliban poetry thing had a very different quality when we moved down from Kabul to Kandahar. Because even though a lot of our friends aren’t pro-Talib at all, they would have these tapes with these songs, and would listen to it all the time and it would be on always.”
“I’ve been through the poems looking for references and it doesn’t really come up. The cultural universes of Taliban poems, the songs of the Pakistan Taliban, they’re far more tightly controlled. Interestingly this is another argument to support their being different groups, because the way they go about the songs is different operationally. In Pakistan it goes through a strict production factory, more or less, to make sure the poems properly represent the line they want to take. It’s much more a propaganda product than the stuff that the Afghans come up with. And in the 260 poems we have in our collection there’s not a single mention of drones, and these are poems taken from the south east as well as the south [of Afghanistan].
In the 260 poems we have in our collection there’s not a single mention of drones.”The only thing which comes up and does so twice is the image of Ababil, the green bird, which is a Koranic metaphor for when Abraham is fighting against Nimrud and God sent the green birds to support him. This, I know from talking to Pakistani journalist friends of mine, comes up quite a lot in the drone literature of the Pakistan side, the green birds. The two are often paired together in curious ways. But it’s not really used that way in Afghanistan… Drones don’t really feature in the cultural or aesthetic. Obviously in the videos which come out, which are coming from the east, you’ll have the drone animations and things like that. But that’s coming from the contact with the Pakistanis.”
It should be noted that the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan was drawn by the British, and is disputed today. Much of the territory in Pakistan was in Afghanistan at one time. This is some of the wildest land on earth. It has seen many would be conquerers over the centuries. It will be there when the Americans take their toys home.

This information was originally posted four years ago. PG received a chain letter email about gasoline prices, with these suggestions. With demand increasing, and supply decreasing, the price of petroleum is going to go up. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Only buy or fill up your car or truck in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense the gasoline. When it gets warmer gasoline expands. When you pump in the afternoon or in the evening… your gallon is not exactly a gallon. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the gasoline plays an important role.
When you’re filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a fast mode. If you look you will see that the trigger has three (3) stages: low, middle, and high. You should be pumping on low speed, thereby minimizing the vapors that are created while you are pumping. All hoses at the pump have a vapor return. If you are pumping on the fast rate, some liquid that goes to your tank becomes vapor. Those vapors are being sucked up and back into the underground storage tank so you’re getting less fuel for your money.
Fill up when your gas tank is HALF FULL or HALF EMPTY. The more gas you have in your tank the less air is occupying the empty space. Gasoline evaporates faster than you might imagine. Gasoline storage tanks have an internal floating roof. This roof serves as zero clearance between the gas and the atmosphere, so it minimizes the evaporation.
If there is a gasoline truck pumping into the storage tanks when you stop , DO NOT fill up–most likely the gasoline is being stirred up as the gas is being delivered. You might pick up some of the dirt that normally settles on the bottom.

The current dead tree edition of Creative Loafing has endorsements for upcoming elections. It also has a sticker on the front, advertising one of the mayoral candidates, Lisa Borders.
The only problem is the picture under the sticker. This image is Kasim Reed, who CL has endorsed for Mayor. The sticker is just under the left ear of Mr. Reed, as though he has a large earring advertising his opponent.
This is mildly ironic at worst. A publication can sell ads to whomever has the money. The stickers on the cover are a cute gimmick, and no doubt a welcome profit center for the publication. Still, many picking up the paper are getting a good laugh at this.
Mrs. Borders and Mr. Reed are black. It seems like CL took seriously the memo, recently circulated, about the importance of the next mayor being black.
The next mayor will have to deal with a city going broke. Crucial decisions on how to allocate funds will be made. One of the people running for this office paid big money to put a sticker, advertising her, on the left ear of her opponent. This sticker, and the photo, were on the cover of a publication endorsing the man in the photo. This does not make Lisa Borders look very smart.
The red brick building in the pictures is 939 Piedmont. At one time, PG’s mother, grandmother, and aunt had an apartment there.

The GM plant in Doraville is shut down. The vultures are circling the acreage. Some want to build a new stadium for the Falcons. Others want a mixed use project, with residential and commercial buildings. The area needs either one like a submarine needs a screen door.
PG has an idea for the GM property. The government should build a water reservoir on that land. Perhaps we could divert Nancy Creek and Peachtree Creek to get the water. Maybe we could pump out groundwater.
This may not be the right answer. PG is neither an engineer or a scientist. The environmental impact of having an auto plant on the land for fifty years may be too great to overcome. The land may be too small to make much difference. No doubt the expense would be great, and it might not be cost effective.
Something needs to be done about the water crisis in Atlanta. We have a metropolis of five million people getting water from an overgrown trout stream. Our governments have failed us. They have allowed rampant development, without any thought given to where the water is going to come from.
It is time to quit whining about Alabama and Florida, and find another source of water. There are not going to be any cheap solutions. If the Tennessee River is accessed… a very big if…we will need a pipeline through the mountains to get the water to Atlanta. We might need to use every bit of unused land in the area to build reservoirs, and it still might not be enough.
If the Doraville reservoir was in place now, we could be saving all of this rain we are getting. Put it away for a dry day when we need it. The next drought could start tomorrow. We are going to need bold, expensive measures to solve this problem. The water shortage could do to Atlanta what the levee breaking did to New Orleans. The time to prepare is now.

After PG posted about his Jesus problem, it was off to the Candler Park festival. Driving down a street near the park, PG said there was no parking on this street either, when a space appeared. There was no broken glass on the sidewalk when he returned.
With a warrior President given the Nobel Peace Prize, among other things, PG was getting caught in a rut of negativity. Uzi said “you have a negative attitude”. Going to a friendly, multicultural festival, on an Indian Summer afternoon, would seem to be a chance to be positive.
The food, and designer soap, smelled wonderful, and there was no pressure to buy. A band, the Cassanovas, played blues and rock. At one point, PG and Uzi went into a newly opened section of tents, and the band played a Credence song, “Run through the jungle”. This had been a hit during the war drenched Nixon regime, and here it was played for an audience wallowing in peace.
The land of Candler Park was incorporated into the City 100 years ago. It is a sad story, and some forgiveness would be appreciated. If it is any help, the festival crowd was cheerfully bi racial. Unlike the Piedmont Park Arts Festival, dogs were welcome.
After a while, PG and Uzi set out for dinner. A place in Buckhead proved  too adventurous for PG, and the decision was made to go to Piccadilly Cafeteria. Uzi went in his car, and listened to an NPR report on healthcare and money. PG listened to the Falcons wallop the 49ers.
It is snowing in some places, but in Georgia you can wear shorts and be happy. You can even mix a tie dye shirt with camouflage shorts, and the fashion police look the other way.

PG was reading Carl Hiassen, and the subject was newspapers printing mug shots. Apparently, this is the rage in Florida. A visit to the search engine of the fishwrapper shows that this trend has not spread to Atlanta.
Of course, with google you have other options. PG quickly found a site with mug shots from Dekalb and Gwinnett. For someone with internet access and too much free time, this is dangerous. It should be noted that these photos are of people who have been arrested, not convicted. Some will be found innocent, or have the charges dropped.
In Dekalb, on October 6, 128 people were “mugged”. 11 white men, 3 white women, 87 black men, 14 black women, and 7 hispanic men were guests of the county.
In Gwinnett, things are a bit different. 115 people were processed on October 6. The breakdown is 18 white men, 7 white women, 22 black men, 7 black women, 32 hispanic men, 8 hispanic women, and 1 asian man. It should be noted that this is a blog post, and not an audit. The numbers might not add up.
Many of those in Gwinnett are show “hold for court” as the charge. Also, many of the Gwinnett people ( including all the hispanic women) show “no drivers license” as the charge.
Traditionally, the names of minors,charged with crimes, are not used in the media. This rule is not followed in Gwinnett county. Several of the mug shots are clearly people under age. When the charge is possession of alcohol by a minor, and the face has pimples, it a safe assumption that the person is underage.
If the hairdo police are making arrests, many of these people face further charges.

This is a “Statement from The Elders, Oraibi, Arizona Hopi Nation”. It comes to us courtesy of the Boggsblog. Thank you Mikel Wilson for posting this on Facebook.
You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour. Now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour.
And there are things to be considered: Where are you living? What are you doing?What are your relationships? Are you in right relation? Where is your water? Know your garden.
It is time to speak your Truth. Create your community. Be good to each other. And do not look outside yourself for the leader. This could be a good time!
There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly. Know the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water. See who is in there with you and celebrate.
At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally. Least of all, ourselves. For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.
The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves! Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

PG has been out of action the last few days. Sunday, he was cleaning out his tent, when he felt a nudge on his shoulder. It was a goat. The bad news is, his email was waiting when he got back I used to eat a lot of natural foods, until I learned that most people die of natural causes. There are two kinds of pedestrians the quick and the dead. In Los Angeles, these are known as Dodgers and Angels. Life is sexually transmitted, and always fatal. The only differences between a rut and a grave is the depth and expense. Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing. Even if they tell the truth. Have you noticed since everyone has camcorder these days, no one talks about seeing UFOs like they used to? In the 60’s, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal. How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire? Who was the first person to look at a cow and say,”I think I’ll squeeze these dangly things and drink whatever comes out?”.Was there skeptic to say, “That is udderly ridiculous”? Do illiterate people get the full effect of Alphabet Soup? Can vegetarians appreciate animal crackers? Does pushing the elevator button more than once make it arrive faster? Why doesn’t glue stick to the inside of the bottle? Do you ever wonder why you gave me your email address?

PG was writing his four year post when he went to Avitable to copy his url. While there, PG read a list of rules for blogging. PG does not agree with all the Avitable rules, but it did get him to think. Before long, the PG rules for blogging were on the way. A running list was started, and before long there were thirty entries. Many of them were connected.
It occurred to PG that a lot of the general rules for living have a blogging connection. The ten commandments came to mind…in fact, it was a comment about the first commandment that got PG started. While killing or committing adultery might not happen, the admonishments against stealing, lying, and using the name of G-d improperly are highly relevant.
The first time PG heard the word blog, the dead tree publication was talking about Andrew Sullivan. A “Web log” at the time was called, quaintly, a vanity website. Mr. Sullivan is one of the leading players in the blogosphere today. PG suspects Mr. Sullivan gets is it right more than he does wrong, but needs to check the statistics.
If you want to write something, but don’t know what to write about, Andrew’s blog is a good place to look. He produces some original material, and recycles the work of others. There are several others like this, which you can find easily.
The first general group of rules can be summarized as “Just Do It“. You are not ending world hunger or ending war, you are writing for the internet. The more you write, the more you see to write about. If you keep the quantity up, the quality will take care of itself. The formula for writing is ass plus chair. You are doing this because you enjoy it. Don’t be hurt if everyone does not like your precious blog as much as you think they should.
PG had a job once where the management required a one hour clockout lunch every day. Soon, this became a time to write blog posts. Get the idea, and spit out five hundred words in fifteen minutes. It is not that tough to do, and you can edit, format, and add pictures later.
Blogging is a visual medium. The pictures and videos that you add add punch to the presentation. PG decided at some point that black fonts were obsolete, and that everything would be done in color. While this is not for everyone, it does add a touch to Chamblee54.

Once you have your basic post written, there are a few things you can do. Use short sentences and paragraphs. Look over you text, and eliminate words that don’t need to be there. Assume that the reader is lazy, and make reading your text interesting, easy, and fun.
Use spell check. That is important, and could be said again. Avoid profanity. When you cuss, you shift the readers attention from what you say to the words you use to say it. Use a link to show where you got your information. This is another biggie, for obvious reasons, including respect of other people’s material. And, once again, use spell check.
If you are lucky, people will leave comments at your blog. Comment moderation is a good thing, unless you want people selling generic viagra (in Russian) on your site. A person leaving a comment is doing you a favor. If they ask a tough question or disagree, it means they are paying attention,and taking you seriously.
In general, a blog owner has the right to delete anything not wanted on their blog. When you do this too much, you eliminate the diversity needed for a lively discussion. Of course, you might want nothing but your friends, who say how awesome you are.
When leaving comments, it is good to show courtesy. Do not say anything in a comment that you would not say if the person was standing in front of you. If the person does not use profanity in the blog, you should not use it in the comments. ( Profanity is to be avoided altogether. If you think a bit, you can find a better way to express yourself.)
Andrew Sullivan had a comment about this in “Why I Blog“. “Rudeness, in any case, isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a blogger. Being ignored is. Perhaps the nastiest thing one can do to a fellow blogger is to rip him apart and fail to provide a link.”
There is more to this blogging thing. The blogspot vs. wordpress issue. The technical aspects of basic html. The way to edit pictures, and how to make them fit the spot on the page. A lot of this the veteran blogger already knows, and the novice will find out soon enough. There is really only one thing that does not find any categories, but greatly upsets PG. This is Auto Start music players.
Some people have music players that start the second the page opens. If you are listening to something else you are out of luck. If you are at work, and a music box starts to play with profanity embedded lyrics…you get the picture. Please, for the sake of simple decency, make your music embed a manual start. Trust us, enough people will want to hear your music to click the start button on their own.

There was a feature in the NY Daily News about the death of cursive writing. HT to JoemyG-d. It seems like it is no longer being taught. PG says good riddance.
Cursive refers to the flowing style of handwriting, where the letters are joined. It is from the French word cursif. This is derived from Medieval Latin cursivus, literally, running, from Latin cursus, past participle of currere to run
Cursive sounds like curse, or using bad language. Many people trying to read cursive will curse. The synonym for cuss, however, is from the middle english word curs.
At Ashford Park , print writing was taught in the first grade, and cursive in the third grade. PG learned cursive, and then promptly forgot. He prints when he needs to write, except for a signature. Printing is much, much easier to read.
Some say that with the decline of cursive, that old handwritten letters will be impossible to read. With many cursive writers, they already are. Some people have the patience to write beautifully, but many others scrawl. There is a cliche about doctor’s handwriting on prescriptions. One wonders how many lives have been lost because a pharmacist is not a mind reader.
There is a quote, attributed to an ancient Greek, that “When we start to write, we will lose our ability to remember”. There was grumbling when the printing press replaced hand copied scrolls, and when the typewriter came onto the scene. Whenever machinery advances into manual territory, someone is not going to like it.