Yes, as a matter of fact, I am a science fiction nerd...

I spent Thanksgiving weekend at a science fiction convention.

No, no, no...not like the one in Galaxy Quest. Well, not exactly like it. Although there were costumes, and silliness, and a good deal of fun. But as far as I am aware, there were no aliens who believe that a Star Trek-like show was real life.

As far as I am aware.

Part of the difference is that LosCon is more of a writers and artists con than a media con. That means that many of the panelists are writers and artists rather than actors or producers of science fiction and fantasy films and television shows. Although some of the writers write for those media as well as writing books and short stories, and some of the organizers and participants do sometimes act and work in other aspects of film and television. It's just that the emphasis is a little more literary.

Which makes sense. LosCon is presented every year over Thanksgiving weekend by the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS), which bills itself as the longest running science fiction club in the world. Which it very likely is, having had its first incarnation in the 1930s. It has been operating under the current name since March of 1940. Some of the biggest names in the genre have been active in the Society, as have a few of the most infamous.

They put on a great gathering...part literary discussion, part gathering of like-minded souls, part party. This was the fifth time I have attended LosCon since 1998, and each time I have had a great time.

Some of the highlights this year for me were the panels. No mere human can get to all the panels, and no one would probably want to because they cover a wide variety of subject matter from science fiction to fantasy to horror to anime to science to...oh, to lots of things.

The first panel I attended centered on the topic of "Horror and Religion". There were interesting perspectives, especially since one panelist was a Baptist minister and another is a Buddhist...his take was that horror and Buddhism is a non-sequitor, since the most horrible thing in Buddhism is delusion. The consensus of the panel seemed to be that it isn't the gore that makes horror horror, but that what is horrifying has more to do with the violation of the moral order of the universe and the relinquishment of control. It isn't the blood that is shed, but the soul that is stolen that creates horror, at least in the Western way of looking at things. There was also some discussion of the horror of H. P. Lovecraft and his portrayal of an uncaring universe and ultimate nothingness.

Attendance at that panel has spurred me to pick up Stephen King's Danse Macabre for yet another perspective on the effect of the horror genre on culture.

Another panel, a discussion of what books should be in the canon of the science fiction greats was interesting, not the least for the fact that it went from zero to argument in almost nothing flat when one gentleman in the audience took exception to the suggestion that A Canticle for Leibowitz belongs on the list. A lot of names of authors and books were presented, very few concrete conclusions were made, and I now have a much longer list of books that I need to find and read.

That is another consequence of attending these cons...I always leave with my list of books to find and read having been about doubled from what it was before I arrived.

My favorite panel of the weekend, though, was a discussion of world-building. That panel consisted of David Gerrold and Harry Turtledove riffing off each other for about an hour and fifteen minutes. I left inspired to get back to work on that novel, and with a lot of new perspectives to bring to it.

It was a good weekend. I bought a few books, I got a book I took down with me signed by the author, which is cool because he is one of my favorites. I had a lot of good conversations with interesting people.

And I came home with a cold, apparently, since I woke up with stuffed sinuses and a runny nose this morning. A souvenir of the weekend, I suppose.

Addicted....addicted, I say...

Yeah. It's happened again.

I found a new author.

Well, not new, but new to me.

Back in July I was in the grocery store and happened to steer up the aisle where the books are kept. I usually don't even bother, because they usually have a lousy selection. If there are five books that look interesting, it's a good day...and I've ordinarily read all five of them.

But on that day, I saw a book called Echo Park, by Michael Connelly. I'd heard of him, vaguely, and I knew that Echo Park is a section of Los Angeles, and having grown up in Southern California, I adore books that take place there. So I picked the book up and took it home.

Well, I bought it, but you know...

Once I started reading, I couldn't put it down. And once I was done with it, I had to find more of the adventures of Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch, LAPD detective. I picked up the first book in the series, The Black Echo, and it was wonderful as well. The next one I was able to find (while I've been advised that it is better to read this series in order, I've been reading them as I can find them) was The Closers, which happened to take place in parts of L.A. County that I am very familiar with. Connelly even got the street names right. If I hadn't been hooked already, that would have done it.

So, now I've read nine of the thirteen Harry Bosch mysteries and I'm in the middle of another. Well, two more...but that's a weird story. One night I was in bed reading The Black Ice and happened upon a specific reference to the cemetery in which my father and much of his side of the family are buried. Kind of freaked me out. I had to put that book down and haven't managed to finish it yet. But I will.

I haven't devoured a mystery series in big gulps this way since I discovered Travis McGee in the late 1970s. By the time I had found my way to John D. MacDonald's knight errant, all but three of the books in that series were already in print. I likely would have done the same with Faye Kellerman's Rina Lazarus/Peter Decker mysteries when I discovered them, but I think there were only two or three of them in print when I happened on The Ritual Bath at the library.

Even in my preferred genre, science fiction/fantasy, I've only rarely been driven to search out all the books in a series immediately a few times. I read the first two Thomas Covenant trilogies, by Stephen R. Donaldson (which were all that existed then), one after the other in the space of about a month when I first discovered them. And I was entranced by Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality and Bio of a Space Tyrant series when I found them (even though I thought that the last couple of the Incarnations of Immortality books weren't quite up to the quality of the earlier volumes). After I came upon the first volume of Kage Baker's Company series, In the Garden of Iden, I pestered the library ladies until I got hold of all of those, even to the point of insisting that the library system order one of the volumes when it turned out they didn't have it in their holdings. To my surprise, they actually added it to the collection. There have been other sff series that I've read in their entirety, but in a much more leisurely fashion.

Which is a really long way around of saying that I've been spending my free time (what free time?) lately reading rather than blogging.

And also a long way of saying, if you like mystery novels and haven't read Michael Connelly, you really should make his acquaintance.

So...now that you've read this...Go. Read. A. Book.

A limo for a 12-year-old...

Okay. Up-front admission. I am, by choice, childless. So I probably don't have any right to have an opinion on anything having to do with parenting. But still...

A couple of nights ago the Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana concert tour hit my town. I probably wouldn't have known anything about it, but I live about two blocks from the largest concert venue in town. For those of you who are also out of touch with kids' culture, "Hannah Montana" is a comedy on Disney Channel about a teenage girl who is a pop star (sort of like Britney Spears before she became a bad girl, I guess), but no one knows this but her family and a few close friends and she appears to spend a lot of time trying to make sure the kids at school don't find out so she can be a "normal" kid.

I've actually seen the show a couple of times, and it is cute for what it is, but most of the fans are in the 6 to 12 age range from what I understand. Which is fine. It is a good thing that there are touring shows for those 'tweeners, I think they're called now - the kids who aren't toddlers but aren't teens, either.

But why...please, someone tell me why...when I happened to drive by the arena during the show, there were limos lining the curb in front of the arena. More limos than I've seen for any other event there in the over two and a half years I've been living in the neighborhood. Who spends the money (and I'll bet it is a lot, although having never rented a limo myself, I wouldn't know) to rent a limo to take a 12-year-old to a concert?

I don't know how much the tickets for the concert ran, but I'm betting they were in the $40 to $50 range for the cheap seats, if you could get them. I heard news reports that this tour is so hot that scalpers are getting $1000, $2000, and more for a ticket in some cities. Which brings up another question...who would spend $2000 dollars for one ticket for a 12-year-old to go to a concert.

I wouldn't pay $1000 to see anyone, and I'm a pretty big music fan.

Heck, the most I've ever paid for a concert ticket is about $35, and that was for (separately, of course) U2 and Prince. In San Francisco and Oakland. Okay. So it was a few years ago, in both cases. I've considered paying around $100 a couple of times for a concert ticket, but I got over it in each case.

But $1000? Or more? That's just nuts.

It's even more nuts, when the concert-goer is 12 years old and probably won't care that she saw the show in a year or two. Add the cost of limo for the evening. Probably dinner out. It adds up quickly.

Well. I was a 12-year-old a long time ago. And I understand that there is inflation and all. But I nearly didn't get to go to my first concert (very teeny-bopper - that'd be about the same thing as a 'tweener - but at least the opening act was a very young Steve Martin) when I told my parents that the price of the ticket was $5. I'm pretty sure that $5 in 1970 does not translate to $1000 today. I doubt it even translates to $50 today. Actually, as of last year, with inflation, something that cost $5 in 1970 would have cost $26.56 in 2006. I looked it up.

So, maybe I'm just old and don't understand a culture in which someone would give a kid $1000 to go to a concert, who would hire a limo to take them. But it just doesn't make sense to me. Not even a little bit.

Real time returns

Did you remember to set your clock back last night before you went to bed?

I did. Well, one. I traditionally change on clock on the Saturday night and the rest when I get up on the Sunday morning. I guess it's kind of like opening one gift on Christmas Eve and leaving the rest for Christmas morning.

And, yes, I really do look forward to the return of standard (what I think of as "real") time that much.

I don't know why it is, but I just feel more balanced with the sun rising earlier and setting earlier than it does during Daylight Savings Time. The rhythm of the day seems more normal when the sun is at least thinking about coming up when I get up (at 6 am during the week) and when it goes down when evening comes rather than waiting until 9 p.m. or a bit later to get full dark at the height of summer (in these latitudes, at any rate...it was even worse when I visited England and the sun didn't go down until around 10:30 p.m.)

Now, of course, none of this means that my inner clock will adjust to the time change automatically just because it has gone back to the way I like it. I'll still be off-balance for at least a week, maybe two, until the inner clock gets back in sync with the clock on the wall.

Still, it's moving toward evening now, and it looks like it outside the window next to my desk. And that is a good thing.

Another (tradition) bites the dust...sort of

Sad news (with a silver lining) from Hollywood, especially for an old parade-goer like myself.

I see in an article in today's Los Angeles Times, via Yahoo!News, that after a close call the Hollywood Christmas Parade, now to be known as the Hollywood Santa Parade, will go on on the traditional Sunday after Thanksgiving.

However, it will be much scaled back and will no longer be produced by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce after it washed its hand of the event after last year's parade lost $100,000. It has been rescued by the Los Angeles City Council, via council president Eric Garcetti, who represents the area of the parade route along Hollywood Boulevard, Highland Avenue and Sunset Boulevard. Garcetti, who got the council to act after protests from a private group which formed after it was announced that the parade would not go on this year, was quoted in the article as saying that he "couldn't in good conscience let die" at least in part because it is "one of the last free things families can do."

The plan is to build the parade back up to its former glory, but this year's parade will be just a shadow of its former self, with thirty-five bands signed up so far, plus some floats and equestrian units. Retired "Price Is Right" host Bob Barker has signed on, as has the cast of Disney's "High School Musical", slim pickings for a parade that once boasted the participation of some of the biggest stars in Hollywood. In fact, one of the reasons the parade was not able to make money recently was because broadcasters lost interest in showing the parade once ratings began to fall once "A-list" stars became more reluctant to appear in the parade. Much of the parade's revenues have come from broadcast fees.

Apparently the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce hasn't completely deserted the idea of a Christmas parade and is urging its members to support this year's parade. It is also offered use of signs and parade workers' vests if the new group putting the parade together, Pageantry Productions. Also, the Chamber has said it will consider letting the parade use the name "Hollywood Christmas Parade" in future years if this year's parade is of high enough quality.

This is all very sad for me. Growing up in Southern California, my family attended the parade several times in the early 1970s, when it was still known as the "Santa Claus Lane Parade" (which prompted Gene Autry to record the Christmas classic "Here Comes Santa Claus"...you know: "Here comes Santa Claus/Here comes Santa Claus/Right down Santa Claus Lane"). It was sort of the official end of the Thanksgiving weekend and the beginning of the Christmas Season.

I've got some lovely memories of going out on a cool (well, usually) winter evening to see the bands and the floats and the stars...who still participated in numbers at that time. There would be everyone from the old-time stars like Bob Hope to the casts of many of the network TV series then current. I'll never forget one time when the two elderly ladies next to my family on the parade route (I'd say they were probably in their seventies at the time) were there in their finest clothes, evening make-up and nicest jewelry, so excited because Cesar Romero was going to be in the parade that year. They were very cute ladies, just like a couple of teenagers. During the years I went to the parade, the tradition was that Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner (then on their second marriage to each other) and their children rode on the last float of the parade...with Santa Claus on his sleigh.

It was just a fun time. Not the big production the Tournament of Roses Parade on New Year's Day in Pasadena is, but a nice hometown Christmas parade...it's just that the hometown happened to be Hollywood and lots of the participants were very, very famous.

I hope the new version of the parade succeeds. I hope that the Hollywood community returns to participation in the coming years. I'd hate to know that this part of my growing up wasn't there any more.

What embarasses you?

Natalie, over at Trapped by the Mormons, tagged everyone who read her list of 10 things that embarrass her. Without further ado, then, here is my list:

1. Start with one that isn't too embarrassing. The Princess Diaries is one of my favorite movies, and I watch it every time I find it on TV. Yeah, I know. It's a teenager movie, and I haven't been a teenager in a very long time.

2. Sort of along the same lines: I still go back and read Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books from time to time. I think I'm mostly embarrassed about this, though, because of the TV series that was very loosely based on them. The books are nothing like the series. Still, I would never use one of these books as my carry-around-with-me-everywhere books.

3. While I'm being childish: I have a stuffed crocodile named Rosey that lives on my bed. Further, I sometimes talk to Rosey as if he is a live pet...or a human being.

4. I believe in precognitive dreams. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. No such thing. You're right. Except that I've had them from time to time.

5. I'm also seriously superstitious. Maybe it's because I'm a baseball fan (everyone knows that baseball players are probably the most superstitious people in the world, and it could have rubbed off). Except that the black cat thing doesn't bother me at all. But, for instance, if I spill salt I absolutely have to throw some salt over my left shoulder. And if I'm backstage in a theater (I am a sometime props handler) and someone starts to whistle I make sure they know not to do that.

6. I know all the words to the "Green Acres" theme song. All of them. I could sit here and type them out now to prove it, but that would be too embarrassing for words.

7. I was one of those thirteen-year-olds (back in the early 1970s) who had her bedroom walls plastered with pictures of the heartthrobs of the time. Yes, for awhile the walls were literally wallpapered with glossies from 16 and Tiger Beat and similar publications.

8. Even worse than that...I went to concerts and screamed, well, like a teenage girl. I ot over this by the time I was about fourteen, but still...it's extremely embarrassing in hindsight.

9. I got a D in algebra in the 9th grade. Probably had something to do with the fact that I never did anything in class. Well, I did. I read Gone With The Wind and countless Victoria Holt gothic romance novels. I read everything but my math textbook. And I taught myself how to sleep with my eyes open. Really.

10. I used obscene mnemonic devices to memorize things for exams when I was in college. Well, not necessarily obscene. But definitely racy. It made things much easier to remember, but sometimes I could feel myself blushing when I'd be taking a test and had to run one of them through my mind to get to an answer. Before you ask...no, there is no obscene mnemonic device behind my being able to remember all the words to the "Green Acres" theme song, unless you consider it obscene that I actually watched the show enough times for that song to be imprinted indelibly on my mind.

So, you all, like Natalie said...if you read this, consider yourself tagged. Leave me a comment with a link to your blog when you post your list.

Getting cranky at lunch...

As I was reading at one of my regular stops in the blogosphere, (pilgrimgirl, and you should really stop in and read her someday…she’s a wonderful writer and a wonderful person whose posts are incisive and thoughtful), one of the comments a reader left in response to a recent post really struck me.

It was a simple thought: “It's always kind of entertaining to see what will out me as a complete crank case.”

I read that, and I thought, Yeah, rings a bell.

A case in point from yesterday, when my mother and I were out at lunch: There were two long tables of mid-to-late teens seated right next to us. About half of them, distributed among the two tables, were wearing t-shirts that said something to the effect that they were 100 percent members of the Army of the Lord. Which bothered me right there. First of all, I felt like that represented bad theology: as far as I can remember, Jesus discouraged his followers from establishing a kingdom here on earth, and armies belong to earthly kingdoms. Second of all, that sort of thing smacks of the willingness to convert by force, something I don’t approve of from any religion. And thirdly, although I’m not really a practicing anything at this point, I find it disrespectful to reduce who believers think of as God to the same level as a rock star, a football team, or a clothing label.

Still, I wasn’t going to say anything to them, although I grumbled about it to my mother all through the meal.

But then, as the group left, just as I was commenting that the whole bunch of them needed a keeper, based on their behavior, one of the girls started giggling as she took the ketchup bottle on the table and proceeded to empty about half of it into the melted remains of a bowl of ice cream that one of the other kids had left.

That was it. “Excuse me,” I said. “What are you doing wasting food like that? The t-shirts some of you are wearing indicate that you are religious, think of yourselves as godly people. But wasting food like that isn’t a very godly thing to do.” They just looked at me like I’d grown a third eye in the middle of my forehead or something and walked away.

I’m still not sure that I should have said anything. They were teenagers, for Pete’s sake, and teenagers act like that sometimes. But, you know, it seems to me that wearing a t-shirt that proclaims their religiosity like that, they need to learn at some point that such a public proclamation of specific beliefs and values carries some sort of responsibility, some sort of consequences, with it. It is something those kids need to learn.

It's almost Halloween...

...and, of course, someone took a poll. The headline news in the AP article, which I came across on MSNBC's website, is that fewer minorities allow their children to trick-or-treat than white folks do, 56 percent to 73 percent.

It seems to be a mostly safety issue, and actually shakes out along economic lines. While 86 percent of those surveyed overall said they believe their neighborhoods are a safe place to trick-or-treat, 91 percent of whites and 75 percent of minorities said where the live is safe for going door-to-door to ask for candy and treats. The numbers were almost identical when broken down according to how much money people make: 93 percent of those who make $50,000 or more said they think their kids can trick-or-treat safely in their neighborhood, 76 percent of those who make $25,000 per year or less felt that their neighborhood will be safe for their kids to trick-or-treat.

But that isn't what I found so interesting.

The survey also broke down the households which indicated that they will have candy available for trick-or-treaters this year. Overall, two-thirds said they would welcome trick-or-treaters. Liberals were the most likely to give out candy: 70 percent of those who identified as liberal said they would participate in the holiday. 67 percent of moderates said they would distribute candy, while only 55 percent of conservatives said they would do so. Those are interesting numbers, I think, and probably get at something deeper than just whether or not the respondents are willing to give candy to children.

Another interesting set of numbers from the survey: Only a quarter of those who said they would not let their children trick-or-treat said they take that position because they are concerned about their kids' safety, but fully half said that they would not allow their kids to trick-or-treat because they don't celebrate Halloween at all.

One woman from Pennsylvania offered this quote, about Halloween: "It's demonic. People are celebrating the dead. I'm not into that." It's an interesting point of view, and one that I'm familiar with. When I was attending a Christian (Mennonite Brethren) university, one of my classmates (not Mennonite) accused me of supporting "baby-killing" because I wore a costume (my Renaissance Faire costume) to school on the day. I asked here where she got that idea. Her pastor had told her church that, she said.

It makes we wonder what people with this attitude would do with Dia de los Muertos ("Day of the Dead") , which originated with pre-Columbian populations in Mexico but has been taken up by the Christian population of Mexico (and some areas of the United States with large Mexican populations) and really celebrates the dead rather than just focuses on giving candy to kids. Although there is candy involved, from what I understand.

Did you know...?

Did you know that football stadium full of screaming fans sounds very much the same as a jet flying over very, very low?

It's just amazing. I live about two blocks from a university football stadium that holds something more than 40,000 people. There's a game tonight. And every time the home team does something they like it sounds like there's a plane flying over my apartment at roughly rooftop level.

It's an easy comparison to make, since I also live a couple of miles from the local airport, right under the take-off pattern, and have the opportunity to hear all kinds of planes go over...all the way from one-engine puddle jumpers to fairly large passenger and cargo planes to Air National Guard jets. In fact, a jet just flew over a couple of minutes ago and it took me a couple of seconds to figure out whether it was the crowd or a plane. Then, I realized that it's halftime and there was very little chance that the marching band was getting that sort of a reaction.

The other weird thing is that tonight's game is being carried on ESPN 2, and it seems odd to be able to hear the crowd (and the refs over the public address system) direct from the stadium and also, if the television is tuned to the game, to hear them there, after the signal has bounced around a couple of satellites and back down to my cable provider.

It's probably just a function of my age...I can remember, when I was about 7 or 8 years old, watching the old Ed Sullivan tv show on a Sunday night and them making such a huge deal about the fact that they were carrying a performance by the Rolling Stones via satellite link-up from London. That was a very big deal then, brand-new technology that was rare and expensive and hardly ever used. Now, satellite link-ups are the bread and butter of broadcasting, especially for news networks, and most people rarely give them a second thought.

Oh, and no...I don't really care about the game. I'm not a football fan, and especially not a college football fan...I just like listening to the roar of the crowd.

Yeah, I guess I'm pretty much a nerd.

Progress? What Progress?

Can someone please explain to me how these two things are different?

I read two stories yesterday, one from the San Francisco Chronicle (and in this link, covered by Yahoo!News), concerns a teacher kidnapped and murdered in Iraq by Shiite Muslims because he was Sunni Muslim. The other, from Newsweek, is about a case in Los Angeles in which Latino gang members stand accused of targeting not only African-American gang members but any random African-American in what looks very much like homegrown racial cleansing.

I don't see any difference at all here, other than the fact that in one case the targeted characteristic was religion and in the other the targets were chosen because of their skin color. It is just unacceptable that in the 21st century people would even think about acting in such a...oh, I hate to use the word, but it is the only one I can think of...tribal manner, being willing to kill members of another group just because they look different or because they believe differently. Religion against religion, ethnic group versus ethnic group...it goes on and on.

It is especially interesting to me that, in the case of the L.A. gangs, the point is made that this sort of "brown-on-black" crime, as they characterize it, is still considered an "anomaly", but two paragraphs later the writer reports that the most recent case is the third such case in the past two years.

In the case of the Iraq killing, the linked article makes the point that these sort of sectarian killings are becoming less common. Well, that might be true, but the article also points out that the killing of this teacher is "unremarkable" among all the violence Iraqis see on a daily basis.

Which is another place where the commonalities between the two cases come in. Living as I do in an area where gang activity is not uncommon, it frightens me sometimes that it seems like every time there is a gang-related shooting or killing, the general attitude seems to be, well, it's just the gangs. What can you expect. That sort of violence, whether aimed at other gangs of the same ethnic background, at gangs members of a different ethnic background, or at random victims, just seems to have become an accepted part of 21st century American life. Just as it seems to be expected...and accepted as a reality...that individuals can be targeted because of their religious beliefs in the Middle East.

And the war of words goes on...

Updating yesterday's post on testimony before a Senate committee by CDC director Dr. Julie Gerberding, on the health effects of climate change:

There have been a few developments in this controversy.

First of all, according to AP reports White House press secretary Dana Perino said that the CDC testimony was "not watered down" but that in an interagency review "a number of agencies" had "some concerns" about the contents of the written version of Dr. Gerberding's testimony and that some reviewers did not think the testimony matched up with a report on the same subject by the UN's Ingergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The White House also said that Dr. Gerberding doesn't think her testimony was censored. And, indeed, Dr. Gerberding is quoted as saying today that she is "absolutely happy" with her testimony and that she could and did depart from the written version of the testimony.

Despite this, California Senator Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee (the committee in front of which Dr. Gerberding testified on Tuesday); Tennessee Representative Bart Gordon, chair of the House Science and Technlology Committee; and North Carolina Representative Brad Miller, chair of the House Science subcommittee on investigations and oversight, have all expressed concern over the changes in the written testimony and have requested copies of all versions along with all comments made on the drafts. All also asked for an explanation from the White House chief science advisor, John Marburger, concerning how the drafts of the testimony were handled.

In addition, Senator Boxer's staff evidently questioned the characterization that some parts of the written testimony did not match the IPCC report, and Representative Gordon claimed that some of the deleted sections of the testimony were similar to the IPCC report.

And so it continues. Of course, the climate change skeptics will call this a partisan attack on the White House because all three members of Congress who have called the administration to account on this are Democrats. As far as I'm concerned, that is pretty much beside the point. This concerns every person in the US, every person in the world, and we deserve to hear all sides of the question, not just the side that the Bush administration wants us to hear. If the White House really wants us to get a balanced view of the issue, then it wouldn't be going around changing testimony that doesn't match its own view.

Don't confuse them with the facts...

The Bush administration is at it again, editing out real science from reports and congressional testimony when it doesn't fit "the national priorities of the administration." That quote is from an AP story as carried by Yahoo!News* and is credited to Office of Management and Budget spokesman Sean Kevelighan. Yes, he actually admitted that "lining up well" with the goals of the administration is one of the considerations involved when the OMB reviews reports written by government offices.

If you've read The Republican War On Science by Chris Mooney (and if you haven't, you should), you won't be surprised that this has happened again, this time in a report from the Centers for Disease Control on the effects of global climate change on human health, about which CDC director Dr. Julie Geberding testified before a Senate committee today. According to a CDC official familiar with the report, it was originally fourteen pages long. By the time the White House, via the OMB, was done with it, it was four pages long. As finally presented to the committee, it was six pages long.

What was missing? Specific examples of how climate change will impact on the health of Americans. A CDC spokesman (not the same person, presumably, as the official who commented on the various forms the report took) minimized the importance of the administration cuts in the report and said that most of the information that the CDC wanted to have heard was presented in the course of Dr. Gerberding's testimony. Things like the effects of increased heat on health; injuries and deaths that can be expected from an increase in severe weather events such as hurricanes; and an increase in water-borne and vector-borne diseases such as cholera and malaria respectively.

That's just great. They're finally realizing that they can't deny that the global climate is changing, so now they've decided that they'll just play down the effects the changes will have on the human population. Because if people realized what global warming will do to them, to their children, and to their grandchildren, they might demand that something be done to try to stop...or at least moderate...it. Which might inconvenience some of the administration's rich corporate friends.

Well, for awhile now the right wing has been making snide remarks about the "reality-based community", making it clear that they themselves are not a part of that. I guess they really believe that all they have to do is say something...something, oh, like that global warming doesn't really exist and even if it does it just means more warm weather - "And how can that be a bad thing?"...and it will be so.

I guess they don't want to be confused by the facts.

*As so often happens with Yahoo!News, the link I originally included didn't work. I'd try to fix it but I'm tired, I think I'm coming down with a cold, and I just don't feel like doing it right now. Maybe tomorrow. If the story hasn't completely disappeared into cyberspace by then, as this sort of story so often seems to do. Sorry.

True confessions time...

I hate infomercials.

I want to say that right up front. An infomercial comes on the tube, the channel gets switched. I think the things should probably be illegal.

Except...

Except if they are selling CD compilations, especially of music from the sixties, seventies, and eighties, I'll sit there and watch the stupid things all the way through. And not in the casual, watching while I"m doing something else way I usually watch TV. No, I sit there and watch the things like they are a real TV show.

I probably should be ashamed of myself.

I think I know why I do it, though. It certainly isn't because I'm planning on buying the CDs...I can't afford 5 equal payments of $29.99 or whatever they usually are. That's a lot of money.

No. I do it because I like the old clips they show of the bands back in the day. Before all the artists got fat or bald...or dead. It's like watching videos from before MTV was even a glint in some TV executive's eye. Not that most of them are even vaguely video-like in the way someone born after the advent of MTV would recognize them. Mostly they're performance clips from the various network shows that featured bands and singers.

But, you know, I'm getting old, and that nostalgia thing is very powerful.

And I've been thinking...if they would package and sell a set of DVD's of the performance clips, I just might buy those.

Do those winds really originate in Santa Ana? I think not.

It's October, and Southern California is on fire again.

It doesn't happen every year, but when the east wind blows, often the fires are not far behind.

Sometimes, the fires start when the winds get strong enough to knock down power lines. And sometimes the wind brings out all the idiots with a fire fixation. But whatever the cause, for those of us who grew up in Southern California, fall is fire season. That is just a fact of life in SoCal, just like earthquakes and film shoots. And, honestly, the fires are a natural and healthy part of the region's ecology.

Of course, the fires are regarded with fear and loathing. Through the years they have caused untold damage and not a little loss of life. And often the wind gets the blame, even when it doesn't cause the fires but only spreads them once they've begun.

This makes me sad, because I have always loved wind in general, and the Santa Ana Wind, as it is officially called in SoCal specifically. Wikipedia has a little bit to say about this regional phenomenon here. I've never really liked that name for the wind, though. When I was growing up in Simi Valley, we just called it the east wind.

Yes, in one way I associate the east wind with fires, just like everyone else. I can remember my father spending the night on the roof of my grandmother's house (the house I lived in the first six years of my life) fighting the wind from knocking him off and wetting the roof down with the garden hose so that flying embers wouldn't set the wood building aflame. I can remember our small valley being completely cut off from the outside world, the sky above completely clouded over with smoke. Those were frightening times.

And the fires were not the only trouble the winds would cause. Legend has it that teachers in SoCal don't even try to get their classes to do anything when the east wind is blowing, because it makes their students hyper to the point of mania. Well, it wasn't quite that bad in reality, but I know the wind had an effect on me.

It was sort of a natural high for me, when the east wind was blowing. It made me feel energized, like I could do anything. Being out in it, hair whipping in the 50, 60, 70, 80 mile per hour winds, where sometimes it was almost impossible to walk against the wind, was exhilarating.

One bit of the Wikipedia article linked above that struck me was this:

A Santa Ana fog is derivative phenomenon in which a ground fog settles in Southern California during the end of a Santa Ana wind episode. When Santa Ana conditions prevail, with winds in the lower two to three kilometers (1.25-1.8 m) of the atmosphere from the north through east, the lower atmosphere continues to be dry. But as soon as the Santa Ana winds cease, the cool and moist marine layer forms rapidly. The air in the marine layer becomes very moist and fog occurs.

It can work the other way, as well. I remember when I was about five years old, not long before Christmas, I was scheduled to be in a holiday pageant at church. But when it came time to go to the church for the pageant, it was so foggy out that you could barely see your hand in front of your face. But, in the best show-must-go-on tradition, my mother and father and I set out for the church anyway. We found the driveway to my grandmother's house when we stopped by to pick her up but my father left the car on the side of the road and walked down her long driveway to get her rather than pulling into the driveway because he was afraid he would drive off into the walnut orchard trying to back out again.

We made it to the church, maybe three or four miles away, without incident, but as we started to go inside the fog was still thick. My father looked up, laughed, and remarked that it would be funny if it was clear by the end of the show. Everyone laughed and sort of said the early-1960s version of "Yeah, right," and we went inside. The show went well, I suppose. I don't remember too much about it. I was five years old, after all. But I clearly remember emerging from the church building an hour or hour and half later to the east wind blowing and a crystal clear sky strewn with stars that looked so close that you could touch them. We just all looked at my father like he must have had a crystal ball concealed somewhere on his person.

Where I live now, the wind almost never blows, and when it does it rarely blows very hard. Yesterday we did have wind, not from the east but from the north, not warm but cold, and only up to gusts of about 40 miles per hour (as reported; it didn't seem nearly that much to me). Still, it felt so good to have it. And it made me miss SoCal and the east wind, despite all the trouble it sometimes exacerbates.

So, as I watched the CNN coverage of the fires this morning, I felt bad for those people whose homes were burning or in danger of burning. But there was also a part of me that was very homesick for my east wind.

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah...and no, I'm not talking Beatles' songs

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. It's been nearly two months since I've posted here.

No excuses, except as Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say, via Gilda Radner on the real Saturday Night Live, "It's always something."

First of all, late August to about this time of year is always my worst time of year for allergies, and by the time I've been finished with my work writing (yes, I do get paid for some of my writing...Believe it or Not!) my brain has been hurting too much from trying to look around my poor aching sinuses to write much else.

In addition, I take care of my mother (a full-time job, that, even if "taking care" mostly just means being here for her on a continuing basis), which takes up a certain amount of time. This has been taking more time since she was in the hospital a few weeks ago. She was only there for two days, but there have been extra things for me to do since she's been home...making sure she takes her meds, that she doesn't overdo, that sort of thing...which take up time.

And then there's just keeping a household running. I never realized, until I started taking care of my mother and handling her affairs just exactly how much time it takes to keep a household running.

Well, I've been thinking about it, and I think I want to make this a more active sort of blog...not just for whenever I feel moved to write about something, but as a regular witness to the world around me.

Quiz time...

There's Not a Violent Bone in Your Body

You're cool and collected, even when someone really gets under your skin. And while you don't blow up when you're angry, you know how to express your anger calmly. You don't bottle emotions up or let them get out of control. For you, violence would never be an option.

Could You Be Violent?

I sure hope this is accurate.

I can honestly say that I have never hit anyone in anger. The only physical fight I've ever been involved in was in between tap and ballet classes at dance school when I was in about fifth grade, and that consisted of Evelyn Gruen clocking me on the side of the head with her Ballet Box (the carrier for her dance shoes) and then running away. I still don't know what made her so mad at me. And I can't say that I wouldn't have fought back if she had stayed put, but I was so stunned that all I could do was stand there and watch her run. The weird thing about it all was that we never got along in dance school, but we went to the same school in junior high and while we weren't really friends, we were friendly.

Just one of life's little mysteries, I guess.

Another thought that this quiz brings up is the fact that I've never really understood the resort to violence. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Especially in this day and age when it seems like more and more people, almost as a first response to getting angry or frustrated, go out and kill a few (or a lot of) people. I'm talking about terrorism (of all stripes and from all points on the political and religious spectrum, because it isn't just adherents of Islam, folks), but I'm also talking about "going postal" in the workplace, going on shooting sprees at school or in random public places, and the people who decided that it is just a wonderful idea to get back at an estranged or ex-spouse by killing the kids, or the spouse and the kids, or the spouse and the kids and then him or herself.

Really. What is up with that? Maybe I'm just old fashioned. Or old. Or really, really naive. Or maybe it's my upbringing. There was no "domestic violence" in my house growing up. Heck, there wasn't even any yelling or name-calling. Yeah, I got a swat on the butt a couple of times, but it wasn't meant to hurt, just to get my attention when I was off in "I'm-the-center-of-the-universe-land". But my parents didn't fight. They didn't yell at me or at each other. A friend once told me, when I explained all this to her, that she felt sorry for me because I had never developed any defenses against what she called the "real world". But violence and verbal abuse wasn't used and wasn't approved of in my family. We had a neighbor who was abusive to his family when he was drunk - and he was drunk a lot - and he was used (quite without his knowledge) as an object lesson in how one doesn't conduct themselves in their relations with others. I could never understand why that neighbor did that, and I still don't understand it, and I guess maybe I'm glad that I don't. Because I think that if I understood it, I might be more likely to be susceptible to it.

Which, apparently, according to the quiz, I'm not.

Thanks, by the way, to Sister Susan Rose over at Musings of a Discerning Woman for pointing out this quiz. She got the same result as I did, by the way.

Tag, you're it...Jobs I would never want

Natalie Collins, over at Trapped by the Mormons, posted a general tag for a list of the top ten jobs you would never want to have to do. And so, my list:

10. Construction worker - I can saw a board and drive a nail - I am the daughter of a father than never let the fact that he didn't have a son stop him, so he taught me well - but my friends also know me well enough to realize that I'd make a wonderful vampire. I don't do sun, in other words. Which is probably a good thing since I have exclusively Northern European pale-skin genes and have never been close to tan. I burn, I peel, and then I return to pale. Well, except for the freckles. So I'd never make it in construction.

9. Waitress - I've seen the crap waitresses often have to put up with. I'd probably get canned inside a week for slapping men with wandering hands.

8. Telemarketer - Been there, done that, got the headache from being hung up on so much...and I wasn't even exactly selling anything, but just informing people of a sale at a local jewelry store in the small town where I used to livev.

7. Fruit grader - This is something else I've done and would prefer not to do again. It involves standing for long hours, watching fruit go by on a conveyor belt and throwing out the rotten peaches or plums or whatever fruit you happen to be grading. I used to get dizzy watching the conveyor belt to by. That, or I'd realize I was leaning in the direction the belt was traveling, sometimes to the point of nearly toppling over. Which can be really humiliating.

6. Gift Wrapper - No talent at this one. There's always something wrong with the presents I wrap. They look like...well, there is no adequate description. One Christmas season when I was still a good little church-going girl, my church had the gift-wrap and Santa Claus-photo concession in the local Sears store in order to make money for the church. I volunteered to help out. After about half an hour in gift-wrap, they sent me to take pictures of the kids (and others) with Santa. Which was fine with me...that was a fun job.

5. Sales - Especially door-to-door sales. This is something I have no talent for at all. I did the candy-sale thing as a school fund-raiser in junior high. This was back in the day when you didn't set up in front of the local grocery store or Wal-Mart; you schlepped the candy door-to-door. I think the only candy I sold was to my parents. I did the Girl Scout cookie sale thing when I was a Junior Girl Scout. Same result. When I was 10 or 11 or so I tried selling Christmas cards door-to-door. I couldn't even sell those to my mother. I was even an Avon lady for awhile not long after I got out of high school. That job finally got it into my thick skull that I'm just not cut out for sales.

4. Food-samples presented in grocery stores - Sort of in the sales vein. I hate having people try to force food on me in stores, so I wouldn't want to do that to anyone else, either.

3. Press secretary to any politician - I'm a lousy liar. Enough said.

2. Retail customer service - This is something else I've done - during the Christmas season. Yikes. Everyone I talked to was already pissed off before they ever go to me. I don't do well with people yelling at me. When the holidays were over I begged to be returned to cashier work. I liked being a cashier. Sure, you get someone stupid through your line once in awhile, but most people are nice and you can get into some really interesting conversations when there aren't many customers and have time to chat.

1. Anything in the medical professions - I have this horrible phobia of anything even remotely medical. I can't even watch hospital shows on television through an entire episode without my anxiety levels rising out of control. So, no, I wouldn't do well in a hospital or doctor's office setting.

So there you have it, ten jobs I would not want to have...plus a couple of comments on jobs I've actually enjoyed. Instead of tagging anyone specific, I'll just tag anyone who happens to read this and feels moved to share. If you decide to do so, drop a link in the comments section so I can see what jobs you can do without.

We're all in our places with sunshiny faces...yeah, right

So, its just after 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning, and here I am cruising the Internet and looking out my window.

Why am I up so early? Well, for the second time in three days there were people out in the alley outside my bedroom window having a loud conversation. At least they waited until almost six this time. Thursday morning they were out there at 4:45...wonderful thing to be startled awake by conversation even before the butt-crack of dawn on one's birthday.

Not that early is always a bad thing. I'm up and at my desk by 6:30 or 7 on weekday mornings to start my day's work while it's quiet and cool. And since I do work at home, my commute is sixteen steps from my bed to my desk (yes, I counted) and I can work in my nightgown if I want to, getting up that early isn't really that bad. It would be better if I could work straight through...I'd be finished by noon or earlier...but the nature of my work is that I have to wait for specific information to become available before I can finish each component of the day's tasks, so it usually takes a couple of hours beyond that. That, and the fact that the downside of working at home is the inevitability of getting interrupted by people who think that because I work at home I'm not really working, or that I can take as much time off in the middle as I want. I'm not sure what part of the word "deadline" they don't understand.

Still, this is very early to be up on a Saturday, when I don't have to work, especially for someone like myself who doesn't do mornings and doesn't do caffeine. I mean, the birds aren't even up yet, or if they are they are being very, very quiet. There are beginning to be more cars out and about now, and I just heard someone sneeze across the courtyard. And some fool still has their air conditioner on rather than throwing the windows open while it's still cool. Granted, it is supposed to hit about 101 degrees F today, but it will still be window weather until at least the middle of the morning. Maybe they have more money budgeted for the PG&E bill than I do. Oh, and someone just flew their puddle-jumper over (ah, the joys of living near the airport)...and now another one that I can hear but not see. Must be flying lesson day. Or they just woke up over at the airport...now I hear a larger plane. There it goes...by the flight path, I'd guess it's on its way to Vegas.

Well, I think I'm going to make some breakfast now. I didn't have much for dinner last night, and I'm absurdly hungry. And then I might go back to bed. Or else finish that scarf I'm knitting...or that book I'm reading...or work on one of my writing projects...or do the grocery shopping.

Isn't that what the weekend is for? To rush around doing all the things you don't have time to do during the week?

Marking the passing of a true original...

Sad news to report today. Tom Snyder, journalist and interviewer, has died at age 71.

Snyder hosted Tomorrow, a late night interview show from 1973 until 1982. The antithesis of Johnny Carson's Tonight show, which his show followed, Snyder interviewed a wide and deep variety of the famous and not-so famous, presenting real conversation that sometimes could not have been shown on broadcast television any earlier in the evening during that era.

I was a fan from the beginning Tomorrow's run, often dragging myself to school in the morning with my eyelids at half-mast because I'd been up until 2 a.m. watching the show (at that time, Tonight ran for an hour and a half, from 11:30 p.m. until 1 am, with Tomorrow following from 1 a.m. to 2 a.m.). The interviews were often serious, sometimes hilarious, and almost never run-of-the-mill.

Snyder hasn't been on television for awhile, but his presence has been sorely missed, at least by me. In a time when "talk show" has become synonymous with tabloid trash like that presented by Jerry Springer and Maury Povich, or with politically correct interviewers like Oprah Winfrey, I wish someone like Tom Snyder would come along again and inject some reality into the genre. He wasn't always politically correct. Some of the individuals Snyder interviewed could likely find a place on some of the tabloid shows. And some of those he interviewed (such as Charlie Manson) were likely presented at least partially for their value in gaining ratings. Still, Snyder's show was never sordid like so many of those shows are today.

Sadly, I doubt we'll see his like again.

The first half-year (plus a month) or, What I've Been Reading...

I meant to do this at the beginning of the month, as an inventory of the books I read during the first half of the year but never really got around to it. So, almost a month late and a couple of books longer, here is the list of books I've read so far this year:

1. Rage, Jonathan Kellerman (Ballantine Books, 2005) 391 pages (paperback edition).

2. Behind Closed Doors, Natalie R. Collins (St Martin Paperbacks, 2007) 322 pages. 8

3. The Lucifer Gospel, Paul Christopher (Onyx Books, New American Library, 2006) 357 pages.

4. Last on the Menu, Sister Eleanor Quin, C. S. J. (Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969) 182 pages.

5. The Republican Noise Machine, David Brock (Three Rivers Press, 2004; Afterward copyright 2005) 432 pages.

6. The Templar Legacy, Steve Berry (Ballantine Books, 2006) 487 pages.

7. The Republican War on Science, Chris Mooney (Basic Books) 357 pages.

8. An Alphabetical Life, Wendy Werris (Carroll & Graf Publishers) 292 pages.

9. Hotel California: The true-life adventures of Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Mitchell, Taylor, Browne, Ronstadt, Geffen, the Eagles, and their many friends, Barney Hoskins (John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2006) 324 pages.

10. The Alexandria Link, Steve Berry (Ballantine Books, 2007) 462 pages.

11. Michelangelo’s Notebook, Paul Christopher (Onyx Books, 2005) 358 pages.

12. The Collar, Jonathan Englert (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) 301 pages.

13. Tutu Deadly, Natalie M. Roberts (Berkley Prime Crime, 2007) 248 pages.

14. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, Charles C. Mann (Vintage, 2005, 2006) 541 pages.

15. All Saints, Liam Callahan (Delacorte, 2007).

16. The Last Cato, Matilde Asensi (Rayo, 2006; originally published in Spanish, 2001) 458 pages.

17. The Machine’s Child, Kage Baker (Tor, 2006) 351 pages.

18. Evolving God, Barbara J. King (Doubleday, 2007) 262 pages.

19. Gods and Pawns, Kage Baker (Tor, 2007) 335 pages.

20. Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America’s Soul, Edward Humes (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2007) 380 pages.

21. By Their Father’s Hand: The True Story of the Wesson Family Massacre, Monte Francis (Harper, 2007) 285 pages.

22. Rembrandt’s Ghost, Paul Christopher (Signet, 2007) 347 pages.

23. Dr. Mary’s Monkey: How the unsolved murder of a doctor, a secret laboratory in New Orleans and cancer-causing monkey viruses are linked to Lee Harvey Oswald, the JFK assassination and emerging global epidemics, Edward T. Haslam (TrineDay, 2007) 374 pages.

Non-fiction titles are in bold. I kind of hesitated before bolding the last title on the list. It is non-fiction, but it is also one of those conspiracy-theory books that make interesting if fairly questionable claims about how history really happened. But, since it is presented as non-fiction, I decided that it qualified as such.

Actually, Dr. Mary's Monkey was in interesting book. I love conspiracy theories even if I can't ultimately buy most of them as presented. The best ones present their claims in terms that make logical leaps that you at least have to think about before dismissing them, and this book managed to do that. Yes, the idea that several people whose names are linked with the JFK assassination (primarily Clay Shaw, Guy Bannister and David Ferrie...the New Orleans contingent, in other words) were also caught up in clandestine research that might have grown our of an adulterated early polio vaccine that is now causing soft-tissue cancers in many of those innoculated with it as well as being the ulimate genesis of HIV takes a fairly big gulp to swallow. But Haslam manages to weave the story in such a way (and with plenty of references to follow up if one is so inclined) that it doesn't seem completely out of the question on first read.

This statement, of course, doesn't mean I believe a word of it. But as a conspiracy theory it certainly does better than the story, for example, that Elvis is alive and well and living in Cleveland or wherever.