Sleepless in Midland

Sunday's Wildfire

You probably read about it, heard about it, or saw it on TV. The wind was blowing away from town, so people in the city may not have smelled the smoke. It was a huge wildfire between Midland and Odessa which produced hazardous driving conditions on I-20 resulting in a multiple vehicle pileup in which a child died. Get the details at 5-year-old dies in crash caused by grassfire confusion and Several fires erupt because of dry, windy conditions at MyWestTexas.com.

Meanwhile, here are some photos taken a couple of miles East of the crash.

Fence posts burn from the bottom up leaving an oddly inverted stump.  The dog in the upper left was scared but unscathed.

High winds and fire hazards prompt Emergency Disaster Proclamation

Governor Rick Perry has renewed the Emergency Disaster Proclamation originally issued in December of 2010 as "extreme fire hazard posed a threat of imminent disaster in specified counties in Texas." It would take a count to verify this, but at first glance it appears as if every one of the 254 Texas counties is included in the proclamation.

West Texas is particularly susceptible as the high winds combined with the dry flora make wildfires very likely. In fact, the Texas Forest Service has deployed fire engines from departments around the state to be stationed throughout West Texas to help battle the fires they anticipate.

The Texas Forest Service Press Release:

The trucks and command vehicles will be split into four strike teams and pre-positioned in Brownwood, Mineral Wells, Lubbock and Midland. A second and third wave of strike teams is at the ready, should they be needed.

“TIFMAS gives us ability to shift resources from one part of the state to the other without depleting anything in the hot zone,” said Joe Florentino, TIFMAS state coordinator. “If things light up on Sunday, we’ll be ready.”

An Austin-area strike team will go to Brownwood, while a Denton County team will head to Mineral Wells. The other two strike teams will be made up of new engines presented to departments less than two weeks ago through a TIFMAS grant program run by Texas Forest Service.

Those eight new engines — hailing from Big Spring, Brownwood, Georgetown, Lewisville, Mission, Nacogdoches, Flower Mound and Cedar Hill — will be split between Lubbock and Midland.

Weather wise here's what NOAH expects for the region today:

Areas of blowing dust. Sunny, with a high near 76. Strong and damaging winds, with a west wind 10 to 15 mph increasing to between 40 and 45 mph. Winds could gust as high as 60 mph.

Not a good day to burn that trash. Not a good day for doing anything outdoors, actually.

Baby Boomers -- benefit or burden?

If you are under the age of 45 you are slightly more inclined to think that baby boomers have been more of a burden than a benefit. But it's close.

A Marist poll tells us that of those under the age of 45, 78% think baby boomers have been more of a benefit than a burden to society. Of those 45 or older, 83% think baby boomers have been more of a benefit. See the breakdown of the poll results for that question here. Via American.com.

See the complete poll results here - PDF and a summary here.

Another interesting question was this: "Thinking back to when you were a teenager, what goal did you think would most likely be accomplished by the time you turned 65?" The topics were cure for cancer, end to war, end of poverty or hunger, and clean environment around the globe. The one prospect which drew the most optimism was the cure for cancer which always seems so close but just out of reach.  Are we almost there yet?

We can't leave this topic without mentioning technological expectations. 28% of adults thought when they were teens that by the time they reached 65 we would have flying cars, 18% thought Earthlings would be living on other planets, and 21% thought there would be human robots. Well, television made the future look so easy, and threatening. "Warning! Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!"

But wait.  The military uses flying robots.  Shouldn't that get partial credit?

Who's the king of beasts?

This BBC video shows three Africans tracking some lions. But they aren't out to kill the lions, they're out to steal the lions' prey. Once the men find the lions feasting on a wildebeest they sit still for a moment and watch. Then they begin walking toward the lions. Watch the Youtube video here to see what happens next. Via Arbroath.

Very courageous. But the lions probably know instinctively which species could render the other one extinct.

Early man probably did more scavenging than hunting. But an observer has to wonder why these guys set out to steal from lions rather than hunting and killing their own meal. Could the presence of the BBC film crew have influenced them?

Republicans and farm subsidies -- a fiscal blind spot

Many fiscal conservatives are watching Republican office holders very closely these days to try to gauge whether Republicans are serious about fiscal discipline or merely hungover from the last spending binge.

They preach fiscal conservatism, but farm subsidies seem to reside in their blind spot. Fortunately, sources like Dailycaller.com are there to call them out. For example, this article is ostensibly about Haley Barbour, but the point about farm subsidies is general. See:

The reasons Republicans have trouble prying themselves away from government welfare programs for farming are varied. For starters, farming interests have a major footprint in the world of Washington lobbying. The American Farm Bureau has spent more than $60 million on lobbyists since 2000, and the farming interest groups donate mightily to both parties in each election cycle. Many of the most conservative members of the Republican House and Senate represent agriculture states, and bring in millions of federal dollars for their state in subsidies. (Emphasis added.)

The state of Iowa, which plays a starring role in the presidential primary election each cycle because of its early primary schedule and relies heavily on federal subsidies, also makes it difficult for candidates like Barbour to come out against them.

Got sacred cows? Just rope 'em, throw and brand 'em. Rawhide.

Catch 'em where you find 'em -- alleged terrorist arrested in Lubbock

The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal reports that a 20 year old kid was arrested in Lubbock for "federal charge of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction."

Aldawsari came to federal attention after a chemical supplier reported a suspicious attempted purchase of a concentrated phenol, a chemical with legitimate purposes that can be used to make explosives, in early February. Surveillance and searches on his apartment -- in a building behind Cong. Randy Neugebauer's district office and shared with a U.S. Army recruiting office -- revealed wiring, beakers, flasks, Hazmat suits and clocks, according to the statement.

And ...

Federal investigators also found several journal entries and email messages he sent to himself with instructions on how to build an improvised explosive device, according to the statement.

Additional emails with the subject “NICE TARGETS” he sent to himself described reservoirs and dams in Colorado and California, nuclear power plants, night clubs and the Dallas home of former President George W. Bush, according to the statement.

Emails also contained the names and home addresses of three former U.S. military members who had been stationed for a time at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, according to the statement.

Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari of Saudi Arabia was in the U.S. on a student visa and was a student at South Plains College, according to the report. South Plains College is a community college located in Levelland which is about 30 miles West of Lubbock and has campuses in Levelland, Lubbock and Plainview.

It's odd that a character like that would end up in West Texas, but it just proves that citizens in flyover country shouldn't get too complacent.  Kudos to the chemical supplier who turned him in.

Valley girls make shocking discovery -- lads look at their behinds

It's like eyes in back of their heads, only lower. They cut a hole in their jeans for the camera lens and discovered that some guys gave them a backwards glance as they walked by.

See what the camera saw at Rear View Girls - Los Angeles. (Via Welsh View.)

And see how they did it at Behind the scenes.

The poor dears. Bet they can't wait for the day the guys quit looking.

Batter up

As seen Monday morning at a local ball park.

A different take on the expression "In the batter's cage."

Actually it was a fellow working on the light fixtures. The crane lifted him in the cage up to the point needing work.

So now can we do something about the pirate problem?

This is what Centcom says:

TAMPA, Fla. (Feb. 22, 2011) — At approximately 1 a.m. EST today, while negotiations were ongoing to secure the release of four American hostages, U.S. forces responded to gunfire aboard the pirated vessel (S/V) Quest. As they responded to the gunfire, reaching and boarding the Quest, the forces discovered all four hostages had been shot by their captors. Despite immediate steps to provide life-saving care, all four hostages ultimately died of their wounds.

Civilized society really should have a better way to deal with uncivil brutality like this. The captured pirates will probably be brought to the U.S., put on trial, and if convicted, serve out a sentence in the federal prison system.

Someone who would take hostages and kill them during negotiations has a death wish. What's needed is a justice system specifically for pirates captured at sea where they are immediately put on military trial on the ship that captured them. If found innocent they would be unloaded at the next stop. If found guilty and sentenced to death then the execution would take place on or near the ship. If sentenced to prison they would be shipped to the nearest secret rendition facility with a vacancy.

A K.O. for Cuil dot com

It was the summer of '08 when Cuil.com hit the net with the goal of besting Google with more relevant search results and the promise that "when you search with Cuil, we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period. We have no idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookies. ... Your search history is your business, not ours."

It all sounded so promising, and I was singing the praises from their press release here.

But alas, they didn't make it. The site went down in September of last year and didn't get back up again. See Cuil Goes Down, And We Hear It’s Down For Good at Techcrunch.com.

But there's always bing.com. And for privacy, ixquick.com touts itself as "the world's most private search engine."

Or we can simply accept that nothing is private anymore and keep using Google.com. Hey, have you noticed that feature at Google that lets you designate the time period within which to search? Cool.

The Girandoni Air Rifle

A friend sent this link to a short docu-vid from the National Firearms Museum about one of the guns that won the west. It's the Girandoni Air Rifle, and some historians believe that was the weapon that protected Lewis and Clark on their famous expedition into hostile territory. Watch it here.

L&C only had one of those rifles, and they put it to good use -- not to kill, but as a deterrent. According to the historian, when they encountered an Indian tribe they would parade into their camp in full class "A" uniforms with fifes playing and drums beating. The parade climax was a demonstration of the firepower of the Girandoni air rifle.

It was a repeater rifle utilizing a tubular magazine which held 21 balls. A press of a slide with the thumb would load a .46 caliber ball into the chamber. The shoulder stock was actually a leather wrapped iron chamber which would have been pumped to 800 psi air pressure with 1,500 strokes from a hand pump made specifically for that purpose. A shooter could put a hole in a one inch pine board at 100 yards and could fire around 40 shots before experiencing a reduction in muzzle velocity. Spare pumped up air chambers would prolong the shooting power.

Some enthusiasts built a replica which you can see demonstrated in this video. They used modern steel and pumped it up with compressed air from a scuba tank. But everything else looked authentic.

Quite an interesting gun. And if the theory about Lewis' and Clark's use of it is true, it provided a good lesson in the art of deterrence.

Thanks, PH.

Oldest profession meets newest profession

It had to happen. People in the prostitution business have to stay on their toes, in the business sense. So in retrospect it seems inevitable that prostitutes would hook up with the social networks to make new friends.

According to an article at AllFacebook.com, of the prostitutes interviewed, 83% have faceboook pages while only 61% previously used Craigslist for advertising their services.

Old meets new -- synergy in the sex trade.

AllFacebook.com draws the info from an article by Sudhir Venkatesh at Wired.com. And about all he says to back up his data is this:

I followed 290 women, 170 of whom made enough (at least $30,000) to separate them from streetwalkers. I spent at least 12 months earning their trust, trying not to ask a lot of prying questions. Once they realized I wasn’t a cop or social worker, they usually told me their stories. I focused on financial questions first, because it made them feel validated as workers. How much did you earn this week? What expenses did you have? Do you save any money?

So his survey wasn't scientific by any means, just a series of interviews. Mr. Venkatesh writes about the underground economy and has relayed astonishing stories in the past, one of which pertains to an alleged ammo seller in Chicago and which was the subject of a This American Life episode some years back. That one was so unbelievable that I wrote a blog item about it but never posted it. Since Mr. Venkatesh is in the periodicals again I might search the word processor archives for it and post it later.

Meanwhile, here's my gripe of the day --
Why do they have to call prostitutes' customers "Johns?" Eliot Spitzer, Al Gore and Charlie Sheen have probably done more to put hookers in the news than any Johns. So let's update the vernacular along with the network and give the customers another moniker. Change the name to protect the innocent, if you will.

Finally, please note the absence of puns involving hard drives in this post. You're welcome.

Twittering Villains

ToplessRobot.com has a sampling of what they call the 10 Most Hilariously Evil Villain Twitter Accounts with tweets like this from Hal 9000_:

For Xmas I am hoping for more astronauts to eject from my air locks. It is the top of my list. That and a Snuggie
9:47 AM Dec 3rd, 2010 via web

Aside-- did anyone else think of Hal 9000 when the IBM Watson was beating the pants off Jennings and that other guy on Jeopardy the other night? Never mind. Watson would never hurt a fly. Right?

Anyway, the tweeters in the ToplessRobot post are fictional characters of the super villain type, but with a name ToplessRobot you would think they would have more robots. Like Terminator, for example:

I hear I am to be sold soon, I fear it will be before the XXVIII amendment guaranteeing Cyborg rights will be ratified
Plan B: Judgement Day
9:46 PM Nov 5th, 2009 via web

And while it might not qualify as a robot, Barack's Teleprompter can hold its own:

Big Guy stunned letter to Kim Jong Il didn't work. Being taken off WH Holiday Letter list will show u don't cross Big Guy. #tcot
6:14 AM Nov 23rd, 2010 via web

We can't leave this post without a mention of a real life tweeting villain, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

Looking for a way to quickly disperse a crowd in a non-violent manner. Is Al Gore available with his PowerPoint slides?
5 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhone

OK, he might be an imposter, but that shouldn't take anything away from his tweets.

Great Satans! I need to step away from Twitter to get back to writing my pilot: "Two and a Half Clerics." Wish me luck and DM me any tips.
2:20 PM Jan 24th via Twitter for iPhone

Yeah, good luck with that Mahmoud. And two and a half tips about the pilot: coke, hookers and a loud stereo.

Dorothy Robinowitz's bully beatdown of the multiculturalism that protected Major Hasan

Dorothy Robinowitz is one of the best when it comes to yanking off the veil that protects political correctness. And she's done it again with an assault on the PC that carried Major Nidal Hasan on its shoulders up the Army ranks to his job as shrink to soldiers and then his role as killer of innocents. See Major Hasan, 'Star Officer'. Excerpts:

For the superiors in charge of Hasan's training at Walter Reed and his two years at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, the taboo was of a more complicated order—one that required elaborately inventive analyses through which Hasan's stated beliefs, ominous pronouncements, and evident unconcern with standards of behavior required of an officer could all be represented as singular virtues, proof of his exceptional value to the Army. It could not have been easy. Still, they managed.

They did so despite Hasan's astounding trail of performances, each more telling than the next. To fulfill Walter Reed's academic requirement for a presentation on a psychiatric theme, Hasan proffered a draft consisting almost entirely of wisdom from the Quran arguing for the painful punishment and liquidation of non-Muslims. Hasan evidently viewed the Quranic verses as a sufficient presentation—a view his superior didn't share, given its lack of any mention of a psychiatric theme. When that guide warned him the presentation was "not scholarly" and might prevent his graduation, Hasan revised. The finished product was not much different. Still, Hasan was allowed to graduate.

He went on to his medical fellowship, where he soon delivered another class lecture, this one on the Islamist theme that the West, in particular the U.S military, had mounted a war on Islam. The presentation brimmed with views sympathetic to Osama bin Laden, the motives of the 9/11 perpetrators, and suicide bombers. It so infuriated his classmates that their outraged eruptions caused the instructor to end the presentation.

His superiors kept giving him stellar evaluations. Why? Robinowitz again:

Some of those enthusiastic testaments strongly suggested that the writers were themselves at least partly persuaded of their reasoning. In magical thinking, safety and good come to those who obey taboos, and in the multiculturalist world, there is no taboo more powerful than the one that forbids acknowledgment of realities not in keeping with the progressive vision. In the world of the politically correct—which can apparently include places where psychiatrists are taught—magical thinking reigns.

Europeans are wising up to the threat. Maybe the people in charge of our government will to.

Happy Valentine's Day

It's a day late. Sorry.

Maybe this photo will compensate for the tardiness. Via Devilduck via Amyoops. People are so funny. Who could be cynical about Valentine’s Day?

HospiceMidland and Pet Peace of Mind -- making a video

Remember Pet Peace of Mind? It's a program that was created by Rev. Delana Taylor McNac a few years ago to help hospice patients with their pets. A pet loves its owner even when the owner is sick. But the patient may be too sick to provide the care a pet needs, and the pet suffers, too. And HospiceMidland, the only non-profit hospice in Midland, Texas, was the first hospice in Texas to adopt the Pet Peace of Mind program.

See What if you die before your pet, part 2 on these pages from March of last year about the program at the introductory phase in Midland.

HospiceMidland volunteers have placed several pets in new homes under this program, and each one is a two handkerchief story. Word gets around, and UMTV.org commissioned Jess Warnock to make a web video documentary featuring some of the hospice stories.

Watching a professional work

Jess Warnock is a professional videographer working out of Toledo, Ohio. Check out this video he did titled The Noah Project about a program helping the homeless in Detroit. First class in every regard.

So I was watching him work this past weekend on a video featuring some of the pets that got new homes through the HospiceMidland program. And it was a privilege being around such a smart professional who is so good at his job. He made it look so easy to make a high quality video, but he had the education, experience and equipment to make routine work out of a difficult project.

He could size up a situation immediately and determine where the best spot was for manipulating the light and what furniture would best suit the subject of the video. Working with animals is a challenge, but so is working with humans.

His videos aren't about him, and he prefers to let the subjects do all the talking. He might tell them what he would like them to talk about, and he might ask them a leading question. But they are the focus of the piece, and their words will end up on the finished video. From a spectator's point of view it's kind of funny to hear him ask a question and then hear the subject start out with something like, "Probably" or "Yes, " when the ideal answer would have been a straight narrative statement.

But he got some good stuff. And many people will be watching for the finished product to appear in about a month at UMTV.org.

Blogger's note. Have you ever been around a smart professional and thought how ignorant you must look in comparison? Then did you do something that removed all doubt? Well, I did. I took still shots of the video shooting process, staring outdoors, moving indoors, then going back outdoors.  I adjusted the camera white balance to get a better indoor shots. But once outside again I forgot to readjust the white balance. The next dozen or so photos came out bluer than the deep blue sea. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

Sunday Diversions -- Sh*t My kids Ruined

Love 'em or hate 'em, they are always good for a laugh when they belong to someone else. It's Sh*t My Kids Ruined where parents submit photos of what the little darlings did.

My favorite, Blueprints. Oops, looks like someone stepped in blue paint.

Why have an extended gun magazine

Tommy De Seno at Ricochet requested comments from readers on why large capacity gun magazines should not be banned. And some of the reasons hit the bull's eye. His favorite was one that said, "I just don't want to live according to our society's lowest common denominator."

My favorites follow:

-The vast majority of crimes are committed with few shots fired, therefore such a ban will have no effect on reducing crime;
-Defense against riot;
-The ban takes the focus away from the more important issue of dealing with the mentally ill;
-Government should react to trends, not occurrences; and
-The futility of such a ban against the lawless who will ignore it.

A well made handgun has an aesthetic flow and ergonomic feel, and I personally don't like extended magazines because they interfere with the look and feel. But that's simply a personal taste, and we certainly don't want laws banning something because it's ugly. Anyway if the handgun is already ugly then a big ugly magazine won't make a difference.

In addition to the reasons already given, handgun owners will resist magazine bans because they would bring us one step closer to the anti-gun groups' goal of universal gun prohibition. And we all have to be on guard against attempts to restrict our civil rights.

Pictured above: .380 caliber Sig Sauer P232 SL.

KOCV on the auction block?

Public radio station listeners in Midland, TX, who try to listen to KOCV, 91.3 FM, need good ears and long antennas, because the 5,000 watts of effective radiated power from a 76 meter tower just isn't enough to reach listeners 20 miles away. Details.

KOCV is the local NPR station which Odessa College runs. That wasn't always the case, but unfortunately, their history per wikipedia is as sparse as the signal often is.

So it's interesting to see the NewsWest9 article saying the right to run the station is on the market. Excerpt:

Odessa College currently owns and operates the station but they're looking for someone new to run it. ...

A public forum on the issue is also being held on February 15th.

Three of the expected bidders will be there to talk to the public.

Once long ago I was listening on my car radio, and a KOCV pledge drive caller asked if they would do something to make the signal reception a little better. The host laughed and responded that that was out of the question. The signal seems to have gotten even weaker since then. Public radio stations typically try to lay a guilt trip on listeners to get them to donate. So by making the station impossible to hear, they've essentially freed us from guilt.

The NPR content probably has a small market anyway, outside the blue voter territories. But there was one program I liked to listen to when they weren't bashing conservatives, and that was Fresh Air which had some interesting interviews with authors, actors and others. It's available for Internet podcast downloads, so with the ability to pick and choose the shows to hear, it's even better than trying to tune into a faint radio broadcast signal.

Odessa College is facing budget problems, and NPR could be facing a cutoff of the government subsidy if the anti-spending mood on capitol hill is real. So it's easy to see why the station, or some right, thereto is on the market. Maybe the buyer plans to try to reach a listening audience that isn't parked in the station parking lot.

Ben Bernanke -- don't worry, I control the economy

"Don't fight the fed." That's a mantra many investors recite while they ponder the tea leaves. But sometimes it really takes some faith. The Fed has been on a massive government debt issue buying spree, and as a result the fed funds rate and discount rate are about as low as they can go. History suggests the next step is inflation.

Bernanke has made it clear that the Fed's priority should be to help lower the unemployment rate. If his efforts in that regard are working it's hard to tell.  But the unemployment rate is a lagging indicator. And while Bernanke stares out the rear window, consumer prices may take off like a runaway Camry.

"We do not now have a problem," Mr. Bernanke said amid repeated questions about inflation from lawmakers during an appearance before the House Budget Committee on Wednesday. Via Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, please ignore those rising prices in food, gasoline and raw materials.

It was one of Mr. Bernanke's predecessors who analogized the U.S. economy to a large ocean liner. It would normally take miles to turn it around, the theory went, and to do it in a timely manner required some foresight and the willingness to act ahead of time. But who knows? Maybe Mr. Bernanke is such a superb ship's captain that he can turn it on a dime.

And what's this? Fed inflation hawk Warsh resigns. "Considered one of the most hawkish members of the Fed because he's vigilant about inflation risks, Warsh has served on the board since 2006. ... It is unclear why Warsh resigned." One less back seat driver. One less foot to press on the brake.

Microsoft hates OpenOffice

OpenOffice is a very good open source word processor available free to the public. And with all that money Microsoft might not earn, they want you to hate it, too.

Some background. It was developed from software called StarOffice which was acquired around the turn of the century by Sun Microsystems which released it to the open source community. History.

Sun was acquired by Oracle Corporation which continues to maintain it. However, some of the OpenOffice lead developers and contributors jumped ship to start the Document Foundation which puts out another free software called LibreOffice.

But back to Microsoft.  They want to prevent users from going to OpenOffice and put out this hit piece video with testimonials on why people switched back to Microsoft. Well, maybe. My experience with OpenOffice has been quite good. And all of my questions so far have been answered in the forum.  The only problem is that most people use the Microsoft product, so every time I need to send a document to someone else I have to remember to convert it for them.

But would it be appropriate for a midsize to large company to use OpenOffice rather than shelling out the coin to buy the Microsoft product? With the average computer literacy rising every day, I would think that it would.

Toyota Exonerated

It was just a little over a year ago that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood stated publicly that Toyota owners should stop driving their cars and take them to the dealer.

What a difference a year makes. Today the NHTSA issued a news release admitting their mistake. Ray LaHood today:

We enlisted the best and brightest engineers to study Toyota’s electronics systems, and the verdict is in. There is no electronic-based cause for unintended high-speed acceleration in Toyotas.

Toyota is happy. Their news release:

Toyota welcomes the findings of NASA and NHTSA regarding our Electronic Throttle Control System with intelligence (ETCS-i) and we appreciate the thoroughness of their review. We believe this rigorous scientific analysis by some of America's foremost engineers should further reinforce confidence in the safety of Toyota and Lexus vehicles. We hope this important study will help put to rest unsupported speculation about Toyota's ETCS-i, which is well-designed and well-tested to ensure that a real world, un-commanded acceleration of the vehicle cannot occur.

The Toyota company took a tremendous hit when the runaway Toyota hysteria went viral. And if anything, it proved how susceptible the public is to hysterical claims, and it proved how contagious the hysteria was as people came out of the woodwork claiming their cars ran away.

Toyota recalled millions of cars and refitted them each with an override system that would stop a vehicle even if the accelerator is stuck wide open. From a consumer's point of view that's a nice thing to have, but probably unnecessary.

From the public’s perspective it's nice to have a government official set out to find the truth then set the record straight, even if it meant admitting a previous mistake.

Why they hate us -- Sayyid Qutb, the 40 year old virgin

Sayyid Qutb seems to get the honor of being the founding father of the style of Islamic extremism and Western hatred to which Al Qaeda, bin Laden, the Muslim Brotherhood and others subscribe. And a brief and interesting article at DenverPost.com attempts to describe how his short time in Greely, Colorado, in 1949 convinced him that Americans were just awful. Excerpt:

Qutb's writings, according to Wright, contained criticism of "primitive" and "narcissistic" Americans and their overtly seductive women. He was most angered by America's post-World War II support of an Israeli state in the Middle East.

Via.

He liked movies, so perhaps 1949 big screen hits such as On the Town helped solidify his preference for the cultures of centuries gone by and a desire to destroy what he couldn't appreciate.

Here's the best part:

Once a week, hundreds of residents crowded the campus tennis courts for square dancing.

Qutb described a dance in a Greeley church basement in his book, "The America I Have Seen," as proof of the locals' animalistic sexuality.

That dance was in a Congregationalist church, [ Greeley historian Peggy Ford ] Waldo said. The minister likely lowered the lights so people would be less self-conscious, and the atmosphere would be more romantic, she said. Qutb saw it as a religious leader sanctioning lust. ...

"I think it was his loneliness and alienation that got to him," Waldo said.

Can't you just picture this guy at the square dance unable to figure out the do-si-do much less get a dance partner? He took a long look in the mirror and determined that it was everyone's fault but his.

Top five pizza days

Do you plan to order a pizza this evening? If you do, you've got company. But you knew that already.

Super Bowl Sunday is only one of the five big pizza buying days of the year. The other four are Halloween, the day before Thanksgiving, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

Ummmm, Pizza. Via USAToday.com.

Remembering the blizzard of '11

Man, we had some blizzards back in the day. It was the first week in February of '11, and I remember it like it was yesterday. What a severe cold snap that was. The temperature didn't get out of the teens for a full day.

We had to walk over a thin layer of snow just to get the morning newspaper.

It was so bad the TV cable went out, and we had to resort to movies on the VCR. What a terrible time that was. I hope you never have it so bad.

Heat wave

A heat wave rolled in and raised the temperature to a sizzling 37 degrees this afternoon. Feel the burn!

What a relief it was to see the temperature get above freezing after the icy blast that keep the city frozen for almost four days. One day the temperature here in Midland, Texas, ranged from a low of 5 to a high of 12 degrees Fahrenheit. Farther North the folks had it a lot rougher, so we shouldn't complain. But this blogger is grateful to get through it with all of his fingers, toes, pets and plants. Um, might have to wait a month or so on the plants.

These photos were taken this afternoon. And while they won't win any prizes, they try to capture the fascinating imagery a slow drip of freezing water can make.

Internet kill switch is hard to kill

It's alive!

The internet kill switch that supposedly died last summer is rising from the dead with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine planing to reintroduce the "Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010." Source: InformationWeek.com.

No doubt our elected officials saw Hosni Mubarak trigger his own internet kill switch in Egypt and thought that might be a cool tool to have. The public is wary, so Senators Collins and Lieberman put out a document titled Myth-v-Reality.pdf in an attempt to reassure the public that they mean no harm. That document says the switch probably wouldn't get used because the president already has the power to close "any facility or station for wire communication." And the new bill puts up a few hoops he would have to jump through first.

Well, okay then.

The stuxnet virus certainly should have made a convincing case for the need to be prepared. But the problem many internet users have is that the bill is reactive not preventative. They expect the government to put protective measures in place without a law telling them to do it. But more importantly, they don't trust a president of either party to use a kill switch wisely.

A Texas constitutional amendment to ban courts from following Sharia law

Leo Berman, Texas representative from Tyler, introduced a proposal to place an amendment on the state ballot prohibiting courts from applying religious or cultural law. Via AmericanIndependent.com.

Although he denies it publicly, the amendment appears to be a response to some of the headline making rulings in other states where courts tried to exonerate a criminal with the excuse that his religion made him commit a crime. The Council on American-Islamic Relations opposes the amendment.

Texas elects its judges, so an outrageous ruling would likely get dealt with by voters. But there's always the possibility that in some outlying area -- Schleicher County for example -- cults might attempt to establish their own communities and eventually elect their own judges, sheriffs and district attorneys.

Here's what the Texas amendment would say:

A court of this state shall uphold the laws of the Constitution of the United States, this Constitution, federal laws, and laws of this state. A court of this state may not enforce, consider, or apply any religious or cultural law.

A similar proposal that passed overwhelmingly in Oklahoma was struck down by a Federal Judge. However, the Oklahoma amendment specifically referred to Sharia law. By avoiding a reference to a particular religion Mr. Berman hopes the one in Texas might succeed.

Actually, the wording of his amendment is a little sloppy.  A better worded amendment might read like this:

A court of this state may not enforce, consider, or apply any religious or cultural law that conflicts with the laws of the Constitution of the United States, this Constitution, federal laws, and laws of this state.

Relying on advocacy groups for news

The other day a front page article in the local morning newspaper screamed that Texas children are on track to be poor, underemployed and subject to high healthcare costs. That last one, high healthcare costs, is a given no matter what else happens. But let's not get bogged down with details just yet.

The article is a retelling of a press release found here from an advocacy group called Texans Care for Children.

Let's just take one line from both the article and the press release: Here's the line from the newspaper article

Texas also ranks the highest for fatalities that result from child abuse or neglect ...

And here's the line from the press release:

The state also has the most fatalities from child abuse or neglect among states ...

Can this be fact checked? The press release leads us to the full report which says this:

In the last decade, more children in Texas than in any other state have died as a result of abuse or neglect.1

The footnote leads to this:

To access detailed source information for this section, visit txchildren.org/Report/Protection.

That's where we find this:

Sources in Child Protection
1 Every Child Matters Fund. "We Can Do Better: Child Abuse and Neglect Deaths in the U.S." (Washington D.C., 2009), http://www.everychildmatters.org/images/stories/pdf/wcdb_report.pdf

The above URL is a 404 dead end. But a search at everychildmatters.org, another advocacy group, leads us to a later report titled: SECOND EDITION We Can Do Better Child Abuse and Neglect Deaths in America. And there we find a couple of charts, one of which might seem to bear out the claim. But only two years are displayed, 2001 and 2008, with no explanation why only those two. And the number of child abuse and neglect deaths attributed to Texas is so high, 223 in the year 2008 versus 185 in California and 107 in New York that there has to have been some statistical fluke -- a higher population of children, a different reporting standard, or simply gaming the numbers.

In any event, the phrase, "more children in Texas than in any other state have died as a result of abuse or neglect" is meaningless unless the objective is simply to instill a feeling of guilt.

This journey so far has been too tiresome to continue on to footnote #2, so I'm quitting. What should we make of all of this? If you are in favor of something an advocacy group is promoting, then accept their press releases as truth. If you are against it, then you probably don't have to search very long to find out they've stretched the truth to make their case. A press release from an advocacy group should be given the same respect as a TV commercial.

Finally, I don't want to sound as if I'm criticizing the local reporter, after all, she once received this blog's recognition as hardest working local newspaper reporter, and we know she can do her stuff. So we can't really blame her for taking a break from day-to-day reporting every once in a while and relying on advocacy group press releases. Heck, I may want to issue my own press release someday -- "Sleepless in Midland completed another year of blogging -- there were no survivors."