1732 There's this guy in Bucyrus

who sells gasoline about 15 or 20 cents higher than the competition. Friday it was $2.39 for regular and Saturday he had dropped to $2.29, but the Mobile and Shell were $2.17. Around here the Sunoco is selling for $2.15, and the cheap gas places are probably less. So I'm thinking, how does this guy stay in business? It isn't just one week-end, but week after week. He's always way higher than stations two blocks away. Surely he can't be living on the loyalty of his relatives and the naivete of motorists coming in from Columbus and Cincinnati. He also has the dirtiest restrooms this side of the Third World--which I discovered the last time we stopped there. When I complained to the cashier she told me it wasn't her job. Well, maybe not, but did she go across the street when nature called? It was a sewer.

Maybe he sells something else and tries to keep the rest of us away.


Bucyrus has two beautiful murals that look like you could walk right into them

1731 Save a plant and it might return the favor

Plant and animal biodiversity isn't just for tree huggers. We've got Lyme Disease because the white footed mouse doesn't have enough natural enemies, and we need to protect the plants too, because they may be the source of treatments that will prolong our lives. This is not saving a snail species because it has "rights" but because it is the smart, productive and safe thing to do.

"Preserving biodiversity also means preserving a reservoir of as-yet-undiscovered medical treatments and cures. Consider the cancer drug Taxol, made from the Pacific yew tree; morphine, which was initially derived from poppies; and Artemisia, which yielded chloroquinine and other treatments for resistant strains of malaria. In addition, microbes -- the most diverse organisms on the planet -- also hold promise: aminoglycosides, a group of antibiotics used in the treatment of severe infections, were derived from a bacterium found in tropical soil.

Animal species too are treasure troves of medicines: the cone snail yields a toxin (recently FDA-approved under the name "Prialt") that is a thousand times more potent than morphine as a painkiller but does not lead to tolerance or addiction. That same snail also yields a broad-spectrum anti-epileptic used for the treatment of intractable epilepsy. It should go without saying that the destruction of species such as these means that potential cures are lost forever. Even species that may seem inconsequential to human life (like soil microbes or cone snails) actually have the potential to improve human life greatly -- if they are not driven to extinction."
American Council on Science and Health

1730 Creating a piece of art?

I found a neat site called typoGenerator. Type in the words, change the font, or colors or background, or toss two of the three and move on.

Not sure I like these colors, or pink flamingos

This might be better

This is such fun!

1729 Ohio should vote

NO on Tuesday there's a bunch of incomprehensible issues on the ballot--called 2,3,4,and 5. They address absentee voting rules (Issue 2), campaign finance laws (Issue 3), the drawing of legislative boundaries (Issue 4) and replacing the Ohio secretary of state with an appointed board (Issue 5). The liberal organizations are supporting this wholeheartedly. They are still mad that Bush won Ohio by 180,000 votes last November. Still think he stole the election. The voice over ads on TV and radio say absolutely nothing, on both sides. Here's how Richard Finan sees it:

• Issue 2 would allow more people to vote before the election but contains not one provision to assure voters that those votes are protected from fraud. In fact, in combination, Issues 2 and 5 obliterate Supreme Court rulings, Ohio attorneys general opinions and secretary of state policies that have protected the integrity of the vote in Ohio for generations.

• Issue 3 would limit the dollar amount people could give to candidates but would allow special interests never-before-imagined opportunities to stuff secondhand money into campaigns. For example, while it would prohibit Ohio’s employers from making political contributions, it would allow millionaires, such as Jerry Springer, the 2004 Democratic man of the year, to spend his own money unchecked for his promised campaign.

• Issue 4 would snatch the vote out of the hands of Ohioans while replacing that vote with a board of bureaucrats sealed off from the public. Ohioans have in every decade since 1970 thrown the rascals out, when they wearied of a party or its leaders. It is hard to believe that Ohio voters do not relish this power or that, as some reformers have said, are too easily tricked into misusing it.

Then comes Issue 5, which would remove the secretary of state as Ohio’s chief elections officer. That job, performed by dozens of different Democratic and Republican elected officials for generations, would be handed over to another appointed board. The board would mean more full-time state jobs and benefits for bureaucrats. The bureaucrats would set their own salaries, vacations and staffing needs, and taxpayers would get the bill."

1728 Debunking the myths of journalism graphic design

Although I didn't know there were myths about design of newspaper graphics, after reading this article at Poynter, I can see it. Some, I even think I've heard, although I'm no journalist. But I certainly think rag right is easier to read than justified right. Oh, the horrors of justifying paragraphs when we used the typewriter!

"Somewhere along the way, the myth developed that justified type conveys more of a hard news feel -- and that and rag right is more featurey. Readers don't make any differentiation between the two. Some reasearch has shown that rag right is easier to read because justified text can create large spaces and more hyphenation. Either way, the achieve the best reader experience, it's important to have someone with a skilled eye tweaking the size, letter and word spacing, and acceptable hyphenation."

Read the article, Debunking Myths by Ann Van Wagener

1727 And liberals complain about Christmas?

What would they do with these holidays so beautifully described and visually enhanced by Avik (see Oct. 10)?

"With the beating of drums and a surge of humanity flocking marquees since the morning despite warnings of thundershowers, the five-day Durga Puja, the biggest festival of the Bengalis, began in West Bengal on Sunday.

The festivities begin from Mahasashthi (the sixth day from the day after Mahalaya), when the priest unveils the goddess Durga during a puja known as bodhan.

This is followed by the three main days of Mahasaptami, Mahaastami and Mahanavami when the chanting of hymns, arati and anjali (floral offerings with chanting of hymns by men, women and children in new clothes) mark the rituals.

The fifth day of Bijoya Dasami, when the idols are immersed, marks the end of a carnival in West Bengal that goes beyond religions and communities."

1726 The continuing devastation in Alabama

Most teen bloggers write about the opposite sex, clothes and tech-toys. Not Rebelution. These teen brothers who are homeschooled have written about the wake-up call they got when driving through ground-zero of Katrina. It's still a mess, they report. They couldn't find a restaurant open, nor a grocery store to buy food. They needed to have their car repaired, and discovered there was no way to use a credit card. Residents of the area were still driving 50 miles to get gas. People are still living in tents. It's not over 'til it's over folks, and the press has gone home.

"In the past two weeks Alex and I have driven along the Gulf of Mexico from Montgomery, Alabama to San Antonio, Texas and back. We were struck not so much by the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, but by the continued devastation. There have been three major hurricanes since Hurricane Katrina hit in late August: Ophelia, Rita, and Wilma. And while it has been legitimate for the media to switch their attention to these new natural disasters, a perhaps unintended consequence is that most Americans, not directly affected by Katrina, have assumed that unless an area was just "re-hit" by Wilma, everything's "O.K. down there." To most, it's old news."

1725 Google's Sergey Brin

I just love Google. As a librarian, I'm not at all distressed that it is achieving librarianship's goals of access to information for everyone even while threatening to put librarians out of work!*

But I especially love that one of its founders, Sergey Brin, is an immigrant. Is this a great country, or what? And not just any immigrant, but he's from Russia. I was a Russian major in college and most of my classmates were immigrants--Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, etc. I think I only met one or two actual Russians.

Google's new plan to digitize works still under copyright is explained in Lawrence Lessig's November column in Wired. It's short and to the point and easy to understand.

And would you believe, my ancestors were immigrants too?

*The American Library Association has come out against torture and the war in Iraq, but has said nothing officially about Google's digitization project. They're leaving that up to publishers and authors.

1724 Jimmy Carter was my favorite president

until he started acting like he was morally still the president, and that's been for quite a few years now. When he jumped in and helped with Habitat for Humanity, he was doing what an ex-president should do. Finding his own niche. Above the fray. In the 90s he didn't like Bill Clinton, and likes George W. Bush even less. Now he has a new book, "Our Endangered Values." Apparently it is deadly dull, according to reviewer Bret Stephens. I'm not surprised. Like his party, he hasn't had a new idea in 25 years. Here are the key words of the review by Stephens, now you can decide to read the book or not. Me? Not.

tedious
boring
irritating
sanctimonious
self-congratulatory
humorless
factual omissions
passive-aggressive
"everything is wrong beginning with the title"
weird lapses of memory
obsessed
Tito--"believed in human rights"
Ceausescu--"our goals were the same"
Arafat--"misunderstood"
Kim Il Sung--"vigorous and intelligent"

I wonder of Carter thinks starvation is an important endangered value?

Article about Kim Il Sung in New Yorker. "the estimates are that two to three million people starved to death in the course of the past decade. Starving to death doesn’t happen overnight. Starving to death isn’t even a matter of having insufficient food for a couple of months. It’s total starvation over a long period of time, a complete breakdown of bodies."

"[Ceausescu's] secret police (Securitate) maintained rigid controls over free speech and the media, and tolerated no internal opposition. In an effort to pay off the large foreign debt that his government had accumulated in the 1970s, Ceausescu ordered the export of much of the country's agricultural and industrial production. The resulting drastic shortages of food, energy, medicines, and other basic necessities drove Romania from a state of relative economic well-being to near starvation. Ceausescu also instituted an extensive personality cult and appointed his wife, Elena, and some members of his family to high posts in the government. Among his grandiose schemes was a plan to bulldoze thousands of Romania's villages and large areas of the city of Bucharest, and move their residents into new apartment buildings. Over one fifth of the built area of central Bucharest, including churches and historic buildings, was demolished during Ceausescu's rule in the '80s." http://www.rotravel.com/romania/history/app4.php

1723 Fourteen entries

now in my new blog called, Memory Patterns. You're invited to take a look, although it is probably only of interest to my family. I'm using sewing patterns and photographs to reconstruct some memories. It is completely politics free, although still somewhat eclectic, because that's just how my mind works. I've come up with some memories that were pretty well buried, like buying an art print with green stamps, and who got the garter at my daughter's wedding. Don't throw anything away. You never know when you might need it!

1722 Omidyars of e-Bay finance an old idea

Now they are calling it "microfinance," but when I first went to work in the Agriculture Library in 1978 and worked with the Agricultural Credit and Technology files, I think we just called them small loans. We had hundreds and hundreds of papers in that file on third world rural development and what could be done with small loans. Sometimes it was several sewing machines, or a well, or a fish farm.

I think I'd say the same thing today I said in the 70s. Roads. Build them. Then do your miracles with microfinance or small loans. Without them, the farmers and the small business people have no market. With no markets, they move to the city slums. Without roads, aid rots in the ports.

1721 Writes like a girl--Dana Milbank

Well, it could be a girl's name, I guess.

"The Senate is witnessing a real-life revenge of the nerd. Alito, bespectacled, hair askew, suit rumpled and ill-fitting, walked into Sen. Tim Johnson's office this week to pay a courtesy call. . .Alito forgot to unbutton his suit jacket, causing his tie to stick out and his jacket to bunch up. The judge's pant leg hiked up as he sat, revealing an untied shoelace. . . What better place for a supreme square than the Supreme Court?. . . Compared with Roberts, Alito looks as if he were in town for a "Star Trek" convention. . . Alito caught his foot in carpeting and briefly stumbled while getting in the elevator. . .his buttoned suit jacket bunching up, his fingers gripping his knees, his toes pointed inward." WaPo

What passes these days for journalism! More catty than a next of kittens. But it's probably a good sign that the MSM is totally without words.

1720 Victoria Toensig’s article in the WSJ “Investigate the CIA”

As excerpted in Powerline. Read this and then tell me again why they are wasting my tax money investigating Scooter Libby when they need to be investigating Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame and whoever at the CIA is trying to undo the Bush presidency. Seven questions the reporters haven't been asking. They need a blogfire.

• First: The CIA sent her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger on a sensitive mission regarding WMD. He was to determine whether Iraq had attempted to purchase yellowcake, an essential ingredient for nonconventional weapons. However, it was Ms. Plame, not Mr. Wilson, who was the WMD expert. Moreover, Mr. Wilson had no intelligence background, was never a senior person in Niger when he was in the State Department, and was opposed to the administration's Iraq policy. The assignment was given, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee, at Ms. Plame's suggestion.

[My question 1-a: Is Ms. Plame involved in the misinformation about WMD that lead up to the war? 1-b: Did she need to cover her tracks, throw off the scent? 1-c Does Ms. Plame have more power in the CIA that we have been told? After all, she's making assignments related to WMD.]

• Second: Mr. Wilson was not required to sign a confidentiality agreement, a mandatory act for the rest of us who either carry out any similar CIA assignment or who represent CIA clients.

[My question: 2-a: Does this mean Mr. Wilson was not a CIA employee, but just an ordinary citizen since he didn't sign any agreement normal for an employee? 2-b Was the reason his wife wasn't sent was that she had already botched the WMD investigation?]

• Third: When he returned from Niger, Mr. Wilson was not required to write a report, but rather merely to provide an oral briefing. That information was not sent to the White House. If this mission to Niger were so important, wouldn't a competent intelligence agency want a thoughtful written assessment from the "missionary," if for no other reason than to establish a record to refute any subsequent misrepresentation of that assessment? Because it was the vice president who initially inquired about Niger and the yellowcake (although he had nothing to do with Mr. Wilson being sent), it is curious that neither his office nor the president's were privy to the fruits of Mr. Wilson's oral report.

[My question: 3-a: Does this mean Mr. Wilson was a common tourist to Niger? 3-b: Why did the CIA put so little weight on v.p. Cheney's request. 3-c: Were they already aware of their misinformation about WMD and didn't want to raise the issue?]

• Fourth: Although Mr. Wilson did not have to write even one word for the agency that sent him on the mission at taxpayer's expense, over a year later he was permitted to tell all about this sensitive assignment in the New York Times. For the rest of us, writing about such an assignment would mean we'd have to bring our proposed op-ed before the CIA's Prepublication Review Board and spend countless hours arguing over every word to be published. Congressional oversight committees should want to know who at the CIA permitted the publication of the article, which, it has been reported, did not jibe with the thrust of Mr. Wilson's oral briefing. For starters, if the piece had been properly vetted at the CIA, someone should have known that the agency never briefed the vice president on the trip, as claimed by Mr. Wilson in his op-ed.

[My question: 4-a: Who does Ms. Plame know on that Review Board who would pass on this? Or is she much higher up than we've been led to believe and can just go over their heads? 4-b: Why didn't NYT ask about the CIA clearance? 4-c: Was Wilson so naive that he didn't know he needed permission, and the CIA did act because then their ineptness in sending him would have to come out?]

• Fifth: More important than the inaccuracies is the fact that, if the CIA truly, truly, truly had wanted Ms. Plame's identity to be secret, it never would have permitted her spouse to write the op-ed. Did no one at Langley think that her identity could be compromised if her spouse wrote a piece discussing a foreign mission about a volatile political issue that focused on her expertise? The obvious question a sophisticated journalist such as Mr. Novak asked after "Why did the CIA send Wilson?" was "Who is Wilson?" After being told by a still-unnamed administration source that Mr. Wilson's "wife" suggested him for the assignment, Mr. Novak went to Who's Who, which reveals "Valerie Plame" as Mr. Wilson's spouse.

[My question 5-a: Was Ms. Plame's career and reputation (because of WMD misinformation) in the toilet so they didn't care how she was outed? 5-b: Is Wilson as hungry for publicity as Cindy Sheehan?]

• Sixth: CIA incompetence did not end there. When Mr. Novak called the agency to verify Ms. Plame's employment, it not only did so, but failed to go beyond the perfunctory request not to publish. Every experienced Washington journalist knows that when the CIA really does not want something public, there are serious requests from the top, usually the director. Only the press office talked to Mr. Novak.

[My question 6-a: so is Novak off the hook? 6-b: Did he have no obligation to ask just in case he was talking to a lunch time substitute.]

• Seventh: Although high-ranking Justice Department officials are prohibited from political activity, the CIA had no problem permitting its deep cover or classified employee from making political contributions under the name "Wilson, Valerie E.," information publicly available at the FEC.

[My question 7-a: Why hasn't Plame been fired for this if it's against the rules? 7-b: Has she been fired and no one told us? 7-c: Did she know she was violating the rules?]

1719 9th Circuit Court are sure a scary bunch

A Calfornia blogger, e-Claire, asks what is going on with sex education in California?

Read this Unanimous Decision by the Court: FIELDS v. PALMDALE SCHOOL DIST.

"We… hold that there is no fundamental right of parents to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children, either independent of their right to direct the upbringing and education of their children or encompassed by it. We also hold that parents have no due process or privacy right to override the determinations of public schools as to the information to which their children will be exposed while enrolled as students. Finally, we hold that the defendants’ actions were rationally related to a legitimate state purpose."

So I guess if the schools want to teach your kid that masturbation causes insanity, or that babies come from the cabbage patch you can't contradict them. . . "parents have no due process or privacy right. . ."

Is this the "mainstream" that the Dems keep talking about for our Supreme Court?

1718 I must have lied somewhere along the way

Or maybe I guessed. This really doesn't sound like the way I cook. I like that funny gal with dark hair who's been on Oprah and the one who starts with all the convenience food and comes up with something terrific. I've never even seen this guy. Tonight we're having pizza from that shop up the street.


Which Food Network chef are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

I saw this at Jenna's blog.

1717 Escaping prison in a garbage truck

When an Ohio Penitentiary resident escaped back in the 70s, we got a phone call from the warden. We were on his visitation list--in fact, he was a few weeks from being paroled and had planned to live with us. But cupid struck, and he escaped with the lady from the casket company in the O.P.'s garbage truck.

So as I was watching the news accounts of Jimmy Causey and Johnny Brewer escaping a South Carolina prison today in the garbage truck, I thought about our experience. Our guy was on the lam a bit longer than those two, who apparently were caught when they got hungry and ordered a pizza. The delivery person recognized them and called the police. Our guy (and his lady friend) drove to central Indiana and he got a job in a bar. He was such a good employee and so trusted by the owner, that he made the night bank deposits (he was doing time for breaking and entering, in the night season, with a gun). I think he wasn't caught for nearly a year, and only because he came back to Ohio to visit his mother, and someone recognized him.

Stolen angel

Sometime after 1986, thieves entered this cemetery in Elwood, Indiana, and stole the family angel. A couple of generations of Bruces are buried near by. If you see a marble angel in someone's garden, be suspicious, very suspicious. We're looking for it.



Casselman Bruce family home, Elwood, Indiana

1715 The Bill Gates Malaria Gift

It was sad to see on ABC News two nights ago the news of the Bill and Melinda Gates gift to develop drugs to fight malaria. Yes, thousands of Africans die of malaria every day, but those deaths are unnecessary. Until Americans were duped by Rachel Carson's misinformation, good progress was being made against this terrible disease. Since 1972 when the EPA banned its use, millions have died needlessly. This "do-gooder" impulse we Americans have has killed more Africans than the infamous slave trade of the 17th and 18th centuries. Even if this experimental vaccine works, it won't be ready for another five years, which means many more years of death for Africans. ABC never even mentioned there is another option. Malaria was well under control from the 1940s-1970s. And now without the spraying of homes, it has emerged again in the last 30 years as a killer. It was completely unnecessary.

DDT for malaria control

1714 Men drivers--what babies!

The white pick up came from behind and roared around me this morning as I turned right on red, after making sure I had a clear distance--it was dark and foggy. I always immediately get in the left lane, because if I don't, it is impossible to turn left at the next light which actually has two left turn lanes, but a lot of traffic. I've seen many accidents at that intersection. So he was passing me on the right. I looked over (you can always tell a mad driver by their juvenile attention-getting tire-screeching and loud rhumphhh rhumphh) and he gave me the finger. So I figured when I got up to the light, I'd pull right up next to him (knowing we'd get there at the same time) and give him one of my best poached egg looks--I'm good at that--although smiling and waving can be good too. The idiot. He was mad because I was in HIS LANE from which he wanted to make an illegal U-turn. So when he did that, he gave me the finger AGAIN, like I was to blame because he was late for work. Even with a time change and gaining an hour's sleep, he can't get it together. Such a baby.

1713 Do you really mean this?

Today I noticed a letter where the writer was describing the wonderful attributes of Janice Rogers Brown, the black judge many of us would have preferred to Alito:

“When you read her speeches, it becomes crystal clear that she is worth fighting for, to go to the mattresses for, to the very end.”

I think he meant “go to the mat” not mattress.

But upon checking, I learned this mangled cliche is not that uncommon.