Chamblee54

Unless something changes, on September 21 the state of Georgia will poison Troy Davis. Chamblee54 has written about his case four times. ( one , two , three , four ) Regarding the guilt or innocence issue, this blog does not know. Mr. Davis was at the scene of the murder. The only question is who pulled the trigger, and killed Mark MacPhail. Since this is a death penalty case, the state should be much, much more convincing that Mr. Davis is the killer.
There is a wealth of information available about this case. Since the last time he wrote, PG has uncovered a couple of things. The first is a good look at the GDC profile for Troy Davis. It seems as though he was convicted of an assault on August 18, 1989. This is the night before the murder. This assault was probably the shooting Michael Cooper, after Mr. Davis left a party. ( Ruling 082410, page 3). The other possibility is that Mr. Davis was involved in an assault before he went to the party .
A journalist named Kavita Chhibber has a lot of material available about Mr. Davis. She has an interview with Mr. Davis. He talks, a lot, about his belief in G-d. This interview did not convince PG of the innocence of Mr. Davis.
In the previous stories about this case, PG was unable to find a picture of Sylvester “Redd” Coles. This has been corrected. Mr. Coles is said by some to be the killer of Mark MacPhail. He was at the scene of the crime, and owned a .38 handgun similar to the murder weapon. Mr. Coles, and his attorney, John Calhoun, went to the police after the shooting, and snitched out Troy Davis. The police believed the story of Mr. Coles. ( Ruling 082410 page 19 )
“When Coles took the stand, he admitted arguing with Young but said Davis hit the homeless man. He said he had already turned around to run from the parking lot when MacPhail was shot.
Questioned about why he sought out lawyer John Calhoun the day of the murder, Coles told the jury he had worked for Calhoun “off and on.”
The attorney had accompanied Coles to the police station, where he told officers that he saw Davis with a .38-caliber gun just before the murder.
“Why didn’t you just go straight to the police?” asked defense attorney Robert Falligant.
“I don’t know,” Coles said. “That’s what I chose to do.”
What Coles had not told police was that he, too, owned a .38-caliber gun. He later would admit it and say he had stashed the gun in some bushes before going to the Burger King. Coles had been convicted of carrying a concealed weapon and could not legally carry a gun.
During the trial — and since — Davis’ various attorneys have repeatedly asked why Coles and another man at the scene, Daryl “D.D.” Collins, weren’t ever considered suspects by police. Why wasn’t Coles’ house searched after they learned he was carrying a gun that night — the same type as the murder weapon.
Police never recovered a murder weapon — or Coles’ gun or the one he said Davis owned. An expert on ballistics, however, testified that shell casings found near MacPhail’s body matched those found in the subdivision where another man, Michael Cooper, had been shot earlier that night at a pool party. Davis was linked to both locations. “( source )
The death penalty is clumsy and expensive. It is difficult to administer fairly. It is also very popular. How will poisoning the reputed gunman, in a 22 year old case, deter future killers ? There are things that PG does not understand. UPDATE: Troy Davis was poisoned by the State of Georgia September 21, 2011. The time of death was 11:08 pm

Palindromes are phrases that are spelled the same backwards as they are forwards. Barry Duncan is a/the master palindromist. This is a self applied title … “The other, slightly longer, slightly more combative answer is that it means you shouldn’t confuse me with any of those garden-variety, ‘Madam I’m Adam’ hacks who couldn’t paint my shadow.” Mr. Duncan takes reversible phrases very seriously. The article makes a few points much better than this correspondent. When reading these quotes, be aware that the terms “words” and “characters” are used interchangeably. There is a difference between 44,444 words, and a similar number of characters. As it is, it would take 315 tweets to transmit 44,444 characters, and almost no one would realize that the last one is the first one in reverse order. (Quote) “One way that he categorizes them is by length. Those of one hundred or more characters are labeled simply “long.” Palindromes of one hundred or more words he calls “epic.” And palindromes of one thousand or more characters are called “mega.” … “Palindrome-writing in itself is nothing new. Bill Bryson, in his history of the English language, The Mother Tongue, puts the form at at least two thousand years old, citing our knowledge of Greek and Roman palindromes. The word itself derives from the Greek palindromos—“running back again”—and Bryson dates its English debut to 1629. He even claims to have found the first recorded palindrome in English, by the poet John Taylor (“Lewd I did live, & Evil did I dwel”), though, as Bryson points out, the ampersand is a bit of a disqualifier. Palindromes are just one form of wordplay among many. There are anagrams (transpositions of the letters of a word or phrase into a new word or phrase using exactly the same letters), tautonyms (words or phrases of two or more identical parts), isograms (words containing no more than one of any letter), pangrams (groups of words using each and every letter of the alphabet exactly once), bigrams, trigrams, tetragrams, and on we go. Many of these forms of wordplay have been around for quite a long time, but A. Ross Eckler, former editor of Word Ways magazine, dates a “renaissance of interest in recreational linguistics” to the mid-1960s. The growing interest in palindromes themselves can be tracked, indirectly, by the exponential increase in length of the Guinness-recognized world’s longest palindrome: from 242 words in 1971; to 11,125 in 1980; to 44,444 in 1984, sometime after which they seem to have stopped keeping the record.” (/Quote) El Google has a few results for palindrome. Fun with words advertises Georgia Natural Gas and Glenn Beck, before getting down to business. There is a list of popular palindromes…Do geese see God? … Was it Eliot’s toilet I saw? … Murder for a jar of red rum … Some men interpret nine memos. … Never odd or even. … Don’t nod … Dogma: I am God … Never odd or even … Too bad – I hid a boot … Rats live on no evil star … No trace; not one carton … Was it Eliot’s toilet I saw? … Murder for a jar of red rum … May a moody baby doom a yam? … Go hang a salami; I’m a lasagna hog! … Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas! … A Toyota! Race fast… safe car: a Toyota … Straw? No, too stupid a fad; I put soot on warts … Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era? … Doc Note: I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod … Oozy rat in a sanitary zoo … No, it never propagates if I set a gap or prevention … Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna … Sums are not set as a test on Erasmus … Kay, a red nude, peeped under a yak … Some men interpret nine memos … Campus Motto: Bottoms up, Mac … Go deliver a dare, vile dog! … Madam, in Eden I’m Adam … Ah, Satan sees Natasha … Lisa Bonet ate no basil … Do geese see God? … God saw I was dog … Dennis sinned. Special attention is given to the immortal “A man, a plan, a canal – Panama!”. Leigh Mercer published the phrase in the November 13 1948 issue of Notes & Queries. The webmaster of this facility points out that Panama is easy pickings for palindromists, with it’s alternating vowel, and consonants. The origin of this phrase is a matter of speculation. This page advertises a book, More George W. Bushisms: More of Slate’s Accidental Wit and Wisdom of Our 43rd President [Paperback]. Fun with words advertises Verizon stuff, and has lists. Since the list of phrases will probably have repeats from the above list, we will focus on the list of words and place names: aibohphobia, alula, cammac, civic, deified, deleveled, detartrated, devoved, dewed, evitative, Hannah, kayak, kinnikinnik, lemel, level, madam, Malayalam, minim, murdrum, peeweep, racecar, radar, redder, refer, reifier, repaper, reviver, rotator, rotavator, rotor, sagas, solos, sexes, stats, tenet, terret, tests, Glenelg (Australia), Kanakanak (Alaska), Kinikinik (Colorado), Navan (Meath, Ireland), Neuquen (Argentina), Ward Draw (South Dakota), Wassamassaw (South Carolina), Yreka Bakery (Yreka, California). Some of these phrases are worth repeating. We will try to weed out the dupes, but reversable fatigue may set in first: A dog, a plan, a canal: pagoda … A new order began, a more Roman age bred Rowena … A tin mug for a jar of gum, Nita … Able was I ere I saw Elba … Animal loots foliated detail of stool lamina … Anne, I vote more cars race Rome to Vienna … Are we not drawn onward, we few, drawn onward to new era? … Are we not pure? “No sir!” Panama’s moody Noriega brags. “It is garbage!” Irony dooms a man; a prisoner up to new era … As I pee, sir, I see Pisa! … Barge in! Relate mere war of 1991 for a were-metal Ernie grab! … Bombard a drab mob… Bush saw Sununu swash sub … Cain: a maniac … Cigar? Toss it in a can. It is so tragic … Daedalus: nine. Peninsula: dead … Dammit, I’m mad! … Delia saw I was ailed … Denim axes examined … Dennis and Edna sinned … Depardieu, go razz a rogue I draped … Desserts, I stressed! .. Did I draw Della too tall, Edward? I did? .. Do good? I? No! Evil anon I deliver. I maim nine more hero-men in Saginaw, sanitary sword a-tuck, Carol, I — lo! — rack, cut a drowsy rat in Aswan. I gas nine more hero-men in Miami. Reviled, I (Nona) live on. I do, O God! … Drab as a fool, aloof as a bard … Drat Saddam, a mad dastard! … Draw, O coward! … Draw pupil’s lip upward … Ed, I saw Harpo Marx ram Oprah W. aside … Eva, can I stab bats in a cave? .. Evil did I dwell; lewd I did live … Gateman sees name, garageman sees name tag … Go hang a salami; I’m a lasagna hog … Goldenrod-adorned log … Golf? No sir, prefer prison-flog … Harass sensuousness, Sarah … I roamed under it as a tired, nude Maori … Laminated E.T. animal … Lepers repel … Let O’Hara gain an inn in a Niagara hotel … Live not on evil … Lived on Decaf; faced no Devil … Lonely Tylenol … Ma is a nun, as I am … Ma is as selfless as I am … Madam in Eden, I’m Adam … Marge lets Norah see Sharon’s telegram … May a moody baby doom a yam … Meet animals; laminate ’em … Mr. Owl ate my metal worm … Murder for a jar of red rum … Never odd or even … No, Mel Gibson is a casino’s big lemon … No cab, no tuna nut on bacon … No lemon, no melon … No sir — away! A papaya war is on … On a clover, if alive, erupts a vast, pure evil; a fire volcano … Party boobytrap … Poor Dan is in a droop … Reviled did I live, said I, as evil I did deliver … Rise to vote, sir … Saw tide rose? So red it was … Senile felines … So many dynamos! .. Some men interpret nine memos … Stab nail at ill Italian bats … Stack cats … Stella won no wallets … Step on no pets … Stop! Murder us not, tonsured rumpots! … Straw? No, too stupid a fad; I put soot on warts … T. Eliot, top bard, notes putrid tang emanating, is sad. I’d assign it a name: gnat dirt upset on drab pot-toilet … Tarzan raised Desi Arnaz’ rat … Ten animals I slam in a net … Too bad I hid a boot … Was it a car or a cat I saw? … Wonder if Sununu’s fired now … Won’t I panic in a pit now? … Won’t lovers revolt now? … Yo, banana boy! … Yo, Bob! Mug o’ gumbo, boy! … Yo, bottoms up! (U.S. motto, boy.) As some have noted, a popular entertainer has the last name Palin. She has a blog, Welcome To The PalinDrome: Sarah Palin’s Blog. The last post was October 2, 2008. We don’t want to Harass Sarah. We got tired of her a while back, just like this story about palindromes is getting tiresome. HT for the Barry Duncan story goes to the non reversible Andrew Sullivan. Pictures for this story are from The Library of Congress.

A certain blogger wrote a piece about Somalia. She quoted a story in occasional links & commentary . That story was a rehash of a British newspaper article, Somalia was a sideshow in the war on terror – and is paying a colossal price. To hear this blogger, some want to blame America for everything that goes right, or wrong, in the world. The truth is we are not that bad, or baaad.
According to the Guardian, after 911 America went crazy. Anywhere we saw a chance to fight terrorism, we jumped in. Some of the natives saw an opportunity, snitched out their rivals, and got America to help them . The word got out that Al Queda was active in Somalia, and a secret war broke out.
“From the start Somalia was sucked into the war on terror, a hapless bit-part player in a much bigger global drama. The presence of a small number of people with links to al-Qaida was sufficient to provoke US anxieties that the country could become a haven for al-Qaida members fleeing Afghanistan. Soon after 9/11, the US froze the assets of Somalia’s biggest remittance agency and a pillar of the economy, al-Barakat, and many lost money. Another US counterterrorism measure criminalised organisations whose support could end up in the hands of those with terrorist links. This has made any negotiations with al-Shabaab over aid to the regions they control very difficult for aid agencies.”
“The roots of al-Shabaab’s rise lie in that fatal US miscalculation (backed by the EU) to support with air strikes Ethiopia’s occupation of Somalia and remove the relatively moderate Islamic Courts Union, despite it being the only force to have achieved any degree of stability in the country in the past 20 years. Deep historic enmity between Ethiopia and Somalia provided al-Shabaab with the chance to exploit widespread nationalist anger to gain power.”
A key phrase here is “backed by the EU”. When the British journalist discusses this mess, it is Western relief efforts. When the certain blogger is typing, it is the United States. The certain blogger is not the only person making this mistake.
A comparison is made in these stories to the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The writers here look like they were too young to hear the reports from Cambodia as they happened. PG was old enough to hear the reports, which unfortunately were rather sketchy… just like the justification for the Wars in Indochina. The Government lips never stopped moving.
What happened was that the War in Vietnam spread to Cambodia. The North Vietnamese would cross the border, into Cambodia, to get away from the American troops. Bombing raids were made in Cambodia, and later a land troop “incursion”. Where Cambodia had been a peaceful monarchy, the Communists took advantage of the war chaos to take over. While Cambodia was probably not “nice barbarians living among flowers in the state of eternal innocence”, there is little doubt they would be much better off if the Vietnam War had not been fought next door.
What is happening in Somalia is a tragedy. With the distrust of the West, it will be difficult to help feed the starving people. While there might be a famine without the “global war on terror”, the American killing machine does not help make things better. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress .

This is a double repost, about the custom of middle names. The part about Presidential middle names was written during the 2008 campaign. Pictures are from The Library of Congress .
With the current controversy about the Middle name of Barack Hussein Obama, perhaps it is time for a look at the lessons of history. George Washington did not have a middle name. Nor the rest of the early Presidents. The first one to have a middle name (or initial) is John Quincy Adams. J.Q. Adams is the first son of a president to hold the office. Many current observers wish he were still the only one.
The next POTUS to show a middle initial was William Henry Harrison. He was the first victim of the Zero Factor, in which Presidents elected in years ending in zero died in office. This tradition was ended by Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Another Zero Factor President, Abraham Lincoln, did not have a middle name. Ulysses S. Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant. One legend has a mistake on a school application giving him the middle name Simpson, after his mother’s maiden name. Moving into the twentieth century, William Howard Taft was referred to by all three names.
In many ways, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the first president of the modern age. For some reason, his middle name was frequently used, and the initials FDR became popular. Presidential initials did not become popular again until JFK and LBJ. After FDR went to the fireside chat in the sky, Harry S. Truman became president. The S stood for nothing.
The next president whose middle name was frequently used was John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Could this be a subtle dig at his Irish background, much as the current noise about B. Hussein Obama? As for Baines and Milhous, those both seemed to fit the personality of the man in the oval office.
After Tricky Dick was helicopered out of the White House, the use of Presidential middle names went into decline. Gerald Rudolph Ford would be a good trivia question. George Herbert Walker Bush downplayed his quadruple initials, perhaps knowing that many people don’t trust a man with two middle names. George Walker Bush is frequently referred to by his middle initial. Some even refer to the current “War on Terror” as “World War W”.
In the current election, we have a dark skinned man with a Muslim middle name. We have a white haired republican with the middle name of Sidney. And we have a married woman, who uses her maiden name as a middle name. Her original middle name is Diane. Thanks to wikipedia for help in researching this story.






Last year, PG heard a lot of fuss about the middle name of Barack Hussein Obama. This led to a post on the subject of Presidential Middle Names . That post is still getting google hits, and PG appreciates any traffic he can get.
While researching this feature, PG noticed that many of the early presidents did not have middle names . Apparently, before the American Revolution, middle names were seldom given. For some reason the custom caught on during the 19th century. When America started to draft men for World War I, the draft papers included a space for the middle name.
One possible reason for middle names was population density and increased family size. Many people began to have the same first name ( or Christian name) and last name ( Surname). Middle names were a way to distinguish between Jimmy Bob Jones and Jimmy Joe Jones. There was possibly a bit of status involved in having more than one name.
Women have long used the maiden name as a middle name after marriage. Girls were often not given middle names for this reason. The hyphenated Maiden-Married name is a fairly recent custom (Which this author hopes is a fad that will go away).
While middle names were originally a decoration, many are now used as a primary identification. PG is referred to as a diminutive of his middle name, which can be confusing when authorities insist on using his first name. The middle name is also a handy alternative for someone who gets tired of the name they are called by. There is also this thought …”I think parents give kids middle names so the kids will know when they are really p****d at them.” (That forum has an interesting post about Asian names and languages.) For some reason, people on trial for spectacular felonies are always referred to by all three names.

This is my 911 story. I repeat it every year at this time. Pictures today are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
I was at work, and someone called out that someone had run a plane into the World Trade Center. I didn’t think much of it, until I heard that the second tower had been hit, then the Pentagon, then the towers collapsed, then a plane crashed in Pennsylvania.
I focused on my job most of the day. There was always a lot of melodrama at that facility, and concentrating on my production duties helped to keep me saner. This was roughly the halfway point of my seven year tenure at this place.
One of the other workers was a professional Jesus worshiper. He was a hateful loudmouth. After the extent of the damage became known, he shouted “ They are doing this for Allah” , and prayed at his desk. The spectacle of the PJW praying made me want to puke.
I became alienated from Jesus during these years. Once, I had once been tolerant of Christians and Jesus, as one would be with an eccentric relative. I began to loath the entire affair. I hear of others who found comfort in religion during this difficult time.  That option simply was not available for me.

Dear Irene: Thank you for fulfilling all my expectations of being a blissful non-event, except for making a few friends and my parrot manic. /// I had friends over for a hurricane party last night. One of them said, “Hey, why’s your bathtub full of water?” “It’s for the toilet,” I said. “Who knows if the water is gonna be be shut off?” “Oh,” he said, like that settled it. And then two hours later, when everybody went home, I saw a turd floating in it. /// I can’t believe that this much earwax is coming out of my body … that’s a TMI, isn’t it? /// Sexauer is an ordinary German name referring to one who came from Sexau, in Germany. Looking for a Mr. Sexauer, a man in Washington called at the Senate Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee. Helping him, a girl employee called the Banking and Currency Committee by telephone to check, and inquired politely, ‘Do you have a Sexauer over there?’ ‘Listen,’ the girl switchboard operator snapped, ‘We don’t even have a ten-minute coffee break anymore.’ – Elsdon C. Smith, Treasury of Name Lore, 1967 /// “Men without souls don’t cry.” #TrueBlood /// “you lived up there like an insane squirrel” #TrueBlood /// Irene threw my guitar WAY out of tune. ./// “I’ll think about that tomorrow……after all tomorrow is another day”. Scarlett O’Hara /// “The worst part about being in the homosexual mafia is that awkward moment after the kiss of death.” /// “I’d like to have a word with anyone who thinks I’m argumentative!” /// “Study nature. Love nature. Stay close to nature. It will never fail you.” ~ Frank Lloyd Wright /// “If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.” — Socrates /// “Legislators have no right to torture living creatures who are subject to the drives nature gave them.” Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, 1870, /// “We often suffer, but we are never crushed. Even when we don’t know what to do, we never give up.” – Captain America? /// René Descartes is sitting in a bar. The bartender asks him if he’d like another drink. He says, “I think not” — and vanishes. /// When you speak and or complain of past encounters and experiences, what you say, true or false, positive or negative, reveals more about your attitude and you as a person than about the topic of which you are speaking. /// If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for a reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. -Albert Einstein /// THOMAS, I was at work and had my phone on vibrate when you first called, it was late and I was in bed with wife the second time you called, I answered, but I could not talk. I would love to talk to you. I remember the hot time we had together. M-F 10AM-7PM are the best times to call. Hope to hear from you baby boy. /// Take care and remember that tomorrow will come. Dont stress, relax, let life roll off your back. Except for death and paying taxes everything in life….. is only for now. – Avenue Q /// We cast away priceless time in dreams… born upon imagination, fed upon illusion, and put to death by reality. -Judy /// No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible. -W.H //./ Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. /// This is for all the strong ladies, who have been through a lot in life and survived!!!! I am strong because I know weakness, I am compassionate because I have experienced suffering, I am alive because I am a fighter, I am wise because I’ve been foolish, I can laugh because I have known sadness. I can love because I ‘ve known loss. Repost if you are a strong woman who has weathered the storm but still love to dance in the rain!!! /// Today in depressing realizations: I am old now than Norma Desmond was in “Sunset Boulevard.”/// Criminal Records is only good for condescending stares from the employees cause you’ve never heard their favorite band and high prices. /// What Do You Mean, My Birth Certificate Expired? /// Others campers called 911 Sunday morning after realizing the man was unresponsive, Dickey said. The man had been slumped over his chair in the same position for several hours, police said. The man was transported to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead. /// The days of leaving class at late thirty, sitting in the library all alone studying, countless smoke breaks, and the rewarding masturbation have commenced. /// “In literature, as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.” — André Maurois /// “I know a professor of philosophy whose hobby is to quietly crush biscuit boxes in a supermarket.” /// A burglar broke into a home. He heard a soft voice say,Jesus is watching you”. Thinking it was just his imagination, he continued his search. Again, Jesus is watching you”. He turned his flashlight around, saw a parrot in a cage. He asked the parrot if he was the one talking. The parrot said yes. He asked the parrot his name, the parrot said,”Moses” The burglar asked What kind of people would name a parrot Moses? The parrot says “The same kind of people who would name their pitbull Jesus /// “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” —- Isaac Asimov /// Mirrors don’t talk … and lucky for me they don’t laugh either! /// Bertrand Russell’s 20 favorite words , given in response to a reader’s inquiry in 1958: alabaster, alembic, apocalyptic, astrolabe, begrime, chorasmean, chrysoprase, diapason, ecstacy, fulminate, golden, heath, incarnadine, ineluctable, inspissated, pilgrim, quagmire, sublunary, terraqueous, wind. Alphabetization by Chamblee54. /// Liberals need a subgroup as unstable and badly dressed as the Tea Party. They would be called the Donner Party, after the 19th-century cannibals, and they would demand 100 percent taxes on the rich and free abortions at McDonald’s. /// “Angry people want you to see how powerful they are…loving people want you to see how powerful You are.” – Chief Red Eagle /// Me: “Cats do not drink Gator-Ade. They do not stick their noses in my glass.” Cats: “Whatever. Meow.” /// Is it against the law to eat ice cream in hell? /// No one can think clearly who thinks only with their head. /// Selah

This adventure story is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Today was the day to fix the dripping faucet in the kitchen. After breakfast, and with the roommate at church, the toolbox was opened, and a screwdriver pulled out. The cap on the faucet popped off, and the handle was pulled off. Next was a very big ring thing around the contraption, so another trip was made to the tool box, this time to get a very big adjustable wrench. The big ring came off reasonably well, and the skinny ring below it came off with a bit of effort. Now, the issue was getting the thingbob (spell check suggestion:thingamabob)out of the big bolt, so I could replace the washer.
Since there were grooves on the big bolt, it would seem to reason that the thingbob was screwed into it. A third trip to the tool box was made, and a pair of pliers brought out.
It should be noted at this point that there are technically three toolboxes here. There is the big red box, the smaller red box, used to be in the car, and the paper box lid. Two years ago, when I put the gutters up, I carried all the tools needed for that chore in the paper box lid, and never put them up. The paper box lid operates as a de facto tool box.
So the thingbob doesn’t want to come out. Twisting it with the pliers does no good, and only serves to flatten the grooves on the bigbolt, and make it a funny shape. This will cause problems later when it is time to put humpty dumpty (spell check suggestions:Humphrey,dumpy)( As bad as Richard Nixon was, would Hubert Humphrey have been any better?) back together.
Time to go to google, and look for install a washer. I see a bunch of articles about installing a washing machine, and even more ads of people who would like to install it for me. I try googling “fix a faucet”, and get a long list of people who can fix my faucet. I finally find a home repair site, determine that this is a compression faucet, with a repair that the man says is easy. This is about the level of usefulness I find at the rest of the site.
I find the step by step instructions for installing a washer, only to click in the wrong place and am returned to the page that tells me what type of faucet I am working with. I am starting to yell cusswords at the screen. After seeing the illustrated page, that tells me to cut off the water to the faucet, I find the page telling me how to get the thingbob out of the big bolt. It said to use pliers.
I go back to the kitchen, attach the pliers to the thingbob, shake it a few times gently, and pull it out of the big bolt. I pull the washer at the bottom of the hole out, put the whole device in a plastic cup, and head to Lowes.
I get to the plumbing department, and look for someone to help me. After asking a man with dreadlocks for help, asking a bearded man for help, pushing a red button, and waiting a few minutes, an African African comes to help. He did find a brand new thingbob that was a pretty good match for the old one. I pay for the thingbob and go home.
Does the washer in the bottom go up this way or that way? How do you get it in the little hole in any event? Finally, the thingbob is ready to go in the big bolt. The skinny ring goes on with some difficulty. The big ring goes on with even more difficulty. The handle goes on, after a few more cuss words and a bit of effort. I understand now why plumbers drink so much.
The moment of truth arrives. I turn the water on under the sink, turn the handle, the water comes on, and turn the handle off, the water stops. At first there is no drip, and I start to put the tools up. Then I notice that it is dripping. I turn the water off at the other faucet under the sink, and the dripping stops. I take the package the thingbob came in and go back to Loews to get another.
Replacing the second knob was a bit easier than the first, except when I dropped the spring in the pipe and couldn’t find it. I finally replaced it with an old spring, put the washer, thingbob, and rings in place. The water was turned on under the sink, the handle was turned, the water came out, the water was cut off, and DID NOT LEAK.

PG turned down the heat on his Kroger noodles, and set the timer for ten minutes. He is going to work on this post for those ten minutes, and publish the results. Pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Clarissa sounds like the name of a hair care product. Instead, it is the name of a lady with a blog. She published a story recently, saying that one way to make your blog instantly popular was to publish a story with the title you see above. Actual knowledge about Dr. Paul, the liberation movement, or bowel movements is optional. HT to Unqualified Offerings.
In Atlanta GA, libertarianism is synonymous with Neal Boortz. The radio whiner is a chicken hawk. He got out of military service during the Vietnam War. ( He finished college in 1967 . He was prime cannon fodder. Someone took his place in ‘Nam.) Once his ass was safe, Mr. Boortz never saw a war he did not like. Dr. Paul was in the Air Force, and is opposed to the current armed follies.
Both Mr. Boortz and Dr. Paul are UGLY. Herman Cain is the only Republican hopeful with worse hair than Ron Paul. This would seem to a point in favor of Dr. Paul being a libertarian. Most libertarians PG has known are ugly, lazy, and generous with their opinions.
Neal Boortz did not name a son for a typewriter. Ron Paul does not advertise products he does not use.
Neal Boortz does not appreciate Jane Fonda. A forum called Godlike Productions has this comment: “Re: ron paul looks like a commie sympathizer…I bet he picks Jane fonda as his running mate.”

There was a story in the fishwrapper this morning, Gov’t survey: Illicit pot smoking on the rise. It repeats an AP story. PG has a taste for government induced brain damage, and wanted to read the report. He sent to phrase “A new government survey says more Americans are smoking marijuana” to Mr. Google, and waited 0.51 seconds.
The Sacramento Bee has the top result. They print the same AP story verbatim, including the headline. They advertise Verizon, and a local Toyota dealer.
It is the same at the Houston Chronicle , the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Kansas City Star. They copy the AP story verbatim, including the headline.
The *fifth* result at google city is from The National Institute on Drug Abuse. The report is titled “NIDA InfoFacts: Marijuana. ” The information in the report was last revised November 2010. There is little new information in the report.
Yahoo News, the Seattle pi, the Miami Herald, the Bellingham Herald , Forbes, and the Huffington Post all repeat the AP story. None of the news sources, on the Google front page, wrote a new headline. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress . They were taken by Dorothea Lange.

There was a post at this facility recently about aphorisms. As it turns out, there are a lot of expressions in english for a clever combination of words. A prominent one was epigram. No, this is not a message to Aunt Eppie, although it could be. (The “real” name of former advice columnist Ann Landers is Esther “Eppie” Friedman Lederer. She was the twin sister of Pauline Friedman Phillips, who dispensed advice under the handle Dear Abby.) The first non wikipedia result at google city for epigram was The Best Epigrams from Literature, Poetry, Politics, Science, Sports. It is a lengthy piece of work by Michael R. Burch. He says that aphorisms are a subset of epigrams… “Epigrams which convey truths or principles are called aphorisms.” Mr. Burch mentions other names for clever sayings: adage, anecdote, aphorism, apophthegm, axiom, bon mot, boondoggle, bromide, buffoonery, catchphrase, cliche, chestnut, chiasmus, dictum, doggerel, encomium, epigram, epitaph, epithet, etcetera, folk wisdom, formula, gag, gnome, ha-ha, hillbilly humor, homily, horseplay, hoodwink, jape, jest, joke, lark, leg-pulling, limerick, maxim, monkeyshine, moral, motto, mummery, one-liner, pithy saying, platitude, precept, proverb, quip, quirk, quote, raillery, rib, sally, saw, saying, short poems, snow job, spoonerism, tomfoolery, truism, vagary, waggery, whimsy, wisdom of the ages, witticisms, zingers. This page is a pretty good effort. There is at least one mistake, and it is a doozie. He credits the phrase “take my wife, please” to Rodney Dangerfield. The owner of that catchphrase is Henny Youngman. While his effort to give Mr. Dangerfield some respect is appreciated, this is just plain wrong. If you are not prone to wisdom fatigue, this site is a good place to visit. Mr. Burch covers various types of epigrams, and gives numerous examples. He does dwell on some traditional heros of wordplay, such as Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Parker, Mark Twain, Will Rogers, and Yogi Berra (the only one of that crowd with a World Series ring.) He has a fine section with the racy title Epigrams about Epigrams. This will be part two of today’s story. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. These men were Union soldiers during the War Between the States … What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole; Its body brevity, and wit its soul. —Samuel Taylor Coleridge … Since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief. —William Shakespeare … To write an epigram, cram. If you lack wit, scram! —Michael R. Burch … An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half.—Karl Kraus … An epigram is a flashlight of a truth; a witticism, truth laughing at itself.—Minna Antrim … An epigram is only a wisecrack that’s played at Carnegie Hall.—Oscar Levant … Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.—W. Somerset Maugham … Certain brief sentences are peerless in their ability to give one the feeling that nothing remains to be said.—Jean Rostand … Epigrams succeed where epics fail.—Persian Proverb … There are aphorisms that, like airplanes, stay up only while they are in motion.—Vladimir Nabokov … An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.—Friedrich Schlegel … Exclusively of the abstract sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism.—Samuel Taylor Coleridge … In the mountains the shortest route is from peak to peak, but for that you must have long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks: and those to whom they are spoken should be big and tall of stature.—Friedrich Nietzsche … It is the nature of aphoristic thinking to be always in a state of concluding; a bid to have the final word is inherent in all powerful phrase-making.—Susan Sontag … Most maxim-mongers have preferred the prettiness to the justness of a thought, and the turn to the truth; but I have refused myself to everything that my own experience did not justify and confirm.—Lord Chesterfield … Aphorisms … are the forms of ”eternity”; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book.—Friedrich Nietzsche … Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart’s blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink.—Francis H. Bradley … If, with the literate, I am, Impelled to try an epigram,  I never seek to take the credit;  We all assume that Oscar said it. — Dorothy Parker … Brevity is the soul of lingerie. —Dorothy Parker … Selah.

While researching a post about Molly Ivins, PG stumbled onto a lovely site called Booknotes. ( Auto start warning. Nobody is perfect.) This site enables authors promoting their latest books. It seems to have gone out of business in December 2004, but the interviews are still available. PG likes to listen to “stuff” while he edits pictures, and Booknotes appears to be a treasure chest.
The multi tasking soundtrack last night was a chat with Hendrik Hertzberg, who is familiar to readers of The New Yorker. BTW, the majority of TNY readers live west of the Hudson River. Supposedly, the biggest number of readers is in California.
In 1965, Mr. Hertzberg was about to get drafted. At the time, this meant a one way ticket to Vietnam. Young men looked for alternatives to this, some of which were legal and moral. Mr. Hertzberg heard about an organization called the National Student Association. “And so I went to work after college for the National Student Association for a year. And it wasn`t just because the National Student Association was a wonderful cause that advanced liberal ideas and fought communism abroad and all of that sort of thing. Later, we learned that it was a CIA front, but I didn`t know that. What I did know was that if you worked for the National Student Association, you didn`t get drafted, that — it wasn`t exactly that you were deferred, but anyway, nobody got drafted while working for the National Student Association, so it was a way to have a year without worrying about getting drafted.”
The National Student Association has a facebook page, which one person likes. “The 1967 revelation of NSA’s ties to the Central Intelligence Agency sparked a national scandal, but did not measurably damage NSA.”
The CIA was involved in all sorts of things in those days. ( It still is today.) One of the fronts was Radio Free Europe. When PG was a kid, the cartoon shows had a commercial for Radio Free Europe. (It was different from the one embedded here.) These fund raising commercials were part of the scam. These commercials netted around $50k a year, out of a total budget of several million dollars. ( source )
Soon after the war stories, the conversation turns to religion/tribal allegiance. LAMB: Explain this. “The Nuremberg laws would say I`m Jewish. The Law of Return would say I`m not.” HERTZBERG: Well, according to the Nuremberg laws, if you have a — if you had a Jewish father, the Nazi classification, you were a Jew. But the Law of Return, where — what entitles you to citizenship, automatic citizenship in Israel, you`ve got to have to have a Jewish mother. So I`m Jewish one way, I`m not Jewish the other way. I guess I feel sort of 51 percent Jewish because my name, Hertzberg, sounds Jewish, and therefore, people respond to me, often assume that I`m … 100 percent Jewish.”
This conversation was in 2004, when BHO was a little known Senator. Today, BHO, who had a white mother, is routinely considered black. If you go by the laws of the Nazis, BHO is black. If you go by the laws of Israel, BHO is white.
Mr. Hertzberg took a break from journalism to write speeches for President Jimmy Carter. Mr. Hertzberg is a member of the Judson Wellover Society. HERTZBERG: Judson Wellover was the very first White House speech writer. Not the first person to write speeches, ghost write speeches for a president — that would probably be Alexander Hamilton for George Washington — but the first person who was ever hired just to write speeches in the White House was Judson Wellover. He was hired by Warren G. Harding, and he — it was such a matter — it was such a shameful thing to have somebody writing — hired to write speeches that they hid his salary in the budget of the White House garage. And when we started, when Bill Safire and I started the Judson — the society of sort of a marching and chatter society or dinner — we have a dinner every couple of years of White House speech writers from all administrations, we named it after Judson Wellover.
Warren Harding is credited/blamed for coining the phrase “founding fathers”. It is not known whether Mr. Wellover was involved. Pictures today are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. The spell check suggestion for Hertzberg is Herbert.

A blog called Unqualified Offerings has a thought provoking story this morning. It is about the apparent victory of rebel forces in Libya. There is a quote from The Economist that puts the net up.
“Libya will have an impact on NATO too. The military alliance that faced down the Red Army might have been expected to crush the clumsy forces of Colonel Qaddafi in days. Instead it took five months of fighting and 17,000 air sorties. An embarrassment for NATO? Not at all. The alliance has had a good war so far (who said “stalemate” not long ago?) and is winning the best kind of victory given the circumstances: one achieved mostly by Libyans themselves. Rebels entered the capital without a single Western soldier visible on the ground (though there were some special forces). NATO air attacks, as well as weapons supplied by friendly Gulf states, aided the rebels. But they alone manned trenches, which will give them added legitimacy in months to come. “
Those weren’t boots on the ground, they were Gucci loafers. The CIA, and the for profit contractors, have been active in Libya for a long time. This “coalition of the billing” represents the USA just as much as the young troops we love to love. And the people they kill are just as dead.
Another item in the Economist quote was the 17k air sorties. It is assumed that most of those were by the United States. It is another safe assumption that with jet fuel, and laser guided smart bombs, that these air sorties cost a pile of money. At a time when the government is broke, and the Washington wise guys are screaming for cuts in spending, the cost of these air sorties needs to be looked at. ( The special forces are also more expensive to operate than uniform troops.)
PG first heard of Unqualified Offerings in the fallout after the Mavi Marmara incident. There were two posts, I Already Shot You, and 60-Year Mortgage . . . Of BLOOD Bwa Ha Ha! Here are a few quotes.
“Israel not only no longer faces any enemies who pose an existential threat, it doesn’t even have enemies who can thwart any strongly held Israeli policy aim. No state is going to go to war to “destroy Israel.” I doubt any state particularly wants to. Certainly no state that might want to can do so. But beyond that, no state is going to go to war on behalf of the Palestinians and the Palestinians lack the power to launch an effective war on their own behalf.”
“For all practical purposes, Israel has its original goal, formal control of all of Mandate Palestine west of the Jordan, within its grasp. Because it’s not completely insensible to global political reality, it can’t just annex the West Bank and be done with it, but it can plainly add any given piece of the West Bank to itself at any time. Roughly ten percent of Israel’s Jewish population lives in the West Bank or East Jerusalem. They’re not moving back. Israel does have to finesse the public-relations of the process, but the public relations are subordinate to the process. And Israel has to deal with the demographic issue: there are all these darn Palestinians. Everyone thinks that eventually Israel has to make nice with them somehow. Israeli actions suggest that Israel thinks it just needs them cowed and poor. And while a visible expulsion would look bad for the cameras, there’s always “encouraging” Palestinians to emigrate over time.”
” Viewed institutionally and leaving moral questions aside, it counts as a triumph of grand strategy. Israel bought off Egypt with Egypt’s own territory. It convinced Jordan to bow out, and plain beat Syria like a rodeo clown. Lebanon could be broken any time and was, and the Lebanese were always falling all over themselves to help. At this point, Israel has also destroyed the ability of the Palestinians to mount any consequential resistance of their own. Just as Hezbollah couldn’t occupy a single Israeli exurb in a trial of a thousand years, no Palestinian organization can stop Israel from planting its flag on any particular spot of the West Bank for so much as a week.”
” This is not Israel “shooting itself in the foot.” This is Israel winning. Be for that or against it, but at least recognize it.”
“On the other side, frequently foreigners make sad faces. I am thinking that Israel counts this among the acceptable costs. You can consider this anything from a travesty of justice to the fulfillment of God’s Divine Plan. But it sure looks like “winning” to me, on its own terms. “
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress .