Gentle Reader -- You are welcome to peruse my web-based journal. I assure you that my contributions to this medium will be both infrequent and inconsequential. Read on!

A BULLSHIT LIST

So Boston.com has published a bullshit list of the top 50 Sci-fi shows of all time. Why is this list bullshit?

1. Because any list of this type, being totally subjective, is inherently bullshit,

2. Because it's bullshit. Futurama is 41, behind Stargate Atlantis (26)? My Favorite Fucking Martian (32)? Dr. Who (8) makes the Top 10 (thankfully) but is behind Stargate S-G1 (6)? TWILIGHT ZONE (7) is behind SG-1? You're kidding me!

There's a lot to be said about this list, but it's pretty clear that not much thought was put into it.

and,

3. The list is triply bullshit because Boston.com doesn't give it to you as a list. You have to click though every entry and read their bullshit commentary (the Avengers' commentary manages to omit the name of Dame Diana Rigg, who played Mrs. Peel with sublime hotness, for example) to get to the next one.

Bullshit.

Idiots. posted by Carlton at 8:19 PM

THE CLARION WHO?

The Jackson, MS Clarion-Ledger was one of the two very thin newspapers we read in my house growing up. I didn't know, however, that it was capable of actual journalism. Seems our leaders are looking to place the blame for the Katrina debacle firmly where it belongs:

The Clarion-Ledger has obtained a copy of an internal e-mail the U.S. Department of Justice sent out this week to various U.S. attorneys' offices: "Has your district defended any cases on behalf of the (U.S.) Army Corps of Engineers against claims brought by environmental groups seeking to block or otherwise impede the Corps work on the levees protecting New Orleans? If so, please describe the case and the outcome of the litigation."

Yep, we WOULD have fixed the levees, made them better than you could imagine. Forget a Category 5 hurricaine, they woulda been good against a Category 6, or even a 7! But those lousy environmental groups, they wouldn't let us. Because they're so strong, and we always have to do what they say. So it really wasn't our fault! posted by Carlton at 9:50 PM

REBUILDING

This column by Paul Krugman started me thinking about how the Bush people will run the reconstruction effort.

What I expect, and fear, that they will do is just what they have done in Iraq and with the Global War on Whatever: spend ludicrous amounts of money, most of which is siphoned off into the pockets of the heads of a few major corporations. The rest of the money will be used to make a pitiful beginning of a few projects that they can point to and say, "Look! Progress!"

If the Bush people are allowed to do this thing in their own way, I expect that a couple of years and a couple of hundred billion dollars down the road, the Gulf Coast will be only partially rebuilt, most of the refugees still will be living in rusting trailer parks built by the Shaw Group in the desert and sending their children substandard "recovery schools" run by Halliburton. Both the trailers and the schools will cost a premium over alternative solutions available through already-existing programs (i.e. Section 8 and the normal public schools) and will ensure that these refugees remain part of a permanent underclass -- even more than before, because now they are isolated from the services and opportunities of a major city, however meager those may have been before Katrina. Their former neighborhoods will still be uninhabitable, or will have been turned into gated subdividions.

And the Bush people will point to the crime and unsanitary conditions in the parks and say, "Government can't help these people. Look at how much we've spent on them already! They need to take responsibility for their own situation." And any family or individual who leaves the parks to love with relatives are start somewhere else will be lauded as a success story for the program as a whole.

You heard it here first, folks. posted by Carlton at 11:54 AM

HOSPITALS OR PIPELINES?

Which is more important? My hometown paper, the Hattiesburg American, has the White House's answer.

My favorite quote:

[Line foreman Matt]Ready said the crew members did not learn they were restoring power to pipelines until after the job was done.

How did they feel about that?

"Is this on the record?" Ready asked. "Well, then, we are all glad we were able to help out."

posted by Carlton at 4:47 PM

BONES

So this new show premiered last night, starring our friend Emily as Dr. Temperance Brennan,scientific sleuth. (She's really much more Molly's friend than mine, although I certainly know her, and she might very well remember who I am.) To be honest it's not really my thing, although I thought that Emily did well -- I've never been a big fan of the crypto-scientific crime drama genre. I expect it will do very well for her.

We will certainly continue to watch. however. Congratulations to Emily! posted by Carlton at 11:59 AM

SPECIALTIES

This is an interesting article from USN&WR -- interesting that this conservative-leaning mag would lean away from Bush, yada yada.

Mostly it's interesting because it quotes Nancy Staudt, a "visiting professor at Northwestern" as a "specialist in how government institutions make decisions." Prof Staudt was a visiting professor of tax law at BU while I was there. She had the dual distinctions of 1. Teaching a course in gift and estate tax law and never having heard of Anna Nicole Smith (who was a -ahem- big story at the time) and 2. Being the most attractive professor I believe I have had in my post graduate studies (I'd say the pic on her profile does not do her justice). Boy that seminar paper I did was shit, though, huh?

She was a good teacher -- very knowledgeable, professional -- I simply had no idea she was a "specialist in how government institutions make decisions". Maybe that's a new specialty. posted by Carlton at 11:43 AM

REBATES

I just called Hewlett-Packard to register my displeasure. Not with the computer that I purchased, which is working fine so far, but with the entire mail-in rebate system upon which the computer industry is apparently founded. Everyone has probably had this experience: The thing (computer, software, printer, phone, whatever) advertises itself at a certain price, let's say $700, and at the register you have to pay $1,000. You, the consumer, then have to send in a form that is enclosed with the thing and wait a hundred years to get the money back.

In this case, the form is a receipt-like strip of paper that printed out at the checkout and one exists for each COMPONENT of the computer I bought -- computer box, monitor, printer. Also, the forms call for the UPC symbol from each BOX thet each component came in -- which is extremely inconvenient because the boxes were discarded immediately, as we have a houseful of boxes right now and if we didn't get rid of them as soon as possible my wife and I would get divorced. And then there's the printer that came with the computer, which I'm keeping in its box because I have a printer/scanner that I'm alreadyusing -- and I don't want to open it up and cut the box just to get the UPC symbol. So, they say, fill the forms in without the UPC symbols, we'll send you a non-complying form card, you'll send THAT back in, and hopefully I'll get my rebates back before the sun exhausts all its fuel and collapses in upon itself.

What do other people do about this? posted by Carlton at 1:07 PM

THE USUAL SUSPECTS

Well, this didn't take long:

At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.

One is Shaw Group Inc. (Research) and the other is Halliburton Co. (Research) subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton.

Bechtel National Inc., a unit of San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp., has also been selected by FEMA to provide short-term housing for people displaced by the hurricane. Bush named Bechtel's CEO to his Export Council and put the former CEO of Bechtel Energy in charge of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

This makes me want to scream and shout. Halliburton. Bechtel. It never stops.

Up to and including:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush issued an executive order Thursday allowing federal contractors rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to pay below the prevailing wage.

. . .

The Davis-Bacon law requires federal contractors to pay workers at least the prevailing wages in the area where the work is conducted. It applies to federally funded construction projects such as highways and bridges.

Never let it be said that there was a disaster so vast and a situation so serious that it wasn't an opportunity for naked crony capitalism and union-busting. posted by Carlton at 1:11 PM

CARLTON NICHT TOT

(Yeah, my German, whatever.)

So, I'm in the awkward position of getting sick during the very brief period when I don't have health insurance. I have the option of getting on COBRA at my last job, of course, but that would take a few days and cost $250 just to cover me for the three weeks left before my new job's benefits kick in. The doctor's visit here cost me just $70, so it was cheaper just to pay.

I could just wait, of course. But my symptoms were these strange and very painful headaches. Not only do they hurt a lot, and are totally unheard of for me or my family, but a quick net search turns up poosibilities ranging from "totally benign" to "NARM!" (U.S. cable TV reference.) So I went, and they told me it was nothing. Probably.

Oh yeah -- probably related to migraines. That's all I need. Migraines. I blame it on Bush, myself. posted by Carlton at 11:56 AM

ONWARD

On other topics:

I bought a new computer the other day -- a HP shitbox of one kind or another. I agonized over it for all of about ten minutes. I knew how much I wanted to spend, and I don't do anything besides word-prcessing and net surfing. So any computer on sale at the large electronics outlet store where I went would have done the trick.

All I know is that it will fail me at some point or another, probably an incovenient one.

The computer is silver, by the way.

. . . and I went to my first Nationals game today, at RFK stadium. It's a big place, where even decent 35,000 baseball crowds can seem dwarfed -- it used to be a football stadium, people say, as if that explained everything. (More people go to football than baseball? Are football fans fatter?)

I gather that the Nats are super happy that they aren't Expos any more -- Montreal is a great city and Canada a great country, but the Montrealeans seem to have treated their home team in the same way that the Bushies treated New Orleans.

That puts me at three professional baseball parks -- Fenway, Yankee Stadium (where I saw the Mets shell the Yankees), and RFK (where the Nats were given a big titty-twister by the Florida Marlins tonight). I don't have a much interest in baseball, really, but I do like going to games. And Nats tix are cheap.

That is all. posted by Carlton at 12:33 AM

PICTURES = A CERTAIN NUMBER OF WORDS

How was it in New Orleans? This bad.

So, I don't read German, but I know what's in the pictures.

By the way, we aren't supposed to be seeing any bad pictures from New Orleans. That might makeus think that something bad happened there. Which is nonsense, because Brownie was doing such a great job. posted by Carlton at 12:29 AM

MALADMINISTRATION

This NYT article contains the Bush quote about not anticipating the levee breaches.

Given what I and others have said, it really can't be maintained that we, as a country, didn't anticipate this. They, the ones in charge, were not paying attention.

Some of them were on vacation, as I recall.

I've said this a number of times, but it bears repeating -- this administration, and the cabal that put them in power, is really good at manipulating appearances. They can make a good man look bad, they can make bad acts seem good, or at least harmless trivialities. They can make the fair seem unfair, or the reverse.

They are master illusionists. What they can't do, to save their lives (or ours, apparently), is accomplish anything real. They can't actually feed the hungry or rebuild a country, or rescue those in need. They can't actually make the trains run on time or keep the roads in good repair. They can't get buses and gas and food and water to desperate citizens in a timely manner -- they can only play a furious game of catch-up when it turns out that they are starting to look bad. posted by Carlton at 3:43 PM

RAPID RESPONSE

I have been out of touch for most of the last few days, without television and internet for most of it, and tied up with my move and real-estate transactions in any case, so I have not been following most of the coverage of Katrina and the response. For obvious reasons, I have been primarily concerned with my own flesh and blood -- who are, without exception, safe and sound (but inconvenienced).

Now, finally, I have had a chance to spend some time in front of the news channels and the computer screen. I've seen the briefings and Mr. Bush's speech. I've been reading the commentaries.

I am appalled.

As some of you know, I was married in New Orleans in May of this year. Molly and I arrived in the city a few days ahead of the rest of our party in order to get our marriage license and look around a bit before the circus came to town. We walked around the French Quarter and to the Riverwalk, and went uptown to a restaurant that we had visited previously. We had a good time.

While we explored the city, I explained to Molly what I knew about the precarious relationship with the waters that surrounded it: the city was entirely below sea level, only the levees kept it safe, the nightmare scenario was a giant hurricane breaking those levees and drowning the entire place.

How did I know this? Am I a civil engineer? A member of the Army Corps of Engineers? A resident of New Orleans? A FEMA official?

No, I knew about it because it was COMMON KNOWLEDGE -- I read it somewhere, and I don't remember where. I've heard people discuss a Scientific American article from a few years ago that laid this out, but I don't think I read that one. I read The Control of Nature by John McPhee in college (fifteen years ago), and I recall a section about the ACOE working to keep the Mississippi River in its banks which might have contained something about it.

According to DailyKos: President George W. Bush said, yesterday, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees."

For all of our sakes, I hope that quote is a total fabrication, or at least taken out of context in the most partisan possible way.

[Lest we forget a similar quote by then National Security Advisor C. Rice: "No one could have anticipated an attack of this nature." By which she meant planes being crashed into buildings.] posted by Carlton at 11:14 AM

STURM UND DRANG

I'm happy to report that, in the wake of Katrina (this storm having been memorable enough that the "Hurricane" part will probably be dropped without anyone missing it), my family is unharmed and doing well. Trees fell on the house and a car in the driveway, and there's no water or electricity and food is scarce, and they are sweltering in their hermetically sealed centrally air-conditioned (except not NOW) home. My sister, who lives in Maine, and I have urged them to come away and stay with one of us for a while, and perhaps they will do that. They are reluctant to leave their home, of course, but it's too hot to stick it out down there, I think.

As my mother said, waiting for the storm: "We weren't much here in Mississippi before this, but we won't be anything after it."

I, personally, was very lucky in this storm because my brother's cell phone has worked continuously for the entire period, except for a few hours when the storm was directly over Hattiesburg. I spoke yesterday with an old USM friend who hadn't heard from her mother in Laurel and who was medicating the resulting insanity with Kahlua and skim milk in a ratio of 3:1. Later on, she called to let me know that 1) her mother was fine and 2) the medication was working.

I am tempted to thank God for their safety. But what do I thank Him for? Sparing their lives? Causing them to move to Hattiesburg instead of Gulfport forty years ago? Sending the tree through the roof of the bedroom and not the dining room?

Still, I am thankful.

For our local writer-in-residence's take on the situation, please check out this piece in the Paper of Record. posted by Carlton at 10:26 AM