More Background Noise

November had a bumper crop of Utah strangeness.

First was the three-way pissing contest between Mayor Rocky, the SLC Town Council, and the LDS Church over the Main Street Plaza easement. In a deal brokered by prior mayor Dee Dee Coridini during her term., the LDS purchased the one block of Main Street that passes through their two blocks of buildings to create a pedestrian plaza and place of serenity between Temple Square and the Conference Center. They paid the city $8M. In return they agreed to the City retaining an easement that allows unrestricted public access and thoroughfare through the plaza. The sticking point is that the LDS wants to regulate behavior on the plaza - no swearing, no smoking, no drinking, etc - with the huge issue being no protesting. Now the LDS is unhappy about that and wants the city to give up the easement. Rocky Anderson has a slight problem with that - some little concern about First Amendment rights and all - and believes that the easement is absolutely essential to maintaining public access and the same free speech rights that any citizen has on any other city street or park.

Then we have the case where a teacher of a high school junior English class in a question on a mid-term exam asked the students to compare the precepts of transcendentalism with "The Words of Wisdom" (an LDS book that offers up virtues to live by). The non-LDS kids understandably felt they were at a bit of a disadvantage. And people outside of Utah wonder why there aren't Mormon private schools like there are Catholic and Jewish schools elsewhere. It often seems our public schools are Mormon schools.

Finally there's the mayor of Virgin who claims that "there isn't and never was a $25 fee for people wanting to appear before the town council", despite it being the first rule on the list of regulations for addressing the council at their public meetings. What’s more, even after you pay your fee, the topic still has to be approved by the Mayor. To be sure that you would actually be heard, an issue of the town newsletter suggested that prospective speakers keep their comments “positive”. When the Mayor was asked about this curious fee in a theoretic democracy, his response was "Well, we never actually charged anyone, and if we did I'm sure it was a mistake." When a number of people produced receipts or cancelled checks showing they paid the fee, his response was "Well, it's a fee that didn't have to be paid." So once again the mayor of Virgin proves he and the town council are raving idiots and bald-faced liars. This is the same town that passed an ordinance 2 years ago requiring every household in Virgin to have a gun. Is it the water down there? Is it radiation? Are they all smoking crack? Is there some kind of celestial vortex that attracts lunatics to that part of Utah?

Happy Satanic Christmas

One day last week I had the Today show on while bumbling about doing morning stuff. Then they had one of their guests on.......
I have seen the gates of hell. I've peered into the very face of the demon. I heard and saw the anti-christ. The hell-spawn that will annihilate us all is Barry Manilow. His epoxied-on, perpetual smiling visage peered out from the electron fog of the picture tube as he launched into his version of White Christmas/Happy Holidays. I immediately felt the waves of nausea envelop me as the wreched dreck the ass clowns at the Today show have been sodomized into thinking was music and singing reverberated off the green-pea soup plastered walls of our living room. I ran to find a long screwdriver with which to gouge out my eardrums and plunge into my brain. More than anything I wanted the madness to stop.
I've seen the face of pure evil - the demonic grin of Barry Manilow.

Background Noise

What do I mean when I say that there's a lot of background noise to deal with when living in Utah? Here's a recent example....
Like all governors, our Mike Leavitt has signed proclamations honoring all sorts of things - Rodeo Day, Wells Fargo Day, Peach Day, Home School Day, Jello Day. However he refused to join the 20 other governors declaring last week "World Population Awareness Week", sponsored by the D.C. based Population Institute.

The reasons given by Leavitt spokesperson Natalie Gochnour were that proclamations are granted to Utah organizations and "This is a national organization". OK. Fair enough I suppose (although Jello is stretching it a bit). More disturbingly though, she said the zero population growth message is not consistent with Utah values.

Barf.

Geek Alert!

Disturbingly cool - I think. The Internet License Plate Gallery

Toys for Boys

My friend went and bought himself a toy. Take a peek at Bob's Corvette

Read the page and you'll see some rambling about male menopause and mid-life crisis. I dunno, I just don't get the whole sports car thing. My concept of a suitable toy vehicle is more along the lines of something like this or maybe something in red. All to be able to get to places where going up stuff like this or down things like this is required to get there. That means you get to see way cool landscapes.

Is that your face?

The web site for Needle Sports in the UK has a curious page: rocks that look like faces. Well worth a look at Needle Sports - Rockfaces

Having Trouble Keeping Score?

I know. At this point it's getting pretty difficult. Here's something to ease your tracking burden. Don't forget to look at the other time periods.
The Wage Slave Journal: George W. Bush Scorecard of Evil

But It's A Dry Heat

From the NPS Morning Report today...
Death Valley National Park
Heat-Related Fatality


The park had its third heat-related fatality and second within the month on Wednesday, August 28th. Brett Kedish, 32, of Budd Lake, New Jersey, began a hike to Stovepipe Wells sand dunes with his wife around 10 a.m. that morning. The air temperature in the shade was 113 degrees; ground temperatures exceeded 150 degrees. Kedish’s wife, feeling hot and tired, decided to return to their vehicle after about an hour. At 1:50 p.m. she reported him as overdue. Three hasty search teams went to high observation points around the dunes while park pilot Ed Forner and maintenance worker Ron Giblin searched from the air. Ranger Aaron Shandor saw a person meeting Kedish’s description walking about a mile from the Stovepipe Ranger Station. Within moments, he’d disappeared again. Shandor and ranger Kyle Nelson found his tracks in the sand and followed them for about 100 yards, where they found Kedish lying unconscious on the ground. Basic life support was begun. The two rangers were soon joined by resource management employees Tim Croissant, Jim Roche and Ryan Taylor. Roche ran the half mile back to the ranger station and got a vehicle, then drove to meet the others, who were carrying Kedish out on their shoulders. Kedish was taken to a waiting ambulance, driven by visitor use assistant Bruce Casper. Roche and Nelson continued rescue breathing while Kedish was driven to Furnace Creek. He was transferred to a waiting helicopter, then flown to a hospital in Las Vegas, where he died the next day due to heat exposure. Shandor was IC for the incident.
[Submitted by Kyle Nelson, Park Ranger]

A Benefit Concert

It's nice to see Provo playing host to good works like this.....Neil Young Organizes Free the Mormons Concert

Hold Your Nose

A "friend" pointed me to this site. The Stinkymeat Project (TheSpark.com) Why did I look at that site? Why did I look at it after a Mexican dinner? I'm still deciding whether or not to sign him up for 450 random magazine subscriptions.

What Year Is This?

I had to take a second look to make sure this wasn't from The Onion or SatireWire. In Greece, use a Game Boy, go to jail - Tech News - CNET.com

A New Skiing Toy!

Perhaps a novel commuting vehicle? What happens if it can't keep up with you and you pass it on a steep downhill?
ZAP! Electric Vehicles

A Million Dollar Contract

So last night Kelly won a "million dollar recording contract" by winning the American Idol competition. What does that really mean? Basically, Kelly will get nothing. If she's really lucky and the record is a huge hit, she'll probably get a chance to make her 2nd and 3rd albums, from which she might actually get to keep some money. Where does this math come from? During the Napster/piracy/infringement debates and handwringing, Courtney Love gave an impassioned speech decrying the actual economics of the recording industry and how musicians are basically shafted. The complete speech is well worth the time to read. Here's a paraphrased excerpt from the first page that outlines what happens to a 4 person band:

What happens to that million dollars?

$500,000 - cost of recording their album.
$100,000 - paid to their manager for 20 percent commission.
$25,000 - lawyer fees
$25,000 - business manager.
$170,000 - taxes
Leaving $180,000, which comes out to $45,000 per person. That's $45,000 to live on for a year until the record gets released.

Let's say the record is a big hit and sells a million copies.

So, this band releases two singles and makes two videos. The two videos cost a million dollars to make and 50 percent of the video production costs are recouped out of the band's royalties.

The band gets $200,000 in tour support, which is 100 percent recoupable.

The record company spends $300,000 on independent radio promotion. You have to pay independent promotion to get your song on the radio; independent promotion is a system where the record companies use middlemen so they can pretend not to know that radio stations -- the unified broadcast system -- are getting paid to play their records.

All of those independent promotion costs are charged to the band. Since the original million-dollar advance is also recoupable, the band owes $2 million to the record company.

If all of the million records are sold at full price with no discounts or record clubs, the band earns $2 million in royalties, since their 20 percent royalty works out to $2 a record. Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals ... zero!

How much does the record company make? About $6.6 million. Read the full speech to see how.

Ouch!

Tragedy amazingly averted, thanks in no small part to the athleticism of the rider. Besides watching the playback (includes narration), make sure to listen to the three audio clips as well.
MSNBC: The Week in Pictures, Aug. 22 - 29

What's up with strange couches?

Yet another odd geek couch - this one made of Mac II's

Calamari Anyone?

What's going on, anyway? Have our planet's sea creatures forgotten where they belong? Yahoo! News - Top Stories

This site --> Welcome to Engrish.com! is worth spending a few (or many) minutes browsing. As it says on the home page:
It's hard to believe the Engrish masquerading as real English over in Japan. It can be seen on signs, people's jackets, t-shirts and shopping bags, in menus and on TV. But nowhere is it more prevalent than on the various consumer products found in convenience stores and supermarkets.

Happy very it makes me. Think I.

We were waiting for this?

Seems the fascination with all things Ozzy just won't quit. An Estonian record company has released an album of Black Sabbath songs played by a quintet specializing in music from the Middle Ages and singing in Latin. ``If you take away the massive wall of sound from many Sabbath songs, what you have is pure 14th century music,'' producer Mihkel Raud claimed.

The 12-track album - called ``Sabbatum,'' Latin for ``sabbath'' - includes ``Wheels of Confusion'' (``Rotae Confusionis'') and ``War Pigs'' (``Verres Militares'') in slow, minimalist versions that sound like they could be used at mass in the Sistine Chapel. ``We went at it with the fantasy that these songs in Latin were actually the original versions, and that Black Sabbath found and used them,'' Raud said. ``Usually ... albums try to add modernity to known music. We did it the other way round.''

Something like 1,200 CDs have been sold, mainly to U.S. buyers via the Internet since the album was released in March. Raud worked with the music group Rondellus, who have three previous albums of mainstream sacred music, to arrange and record the Black Sabbath tunes. He decided not to ask them to record Black Sabbath songs referring directly to the devil. ``I felt that asking them to sing, 'My name is Lucifer, please take my hand' would have been too much,'' he said.

After listening to a couple of tunes on the album's site (brutally slow, w/ lots of time outs for rebuffering).......if you didn't know they were sabbath tunes, you'd be hard pressed to guess what they were.

Soccer - yawn

As someone who doesn't particularly like most games played with balls (they're not sports), soccer never really interested me. Someone I know on a certain listserv also doesn't care for it and came up with this perfect description:
Kind of like perpetual motion pocket billiards with only two pockets.

Today's Strange Flash Animation

Here's today's moment (actually about 4 of them) of zen (safe for work):
Rocking Chair Planet

Strange Drinking Laws

No, not just in Utah - a lot of other states, too. Some quick examples:

CT: no off premise alcohol sales after 8pm or on Sundays. This means that if you go to a restaurant, order a bottle of wine, and want to take the unfinished portion home, you can do so provided that you ordered the bottle before 8pm. If afterward, you either leave the unfinished portion or make sure you consume it all (before getting in your car to drive home).

KY: mailing/shipping any quantity of any alcoholic beverage to anyone in the state of Kentucky is a felony with a jail term of 5 years for the *shipper*, not the receiver.

NE: it is illegal for a bar to serve beer unless they are simultaneously brewing a kettle of soup.

TX: It is illegal to take more than three sips of beer at a time while standing.

MO: Anyone under the age of 21 who takes out household trash containing even a single empty alcohol beverage container can be charged with illegal possession of alcohol.

DE, specifically Rehoboth Beach: Alcohol may not be served in nightclubs if dancing is occurring on the premises at the same time.

Unclear on the concept

According to the lead article in the latest Time Magazine, a poll revealed that 4% of the US population call themselves "vegetarian". Of that 4%, 37% said they had eaten beef within the past 24 hours. If you include chicken and fish, the figure rises to 64%. Is it really that difficult to figure out? Are these the same people who believe in being "a little pregnant"?

Yikes! What's that about living in a desert?

Here's our weather forcast for the next 10 days:

Today
Jul 12 Sunny 105°/70° 0 %

Sat
Jul 13 Sunny 106°/71° 0 %

Sun
Jul 14 Mostly Sunny 103°/70° 10 %

Mon
Jul 15 Isolated T-Storms 100°/69° 40 %

Tue
Jul 16 Isolated T-Storms 98°/65° 40 %

Wed
Jul 17 Isolated T-Storms 95°/65° 40 %

Thu
Jul 18 Partly Cloudy 96°/64° 20 %

Fri
Jul 19 Partly Cloudy 98°/65° 20 %

Sat
Jul 20 Partly Cloudy 98°/64° 10 %

Sun
Jul 21 Partly Cloudy 94°/64° 20 %
Last Updated Friday, July 12, 2002, at 5:58 AM Mountain Daylight Time

Yet Another One

NEW YORK, July 8 — Drug giant Merck & Co. recorded $12.4 billion in revenue from the company’s pharmacy-benefits unit over the past three years that the subsidiary never actually collected, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.Merck reported billions not collected

So How Hot Is It?

I have some friends, particularly one, who insist it's hotter in Salt Lake City than in the Northeast. I think this because we do tend to have more 100F days than NYC. We're also at 4400', so the U.V radiation is about 45% stronger than at sea level at the same latitude. But yesterday (7/2) really pointed out the difference......
Here the high was 97F with 8% relative humidity. I don't know what the actual high and humidty was in NYC - the prediction was for 98F - but with the humidity it would feel like 105F - 110F.
That's why it is more comfortable here and why I can't imagine living east of the Mississippi anymore.

Was Hayduke Right?

A hilarious passage from Edward Abbey's "The Monkey Wrench Gang" has the character George Hayduke walking into a bar in southern Utah. Since one of the things Hayduke really enjoys is a good bar fight, he loudly announces, "HEY! I hear that Utah is the asshole capitol of the world!"
Sunday (6/30) evening a wildfire started near Springville, just south of Provo. On Monday morning some 125 homes in Springville were evacuated and the fire has since grown to over 3000 acres. What started it? Some asshole was shooting at the insulators on power transmission towers. One of the lines came down when an insulator was hit, arced and sparked, and set off tinder dry grass. Un-freakin'-believable.

And we still don't have the balls to ban the sale of all fireworks.

Uh Oh

Looks like Mt. Hood may be waking up. In the last few days, it's starting to show some signs similar to the pre-cursor actions of Mt. St. Helens. Earth Change News

Recent earthquake activity on Mt. Hood.

Images of Beer

A curious site devoted to the photomicroscopy of beer. Using a variety of techniques including polarized light and refractive methods, the site has a wealth of photos of different beers. From the site home page:

Welcome to the Molecular Expressions BeerShots Website featuring photomicrographs (photographs taken through an optical microscope) of the World's most famous beers. We have arranged the beer images by country.

Molecular Expressions: The Beershots Photo Gallery

Finally Figured It Out

Thanks to South Park, the stance of the Cathlick church on sexual abuse by priests, bishops, and cardinals was made crystal clear. It was obvious that at some point during the one-get-out-of-jail-free-card policy making meeting, someone said "Holy shit! If we don't do something about this, we'll never be able to have sex with young boys again!"

Remarkably Bad Navigation

These navigation interfaces would be hilarious if they weren't intended to be serious. Maybe the site owners / designers intentionally wanted to have an example of lousy design?

Pool Selection Menu

GLOBAL SUZUKI

Um, I really don't know what to say

No comment.
My AOL | Today's News

Brushing Shoulders
Finally got to meet a real, live rock star. The Cowboy Junkies played at Red Butte Garden last night (6/25) and after the show singer Margo Timmins came out for a meet and greet. Here's the obligatory cheesy fan photo of me and my new friend.

Interesting Job Posting
This sounds pretty cool.....
[From: http://192.156.97.47/jobs/observer.html ]

Weather Observer
Full-time, Year-round
This position on the Summit Staff requires individuals to live on the Summit of Mount Washington for shifts of eight days on - six days off, in a non-smoking environment.

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to, observing and reporting the weather, public service, and providing information to our visitors and members.

Strong interpersonal, communication, and problem solving skills, very strong outdoor orientation and hiking ability in adverse weather, and demonstrated computer skills are required.

Familiarity with METAR, National Weather Service synoptic weather observations, and back-country search and rescue experience are plusses.

To apply for the position, email résumé to jobs@mountwashington.org or fax to (603) 356-0307 or mail to:


Director of Administration
Mount Washington Observatory
P.O. Box 2310
North Conway, NH 03860

HEY YOU!!! Look at the top of this page!!!!
I'll try again. I've added a free service that will send you email whenever this page changes. Since I don't add posts daily (or even weekly sometimes), this will let you know via email that something new has appeared. It's free. They claim it's totally private and they won't give your email address to third parties. I don't know if it will increase spam specifically from the folks at Change Detection. Even I don't know nor can I find out your email address if you sign up. I only know the total number of people who have opted-in.

There are other alternatives that let you do the same type of thing, such as spyonit.com

I emphasized the visual intrusiveness of the signup form since some folks told me they didn't notice my original, apparently far-too-subtle design.

Let me know if there are any problems witht the service.
Email me -->" marc at mchrusch dot com" (convert to appropriate address form - I'm not sure if this will totally stop the spambots, but since it goes to my Yahoo account, it's not that serious)

Some Airports....
I hate short field landings.
I hate short field landings.
I hate short field landings.
I hate short field landings.
I hate short field landings.
I hate short field landings.

John Wayne International Airport in Santa Ana, California. A nice alternative if your destination is somewhere in the southeastern end of the LA basin. They don't bring in large jets, but they handle the workhorse MD-90s, B737 series, and the like. Thing is, they only have one runway that can handle commercial jets. It's a "huge" 5600' long. I swear the pilot was on the brakes and the thrust reversers before the nose gear touched. I hate short field landings.

Is it chemo?
Just caught a little of the Today Show for the first time in about 2 weeks. What the fuck happend to Matt Lauer's head? Does he have cancer? Is he on chemo? Did he fall asleep under a lawnmower?


Never Forget What the First W in WWW Means
Reacting to Anderson, seems all the big accounting firms are spinning off their consulting groups. Price-Waterhouse-Coopers is the latest, spinning off PWC Consulting and renaming to Monday. They dutifully went and built a site announcing the name change: www.introducingmonday.com but cleverly forgot that there are domains other than .com and other countries than the USA. So take a look at what some lads in the UK did.

Yep - I sure would trust them to build an international site.

Another sign of the coming apocalypse
LOS ANGELES - Looking to go where no reality series has gone before, cable television's E! Networks last week unveiled a new show about ex-model, ex-playmate and ex-wife to an oil tycoon, Anna Nicole Smith.

E! President Mindy Herman promises "The Anna Nicole Smith Show," which is set to debut in August, will give viewers an insider's look at the outlandish life of the former Guess? jeans model who this March won $88 million in a court battle against the son of her late husband over her inheritance. The former Vickie Lynn Smith, a native of Houston, Texas, started her rise to celebrity as a model and soon became a Playboy playmate in March 1992. She went on to become Playboy's Playmate of the Year and a Guess? model in 1993.

"Unlike Mary Tyler Moore, Anna Nicole will throw caution, and not her hat, to the wind," Herman said.

"My life is a roller coaster," said Smith about the TV show and what viewers will see. "People won't be able to stop watching once they tune in."


Yeah. Kinda like watching a train wreck.

A new experiment
I'm trying out one of the free notification services that will auto-send an email whenever this page changes. Since I'm using the free web space provided by my ISP, I don't have support for any cgi scripting or server-side databases. This is why I signed up with Change Detection. Let me know if there are any problems.
marc at yahoo dot com

Incompetence
I have to give this guy credit. At least he has the right idea about wanting to get out of the gene pool. From the NPS Morning Report:

Colorado NM (CO) - Attempted Suicide

Rangers received a report of a vehicle in a canyon between Highland View
and Artist Point overlooks on the afternoon of May 20th. They found a white
sedan occupied by a 19-year-old man from Grand Junction, who admitted that
he'd deliberately driven off the road in an attempt to commit suicide. It
also appeared that he'd attempted to ignite the gas in the vehicle's tank
by lighting a rag in the gas port. A broken belt was found hanging in a
nearby tree, where it appeared that he'd attempted to hang himself after
the crash - a fact he confirmed later when talking with medical staff. He
also said that he'd attempted to electrocute himself a week earlier, but
without luck. He sustained numerous lacerations and contusions in the
accident and was taken to St. Mary's Hospital, where he is being held until
a psychological review can be completed.

Holy Crap Dude! It's Coffee!!!
I don't know why I'm surprised. There's a blog devoted to coffee.
http://www.bloggle.com/coffee/


ABsolutely Fabulous
FTC Charges Three Top-selling Electronic Abdominal Exercise Belts with Making False Claims
Alleges Electronic Abdominal Gadgets Won't Provide Six-Pack Abs

"Now you can get rock hard abs with no sweat"
"Lose 4 Inches in 30 Days Guaranteed"
"30% More Effective Than Normal Exercise"
"10 Minutes = 600 Sit-Ups"

These are the types of claims the Federal Trade Commission has challenged in complaints filed in federal district courts against three widely advertised electronic abdominal exercise belts - AB Energizer, AbTronic, and Fast Abs. The FTC alleges that the marketers of the devices, which use electronic muscle stimulation (EMS), have falsely advertised that users will get "six pack" or "washboard" abs without exercise.

"For years, marketers of diet and exercise products have been preying on overweight, out-of-shape consumers by hawking false hope in a pill, false hope in a bottle, and, now, in a belt," said FTC Chairman Timothy J. Muris. "Unfortunately, there are no magic pills, potions, or pulsators for losing weight and getting into shape. The only winning combination is changing your diet and exercise."

Full FTC story at: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2002/05/projectabsurd.htm

Utah License Plates
Saw a UT license plate at lunch: ITSREDS
The plastic plate frame said: Redheads do what blondes only dream of

As a vastly depressing counterpoint, the plate frame on a huge, older model Cadillac containing the appropriately ancient couple read:
Life's not lack'n when you're Cadillac'n

New "Eagan's Law" Passed in NJ
Under a new law designed to protect minors, local police departments will now be required to inform residents any time a known Roman Catholic priest or bishop moves into their neighborhood. The law also mandates that Catholic priests register with authorities, wear electronic monitoring devices, and be prohibited from moving to within a half-mile radius of a school.

A follow-up to Megan's Law, enacted by New Jersey in 1994, the so-called "Egan's Law" is named for Cardinal Edward Egan of New York and Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, who are both accused of covering up sexual abuse by priests under their authority. Like Megan's Law, Egan's Law is expected to spread quickly to other states.



Creed Tour Cancelled
In a related incident, Cristian rock act Creed was forced to cancel the remainder of their North American tour because of a car accident involving lead singer Scott Stapp. According to a band spokesman, the singer is suffering from back and neck pain after Stapp's SUV was hit in the rear by another car on Interstate 4 near Orlando, Florida on Friday, April 19th. According to Orlando police, no injuries were reported at the time of the accident. It is uncertain at this time if Stapp was rear-ended by a priest.



Major Advancement in User Interface Technology
A new glass is able to tell bar or waitstaff when it is empty and needs refilling. Developed by Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the intelligent glass is fitted with a radio-frequency coil in its base and emits a signal to a receiver set in the table when it's empty, New Scientist magazine reported last week.

The iGlassware system works by coating each glass with a transparent conductive film and embedding a microchip and a thin radio-frequency coil in its base. The conducting material makes the glass behave like a capacitor, a device that stores an electrical charge between two conductive plates separated by an insulator. In this case the glass's base and sides are the conductive plates, while the drink is the insulator. As the level of drink falls, so does the insulation, and this progressively raises the charge that goes through to the microchip in the glass's base. When the microchip receives the "full" charge, that means the glass is empty, so it sends a top-up signal to the waiters' station via a small radio coil built into the table, using a frequency similar to those used by mobile phones. Every glass has its own ID, and its charge is provided by a radio frequency signal also provided by the table coil.

The downside to iGlassware is that it is intrusive - the restaurant knows what you have ordered and how fast you have drunk it. However, iGlassware is bound to be a hit, says Ronald Cole, an expert in hotel and restaurant management at the University of Delaware, .

"Our studies show that if there is a long delay between beverage order time and fill and subsequent refill, customers tend to feel less satisfied about the entire dining experience," he told New Scientist.

This is user-centered design at its best.

A "new" church policy
In the tragicomedy that the Catholic church has become, a policy has been announced after the meeting of the cardinals:

>>
The American church leaders said they would recommend a special process to defrock any priest who has become "notorious and is guilty of the serial, predatory sexual abuse of minors." In cases that are "not notorious" they would leave it up to the local bishop to decide if such a priest is a threat to children and should be defrocked.
<<

Read that carefully. That word notorious is the key. What this means is that if the local bishop can somehow keep cases of abuse quiet, then the priest in question gets to stay in the Church, but if it hits the newspapers, then he's out. Isn't this the same policy the Church has been following for the last twenty years which got them into this mess?

This is ludicrous. This is beyond rationality. It really is saying that the church will continue to try to cover up evidence of criminal behavior and try to avoid involvement of civil law enforcement authorities. Priests of the church are not above the law, and if bishops try to cover up the crimes of priests, then the bishops are committing a felony. If the Pope supports this, then he's just as much a pedophile and just as guilty of accessory felony. This doesn't make any sense from either a legal or religious perspective. Why should notoriety be a factor in a decision of whether a priest has committed a mortal sin, or violated a law? It's time to start handing out jail terms, folks. Extradite the Pope to answer charges, too.

Once again, a real-life affirmation of my decision to avoid all involvement with any organized religion.

NE Snow Depth
This graph says almost all about how dismal a ski season it was in the Northeast. What it doesn't tell you about are all the rain/freeze cycles that reduced what little snow there was to truely dismal conditions. Once again, I'm soooooo happy to be in the Wasatch.

Mud Rain!
Storm total at Alta/Snowbird since Monday is 20", with more today.
On Wednesday it was 36F at 10am, ceiling down to 5500', strong winds, black clouds over the Wasatch and the east benches (but the Salt Lake is in sunshine), still 16,000 without power from Monday's storm....and a foot of new snow in Little Cottonwood Canyon with more expected.

Monday was intensely strange. Mid 60's and really strong winds coming up from the south, with gusts to 75mph, stirred up more and more desert dust - visibility dropped all day till it looked like thick fog at 5p. Then it started to rain. After 1-1/2 years here I've seen some strange weather, including the ever freaky ice fog, but this was my first experience with mud rain. There was so much dust in the air that it collected on/in the raindrops, each one leaving a tan, muddy splat where it hit. It looked like we had all driven through multiple mud puddles.

Sunday was Alta's last day of daily operation. Started cloudy with gusty winds then went to partly sunny and 55F. Legs turned to unresponsive rubber by about 2:00 since it was my third day of turning in heavy corn.



Finally!"-- Rush has announced summer tour dates in support of its forthcoming album, Vapor Trails. The road stint starts June 28 at the Meadows Music Center in Hartford, Connecticut, and runs through August 21 at the Journal Pavilion in Albuquerque, New Mexico. More tour dates will be announced at a later time."

Alas no SLC date yet, if ever. May have to travel for this one. Full article...




Good news!

Reuters News tells us:
" "Ally McBeal," the quirky, critically acclaimed show about a yuppie lawyer that helped Fox gain a reputation as a serious TV network, will end its run in May after five seasons due to low ratings, the network said on Thursday.

The move marks the second major cancellation of a big Fox show following the network's announcement in January that its popular series "The X Files" would also be canceled in May."

Both of these should have been put out to pasture a couple of years ago. It's nice to see a burst of sanity among TV execs every now and then




A new drinking game:
Grab a bottle of your favorite spirt and a shot glass.
Watch The X-Files.
Each time Scuzzy,...uh, Sculley, says "...my baby...", drink a shot.
Each time she says the infrequent "...my child...", drink two shots.
If she utters the extraordinarily rare "...my boy...", guzzle directly from the bottle.

My guess is that on average you'll be drunk on single shots by the third commercial break

The poets have been remarkably silent on the subject of cheese.


Sony has included software that will crash your computer if you try to play certain CDs on your PC:
"The CD will probably cause a system to crash, but it will not alter anything," the spokeswoman said. "And it won't eject properly, but that's just because the computer has crashed."
[Thanks to: Signal vs Noise]

Apparently this is currently restricted to certain CDs sold in Europe, (and the article references a Celine Dion CD, as if anyone should care) but I'm trying to understand something here. Isn't Sony the same company that advertises their MP3 players and how you can copy music from your PC onto your Sony MP3 device and take it "anywhere you go"?


Megadeath is breaking up. Why do things like this seem to happen 10 or 20 years too late?



Finally, a physio-chemical explanation of why condiments go bad in your refigerator.

OH NO! Britney Spears has the same birthday as me.


I suppose I should see Amelie as it's received great reviews from the professional critics as well as from blog folk (who I suppose would be amateur critics). I see two problems with this:

1) It qualifies as an art film. I've yet to remain awake through a single art film. I don't attend screenings of films, I don't go to a cinema - I go to a movie theater to watch a movie.

2) Many of the same blogs that are agog over Amelie also just love Radiohead. I interpret this as a distinct warning, if not a sign of the coming apocalypse. I just don't get Radiohead. Kid A and OK Computer - two back to back discs of pure, undiluted shit. Does crap actually become art if you claim it's art often enough?


From Signal vs. Noise: A court in Sweden has ruled that a man who donated sperm for artificial insemination, enabling a lesbian couple to have three children, must pay child support after the two women separated, a Swedish newspaper reported on Sunday.
What?!
Originally at: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011209/od/life_sweden_sperm_dc_2.html ...but that has "expired" according to Yahoo.

How could I possibly forget Lifehouse in my list of bands that must go?


Bet you didn't know that Britney Spears is an expert in semiconductor physics.
Want proof?


Now for your moment of zen we present the Samuri Lapin
[It's a large-ish Flash animation]

Hey. Wow. I got yet another "pre-approved" credit card offer in the mail today. This one is for a gold Mastercard from First Primier Bank in that bustling metropolis of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Not only am I pre-approved for a coveted unsecured credit card, I get the attractive rate of 9.9% Fixed APR. OK, now on to the fine print...........

Seems that to get this card, I get to pay the following fees:
Program fee - $95
Account Set Up fee - $29
Annual fee - $48
Participation fee - $72 billed at $6 per month

Fucknozzles.

The Pope finally (after how many decades?) broke his silence on the Catholic priest sex abuse cases. He said the priests had succumbed ``to the most grievous forms'' of what he called, using the Latin phrase, ``mystery of evil.''

``Grave scandal is caused, with the result that a dark shadow of suspicion is cast over all the other fine priests who perform their ministry with honesty and integrity and often with heroic self-sacrifice,'' the pope said. He said the Church ``shows her concern for the victims and strives to respond in truth and justice to each of these painful situations.''

Gee, maybe the church can "show her concern" for the victims a little more by finally refusing to hire pedophiles.

Today's music rant:

Elton John claimed that the disc he is currently recording will be his last album. This was excellent news and proved that some all-powerful being loves us. Then the bastard went back on his promise. Fortunately Garth Brooks claims that the disc he is currently recording will be his last album. This is even more excellent news and can only be seen as proof of Dog (or God if you're dyslexic). If there really is a Dog, Garth will keep his promise.

Wow. A solo album from Mick Jagger. Wow. We've been waiting for this, right?

Yet another one-word-named-band, Default, is getting airplay. Heard their tune "Wasting My Time" yet? What did we do to deserve this? These lack luster lame lounge act wannabes sound like Hootie & The Blowfish. Give me a freakin' break. This is what "modern music" has become? Time to bring back Ozzy.

Other bands that suck worse than the vacuum between George W. Bush's ears:
Train
Staind
Creed
Coldplay
Radiohead
Everclear
Incubus

Exactly how many whiny 20-something female singer/songwriters with thin voices do we really need as a society?

Aerosmith in a Nissan commercial. Now *that* will sure get me to buy a new car. Yawn. Is it just me or does Steve Tyler sound like he's trying to pass a bowling ball in that spot?
//////////////////////////////////////////////////

Convoluted obtuse double speak gibberish from HR....
Here's how one immensely clueless dot com company informed it's employees of imminent layoffs:

Thanks to our corporate restructuring of the basic scalable elements need in the vertical dissemination of value-added products through a series of networked servers connected via fiber optics, we are projected to enjoy a brief productivity spurt proportionate to the rest of the undervalued market. In lieu of this unexpected spike, we are still moving forward proactively with our plan to monetize our vertical information resources and reorganize the essential e-business units of our company. The reorganization requires upper-management and upper-upper-management to identify the underachieving nodes within the corporate structure and de-emphasize their impact, thereby preserving valuable investor assets, and preserving our market niche.

Screaming idiots.

A comment on skiing at particular VT area this past Sunday:

Of course there were rocks, dirt, and ice to avoid, but it was actually considerably better than "not terrible," which is high praise this season.

I am soooooo happy to have moved to the Wasatch.

Canada won a gold medal in Hockey during the Olympics. Then there was that whole figure skating thing. Add in the Roots hats business and it all seems to have gone to their heads.
Be afraid. Be very afraid .....
http://www.standonguard.com/index2.html

There is a god!!! One of the more egregious talk show "personalities" is finally being put out to pasture. Sally Jessy Raphael's daytime talk show, the longest-running of its genre, has been canceled after nearly two decades on the air. Couple this with Rosie O quitting her show and it can only mean good news for Western civilization.

HEY! The Olympics are over! Enough with the damned helicopters already!!!!!

Warren Harding passed away on 2-28-02 from liver failure and other complications.

Olympics strange announcement department:

"In the event of an incident, please follow the directions of the event staff. Thank you."
A child nearby asks: "Daddy, what's an incident?"

The Olympics start tomorrow! Tickets in hand for:

women's downhill
men's combined
men's & women's parallel snowboard GS
ice dancing compulsory dances
one of the medals ceremonies (with Brooks & Dunn as the concert headliner)
women's super G
men's 12.5km biathlon
women's 10km pursuit biathlon
women's slalom