Happy Birthday, Bob Barker!

Here's an article about Bob Barker which gives some idea what a cool person he is, contains some of his secrets for staying young—and contains quite a few laughs, too.

In case you don't have other plans, Saturday at 8:00 PM (EST), CBS will salute Mr. Barker with The Price Is Right Million Dollar Spectacular. I suppose we're all invited to, uh, come on down.

No, I couldn't help it!

Birthdate of Greater Greatness

I just read Ian's blog and now I realize why I have such a warm fuzzy feeling about December 12. It's not because it's Bob Barker's birthday, (though he sounds like a fabulous person to know). More important, December 12 is the birthday of an amazing person I actually know! I had the pleasure of getting to know her one summer (when she most graciously hosted me at her home in New Jersey). She's a person of creative brilliance, kindness and wit — I refer to Linda Worsley, noted music composer (and mother to Kent, Steve, Ian, Sean and Michelle Williams). December 12^th is her birthday.

Ian writes (as usual very well) about her in his current entry. I'll add only that I'm honored to know her! And Happy Birthday!

Posted by Me at 23:07 link

'Tis The Season

First, something you may want not to do this year (From Act For Change):

Don't Buy Wal-Mart for the Holidays

Wal-Mart engages in some of the worst labor practices in the country: paying its employees substandard wages, forcing unpaid overtime on its workers and refusing to provide affordable health insurance.

This holiday season, pledge not to shop at Wal-Mart and to ask your friends and families not to buy you gifts from Wal-Mart until the chain:

• Pays its one million workers a living wage
• Provides affordable health insurance to its employees
• Stops discriminating against women
• Stops attacking employees who want to be represented by a union
• Ceases forcing unpaid overtime on its employees
• Stops pressuring suppliers to lower their labor costs

Tell Wal-Mart that until it changes its ways, you will take your holiday shopping to other stores and will urge your friends and family to do the same.

Click here to take action!

After you get your money back from Wal-Mart, you could use it to adopt a wolf in my honor. I'd love it! For $25, Defenders of Wildlife will send you (or, ahem—your gift recipient) an "adoption certificate" and a cute wolf cub plush toy. The money will help to protect wolves. Hey! For $75 you can adopt a whole pack!

If $25 is too much, you could spend less here. How much less? How's free sound?

If free sounds good, visit The Animal Rescue Site and start clicking! Somehow—and please don't ask me how, because I don't know—every time you click the little "Click me for free" button, The Animal Rescue Site gets money (I'm guessing it has something to do with advertising and Web page hits). So it's way cool to visit the site each day and click the jolly, candy-like button. Even cooler, if you buy something from their sponsors, a portion of sales goes to The Animal Rescue Site.

If animals just aren't your thing, The Animal Rescue Site is also affiliated with The Hunger Site, The Breast Cancer Site, The Child Health Site and The Rainforest Site. All of these sites feature the same "click for a good cause" gimmick. Still, it's for real and it's free. And some of the sponsors have some really cool stuff. You might end up doing the bulk of your Christmas shopping there. Not that I know anyone who did that or anything [whistles nonchalantly and looks away].

Posted by Me at 21:51 link

A Giant Leap Backwards

Succumbing at last to the worldwide love affair with the car, China - of all places - is officially turning up its nose at the humble bicycle.

Its biggest city, Shanghai, plans to ban bikes from all major roads next year to ease congestion, state-run newspapers said on Tuesday.

Police will also raise fines tenfold for such cycling infractions as running red lights, Shanghai Daily reported.

[full story]

I suppose some Americans might be flattered that the Chinese seem to be embracing a central facet of our way of life. If you live in a place where people actually go places without driving, let me tell you what it's like here. I have one neighbor who drives his Jaguar three blocks to work and back each day, another who drives her Buick two blocks to church each Sunday, and a very fit young neighbor who drives his gas-guzzling Jeep Cherokee the 1.1 miles to the YMCA several times a week (he has a beautiful, expensive bike which he hardly ever rides; when he does ride, that always begins with his putting the bike on a rack on the back of the Jeep).

Is this really what the Chinese want? If this is the beginning of a general trend, will they be surprised in a few years to find that traffic congestion is much worse, that pollution is much worse, that obesity and associated health problems are on the rise?

A friend of mine, one of the only other "serious bike geeks" in town, put it very well: "Every time I ride my bike [for transportation], I get a little stronger, Statesville gets a little stronger, and America gets a little stronger; every time I drive my car, we all get a little weaker." Yep.

There's a lesson to be learned from the Shanghai episode for Americans working to advance bicycling here. The problems cited by police officials in the article stem from cyclists ignoring traffic laws and riding discourteously. Never mind that traffic lights and many of the traffic laws would be unnecessary without cars; as long as we share the road, we have to accept the rules. Sad but true.

I do hope Shanghai officials will soon recognize the counterproductive nature of this move, or that they are wise enough at least to have ensured alternate routes for bikes to follow.

Shanghai cyclists are dealing with the new rules in a typically practical manner. In the words of one of them, "At the moment on roads where you are not allowed to cycle you simply go up on the pavement and cycle there."

Several places in Statesville, sidewalk riding is a smart move, too — for self-preservation, a law which trumps most others in my book. It's not as if there are many pedestrians, anyway.

Music In My Head:

• The Beatles — "Oh! Darling"
• Buddy Guy / Jeff Beck — "Mustang Sally"
• Steely Dan — "Any Major Dude"
• The Dominoes — "Sixty Minute Man"
• Orbital — "Remind"

Gore Endorses Dean

Al Gore endorsed Howard Dean's bid for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination on Tuesday, substantially deepening Dean's fast-developing drive for dominance in the nine-candidate field of would-be challengers to President Bush.

"I'm very proud and honored to endorse Howard Dean to be the next president of the United States of America," Gore said.

The announcement in Manhattan's Harlem, coming on the morning of another debate between the "'04 Dems," as they're called, could cement Dean's status as the leading Democratic candidate heading into the kickoff contests now just weeks away in Iowa and New Hampshire.

"We need to remake the Democratic Party, we need to remake America," Gore said.

[full story]

In an interview before the news broke on CNN's "Judy Woodruff's Inside Politics," Dean played down his front-runner status.

"The pundits in Washington have been talking about me as the front-runner for a long time," Dean said.

"Well, guess what, the people of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Arizona and so forth get to decide who the front-runner is. So, it's nice talk, but I'm not buying it."

Meanwhile, in a whole other world....
(cue the Star Wars "Imperial March")

From MoveOn.org’s "Daily Mis-lead":

BUSH TOUTS SMALL BUSINESS, PUTS BIG BUSINESS FIRST

President Bush is fond of telling small business owners how much he cares about them. As he said on December 1st, "We want people to feel like if you want to be a small business owner, there's a chance for you." But just four days later, he showed his true colors in a visit to Home Depot - one of his largest campaign contributors, and a company notorious for taking away chances for small hometown businesses. In a moment of candor, the President admitted "When a person has more money in their pocket, they're likely to come to Home Depot" - not one of the small businesses Home Depot regularly works to undercut and put out of business.

To make matters worse, when asked about why the President was touting such a company, a White House spokeswoman said, "Home Depot represents all those factors that have been keeping the economy going" - a direct insult to the small businesses that the President purports to care about and that Home Depot has decimated. The statement also seems to ignore the fact that during a time of war, Home Depot refused to do business with the U.S. government and military in order to avoid consumer protection laws.

Of course, the President has a reason to trumpet Home Depot despite these concerns - Home Depot founder Bernard Marcus has given at least $321,000 in hard money and $273,000 in soft money contributions to Republicans since 2000. And photo-ops are not the only way the President has gone to bat for Home Depot over the interests of average people. Since 1999, "at least three customers and five workers have been killed in accidents in Home Depots," and in 2002, the number of OSHA violations at Home Depot jumped 45%. Instead of increasing federal oversight, President Bush's most recent budget proposed cutting OSHA's budget.

Read the Mis-Lead --> http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1209698&l=11329

Subscribe to the Daily Mislead! Go to http://www.misleader.org and enter your e-mail address in the "Receive the Daily Mislead" box in the top-left corner of the page.

I finished the last of my exams today! Well, for this semester, anyway. One more semester and I'll have no choice but to seek gainful employment. Let me know if you're in the market for a good programmer, only slightly used.

Also, I put headlights on the bike, a pair of Cateye HL-500IIs, which I was able to get for a ridiculously low price on eBay. I gave them a test run last night and they light up the night pretty well. More important, they attract attention from a distance. I'm expecting a very bright taillight in the mail (also a fine eBay bargain) in the next few days; once that's installed I'll be considerably safer riding at night.

But of course, I'll still be a big dork. (sigh)

Posted by Me at 21:31 link

The Day The Music Died

I didn't hear the news until after school the next day. I was fourteen; In those days, I spent afternoons over at my friend Steve's house until my mom got home from work. He and I had only been home a few minutes and, as usual, were listening to music in the living room. We were pleasantly surprised that our favorite station, WROQ, was playing one Beatles song after another. At that moment they were playing "Helter Skelter."

Then occurred one of the coldest things I've ever witnessed.

We heard the back door slam, and the heavy footsteps of Steve's father. To put it mildly, Steve and his father did not get along.

Steve's father strode confidently into the room. He was smiling. In a loud, cheerful voice, he exclaimed: "Oh Stee-eeve—one of your heros just diiiiiieeed!." He threw a newspaper at us. I caught it: "John Lennon Shot Dead" read the headline.

I still occasionally hear that voice, and see that smile, in nightmares. To me, they have come to represent the voice and face of evil itself.

Less than three years later, right after his parents divorced, Steve ran away. He hitchhiked his way to California; when he returned, he was almost unrecognizable. He seemed completely unaware of himself. Every time I saw him, he was filthy and disheveled; he seemed dazed, and perpetually disoriented. A month or so after his return, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and has been institutionalized ever since.

Although it's obviously ridiculous, I blame Mark David Chapman for Steve's illness. I also blame Steve's father, which makes more sense. I can't help thinking they're both part of the same thing.

Posted by Me at 22:49 link

Renewal of Faith

Not just any blog, but one of the best I've ever read. It's written by Marvin Lindsay, the minister of a Presbyterian church in nearby Salisbury, NC. He's an amazing writer and thinker — and obviously he's utterly brilliant, since I agree with him about 95% of the time!

Check it out!

I strongly recommend reading back through his archives. Note the consistent quality of writing and the wide variety of subjects covered, all intelligently and thoughtfully. Be forewarned: I started browsing his archives today and found I couldn't stop until I'd read every single post, something I can't recall doing with any other blog.

The oddest thing about discovering Marvin Lindsay's blog today is that right before I found it (by browsing the Southern Blogs webring), I'd decided to post this quote:

Organized Christianity has probably done more to retard the ideals that were its founder's than any other agency in the world.
— Richard Le Gallienne

From today's news: The White House has asked John Kerry to apologize — for using bad language. Defending his decision to vote for the Iraq war, Kerry, in a interview with Rolling Stone said, "Did I expect George Bush to f--- it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did." Kerry's people have said he meant what he said and has no regrets.

Personally, I think Bush should apologize—to Kerry, and to America, and especially to our active duty military personnel—for f---ing up Iraq, as well as all the many other things his administration has so badly f---ed up. Foul language optional.

Google's da bomb
Speaking of the President, look what you get when you type "miserable failure" into the Google box and then click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. No, I'm not making it up! Go to Google and try it yourself. For more fun, try the same thing with "weapons of mass destruction."

Posted by Me at 18:07 link