My Flat Daddy

Dear Jeebus, I wish this were a joke:

From Boston.com:

Maine National Guard members in Iraq and Afghanistan are never far from the thoughts of their loved ones.

But now, thanks to a popular family-support program, they're even closer.

Welcome to the ``Flat Daddy" and ``Flat Mommy" phenomenon, in which life-size cutouts of deployed service members are given by the Maine National Guard to spouses, children, and relatives back home.

The Flat Daddies ride in cars, sit at the dinner table, visit the dentist, and even are brought to confession, according to their significant others on the home front.

``I prop him up in a chair, or sometimes put him on the couch and cover him up with a blanket," said Kay Judkins of Caribou, whose husband, Jim, is a minesweeper mechanic in Afghanistan. ``The cat will curl up on the blanket, and it looks kind of weird. I've tricked several people by that. They think he's home again."

This is disturbing on so many levels. I wonder what Tom Friedman thinks. Of course the best part is taking a cardboard cutout to confession. Pretty impressive that a cardboard cuttout can participate in a sacrament. Of course, I'd like to see how it fares with the sacrament of baptism:

John's clothes were made of camel's hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

-Matthew 3:4-6

Another Example of Better Living Through Chemistry

(Image from the excellent site, Plan59)

Some of you know that high cholesterol runs in my family (Thanks, Mom.) Well, my biology is no exception. Everything was great until about a year or so ago when it went off of the charts. Everything was wrong – not enough ‘good’, far too much ‘bad’, and apparently after my doctor did a high-end blood test to get down to the molecular makeup of my blood, it turns out that of 15 or so cholesterol markers or whatnot, I was off-the-charts bad in 13 of them.

My bad rating was 195. And my diet, while not completely perfect, is a damn site better than most – No Mickey D’s, no Doritos, etc. So it wasn’t lifestyle issues as much as bad genes. In the end my Doctor put me on Vytorin, one of those statin drugs. Two months later he did some new bloodwork.

And my bad was down to 100. Pretty amazing stuff. And it has actually been making me rethink my rather negative views of the pharmaceutical and medical industries.

Except that, even though 100 is a very good level, my doctor wants it down to a super human 70 or less, which according to some of the latest studies would reverse any damage the two years of high cholesterol may have done, eventually allowing me to live forever, or at least longer than any of you suckers.

Or so that’s the theory at least.

So he’s adding monstrous doses of Niacin to the mix. The side effects include flushing of the skin, which means that for the next several days I’ll be turning beet-red on a regular basis. I love how the side effects pamphlets they hand out with drugs always say that the benefits of the drug outweigh any side effects, otherwise the doctor wouldn’t have prescribed them, so chin-up.

Friday Planet Blogging

The week’s biggest story, surpassing even a revival of the Jon Benet Ramsey murder, was of course the demotion of Pluto from the exalted ranks of planetary status. Personally I feel that a true definition of planets should only include four – Neptune (the smallest), Uranus, Saturn and Jupiter. Seriously, it’s a major step down from Neptune to the next largest mote of rock orbiting the sun, which would be Earth – less than 1/17^th the mass of Neptune.

But if we insist on such a geocentric mode of looking at our solar system, allowing our humble home-rock to be lumped into the same category of object as Jupiter (100 times the mass of Earth and with 62 moons so far discovered, only 38 of which have been named), we will of course end up with absurdities such as whether or not a slightly smaller lump of stones (Pluto is actually a quadrinary system of four rocks orbiting each other) is also a planet.

But what the whole event reminds me of is my fascination as a younger lad with the earlier planetary battle that took place back in the 19^th century. (As both of my parents are astronomers, my youthful fascinations tended towards the astronomically geeky). As a kid my favorite solar system object was Ceres, which had the honor of being considered a planet for over 50 years, before it, too, got unceremoniously booted from the club.

Ceres was discovered in 1801, by Giuseppe Piazzi, and it was assumed to be the ‘missing’ planet that the Titius-Bode law said should exist between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It was deemed to be a planet, given a planetary symbol and remained so even after the discovery of Pallas, Juno and Vesta – the next three objects discovered that would ultimately deemed to be asteroids.

In 1828, the book, ‘First Steps to Astronomy and Geography’, lists the planets as "Eleven: Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Vesta, Juno, Ceres, Pallas, Jupiter, Saturn, and Herschel." Herschel was the name used for Uranus for several years after the Astronomer Hershel discovered the planet.

This remained until 1847 when a whole slew of new asteroids was discovered, bringing the number up to 15. Still, even until the 1850s, by which point the number of known asteroids rose past 100, the first 4 asteroids discovered were referred to as planets, avoiding the term ‘minor planets’ until different national astronomical journals slowly adopted the new terminology. Ceres and the other three were viewed as both planets and asteroids until the time of the American Civil War. Unlike with Pluto their status changed not with a bang, but a whimper.

I always felt more affinity for a tiny rock like Ceres than Pluto, as it is much closer to our own tiny rock. It always seemed more accessible and more exotic to me, especially since no one paid any attention to it in our science classes. It was sort of like having your own planet nearby that no one else was aware of

Pretty pathetic, huh?

On June 20, 2007, NASA hopefully launches the Dawn Mission, a probe that will visit two of these former planets, Vesta in 2011, and Ceres in 2015.

Signs of the Apocalypse

From the July 27^th Economist:

According to the National Police Agency, which oversees the industry, the Japanese collectively spend some 30 trillion Yen ($260 Billion) a year playing pachinko and its upstart cousin, pachislot – roughly equal to spending on health care. Borrowing money to pay pachislot is thought to account for almost half of consumer debt.

Monday Cat Blogging

A good series of kitty shots to keep you all going this week, courtesy of Kathy's new digital camera. I'll be posting more later, but in the meantime if you are jonesing for some new blog reading, you can always head on over to the new blog being run by Imad Moustapha, the Syrian Ambassador to the United States. The politics is to be expected, but it has a series of interesting posts on different Syrian Artists. From Jonathan Schwarz at This Modern World.

Monday Cat Blogging

Well it's been a while for cat blogging as well, and they are back in good graces since Electra snagged that mouse. Though she needs to get some lessons on killing them rather than playing around with them and freaking Mom out. The big news is that Misty is now down from the top floor, and hanging out on the first floor, and as you can see is very happy hanging out with everyone.

Of course now that he eats with the rest of them, we are realizing exactly how many cats we have. Starting to feel like one of those crazy cat people.

Petey and Misty had their annual vet checkups today. Misty may have a Thyroid issue, and Petey has been declared blind, but other than that both are well, especially considering their age.

Pharaoh's Dream

Peter Cornelius: Joseph interpreting Pharaoh's Dream, 1816 (actually Joseph makes the point that he's not interpreting the dream, because only God can.)

Genesis 41:1-8:

"When two full years had passed, Pharaoh had a dream: He was standing by the Nile, when out of the river there came up seven cows, sleek and fat, and they grazed among the reeds. After them, seven other cows, ugly and gaunt, came up out of the Nile and stood beside those on the riverbank. And the cows that were ugly and gaunt ate up the seven sleek, fat cows. Then Pharaoh woke up.

He fell asleep again and had a second dream: Seven heads of grain, healthy and good, were growing on a single stalk. After them, seven other heads of grain sprouted—thin and scorched by the east wind. The thin heads of grain swallowed up the seven healthy, full heads. Then Pharaoh woke up; it had been a dream.

In the morning his mind was troubled, so he sent for all the magicians and wise men of Egypt. Pharaoh told them his dreams, but no one could interpret them for him."

Yes, yes, I know. It’s been far too long since I posted. As you might imagine things have been pretty crazy at work, what with late nights spent working on projects designed to impress and convince people to spend righteous bucks on condominium apartments at the peak of the market.

That’s pretty much the situation right now. Everyone in the residential real estate business is like the Pharaoh after meeting Joseph who successfully interprets his dreams: they are waking up and realizing that the seven fat years of plenty are up, and heading this way are the seven lean years of famine. So time to make the marketing phone calls.

So we are being deluged with these phone calls from panicked brokers and marketers, desperate to set up campaigns to sell their apartments before what will undoubtedly be the last decent autumn selling season. My God, we absolutely HAVE to have these renderings by September or the whole damn world ends.

So I’m taking the work while the going is good, which means a lot of late nights until October when everyone realizes it’s now too damn late and they’re stuck with a whole mess of apartments with Viking appliances and Dog Spas in the building that no one in their right mind would pay a thousand a square foot for.

Smell the fear...

Welcome to Earth!

Well, I got a lot less writing done in LA than I had hoped. Actually none. So it will be a little longer before I can post on the topics mentioned below. But I wanted to welcome two new people to this planet:

First, of course, is Grace, who arrived on the afternoon of Erin and Windy's 2nd anniversary on Monday, weighing a spritely 6 pounds. And now second is Betty's Sister who just delivered a slightly less spritely ten pound (!) baby boy today. Congrats all around.

And Welcome! The per captia national debt today is now $28,229 per person, so get workin'. We'll take it in tens and twentys...

Off to LA

No more posting until Tuesday, as Kathy and I are off to Los Angelese for the Baby shower of Erin and Windy. We'll be hooking up with Airman O'Malley and my Mom, so a good time is guaranteed.

But fear not. While there I will be writing on numerous topics to be posted next week, including more follow-up on the Left Behind video game, a discussion of my gender orientation and a review of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Good Times are a-comin'.

Stay tuned.

Oh, and by the way, the previous post seems to have had an effect. The Kitties have been paying a lot more attention to the mice in the house, especially Wee Girl. Nothing like a little public scolding to motivate the soul...

Tuesday Mouse Blogging

Normally when I skip Friday Cat Blogging, I make up for it later. Can't deprive the readers of kitties, after all. Well today I will, for this weekend they proved themselves to be utterly pathetic creatures.

As several of you know, in addition to having four (five, temporarily) cats, we have also found ourselves with a bit of a rodent problem in our house. Yes, we have mice. And the kitties have proven themselves incapable of dealing with the task.

Which leads to the event on Sunday morning. Waking up after a late night shindig with the usual supects, I started doing some cleanup in the kitchen, including taking out the trash from below the kitchen sink. After tying it up, I heard a curious sound, a sort of 'thump, thump, thump.' Now I am familiar with this sound, having dealt with it before in my office. But the kitties just stared at me, oblivious to the sound, and watching me curiously as I picked up the trash can and looked at the little mouse trapped inside, leaping in the air ineffectively in an attempt to get out.

So I took the little thing outside to let it go, and still, not a reaction from the cats. Nada. Nothing. So as a lesson to them, there will be no cat blogging this week, only a medley of lovely images of cute mice.

Enjoy.

Your Funk's off the Hook

Last funkin' week we funkin' got free funkin' tickets to see funkin' Maceo Parker perform funkin' live in funkin' Prospect Park. The funkin' guy funkin' jammed for almost two funkin' hours, then funkin' went funkin' backstage to bring out funkin' Prince to play a funkin' encore. So then funkin' Prince funkin' jammed for another fifteen funkin' minutes.

It was funkin' great.

Also last week I finished season two of Deadwood. Better than the first. Onto Carnivale...

"This game tastes like burning"

Well my quick earlier posting on the upcoming video game, ‘Left Behind: Eternal Forces,’ has lately been getting me somewhat involved with an increasingly turbulent situation. It seems that my post, along with numerous others on the same topic, raised the awareness of one Chris Price, aka Layman, who is undertaking a one-man crusade on the ‘propaganda’ and misinformation on the game, and who is also now a reader and commenter of my blog (welcome, Chris). Mr. Price, who helps run a Christian apologetics website, has been fighting the good fight against those that seek to diminish or misrepresent his faith. To be honest, more power to him in that quest. I find that if one doesn't stand up for what one believes in, no one else will; although what I’ve read of his website seems to be primarily geared to the attacks on Christianity from inaccurate representations of the Left Behind video game and from ‘The DaVinci Code.’

Now the ongoing video game issue has actually made a top diary listing on Daily Kos. In the past week there are now lawsuits flying and resignations from the staff of Rick Warren, a mega pastor who wrote ‘The Purpose Driven Life’ over the issues that resulted from the publicity surrounding this game. Most of the critical commentary on the game has been (rather snarkily) posted by the website ‘Talk 2 Action’, and it is this website that has received the brunt of Mr. Price’s ire. A good old-school flame war has erupted which makes for some good and fun reading.

One of the problems with all sides to this conflict is that the video game has not had its official release yet. So as I point out in a comment to one of Mr. Price’s latest posts on the topic, it is somewhat unfair for all sides to get too crazy on this. Nonetheless, based on the lawsuits and resignations now flying, it does seem to appear that at least some of what the critics thought distasteful about the game is (or at least was) actually planned for it. After all, the screen shots I posted were from the marketing website for the game. But now, one can safely assume that the final game, if it is now ever released, will never be like this. Which is too bad, as it actually sounded like hilarious fun.

Whatever the merits of either sides’ arguments over this game, the folks behind ‘Left Behind: Eternal Forces’ have to admit that publishing screen shots from a game about a religious war showing New York City burning have to expect some inflammatory responses. Mr. Price makes the point responding to my comment that he doesn’t find the images that inflammatory, at least in the context of other video games which are in fact more violent. Perhaps. But any New Yorker who sees those photos are going to be reminded of other images of New York burning because of religious extremism.

As for the DaVinci Code, if I were a devout Christian I wouldn't be taking the success of the book and movie as too much of a threat. This is a book filled with goobers, including the idea that the bathrooms in the Louvre have bars of soap in which one can hide a GPS transponder. What rubbish. There isn't a museum bathroom in the world that doesn't use liquid soap. Sheesh.

Update: As per the posting in comments, I have edited this post to change the name 'Ware' to 'Price'. I'm not certain where that came from. Apologies to Chris Price.