What I'd Miss Most About New Orleans

Zatarain's.

Now, I really don't think the city is gone forever. Other cities have suffered dreadful calamities and recovered; Lisbon, San Francisco, Chicago. It just takes time. Geography is destiny, and New Orleans' geographical location hasn't changed.

My main frequent connection to that city is that I've become rather fond of the New Orleans-style frozen dinner bowls from Zatarain's, which is headquartered in New Orleans. I don't know if they have any other manufacturing plants outside of that city or not. If not, then my supply will dry up soon and not return unless and until New Orleans is back in business. I usually eat one or two a week, since they fit nicely in my lunchbox. I like spicy Cajun-style food as a change of pace. I'll be sad if it becomes more difficult to get.

Katrina: Week in Review

I've been digesting the calamity that was Katrina. While I haven't written anything here, it's not like I haven't been writing anything. Mostly, it's been an e-mail discussion with a friend and the occasional comment on other blogs. Frankly, I'm disgusted with the coverage I've seen which tries to pin the blame for the "slowness" of the disaster response on the federal government, especially regarding the flooding of New Orleans and the heartrending pictures of those thousands of people trapped in the city, suffering from hunger and thirst in the heat. As I've written elsewhere, the fault for this disaster lies primarily with the state and local governments, who were totally incompetent and bungled this situation at the cost of thousands of lives. It also lies with those who were too complacent or too foolish to evacuate with a potential Category 5 storm bearing down on them. Don't tell me that they couldn't get out; I've seen far too many people still being coaxed from their flooded homes as their cars lie drowned in their driveways. And we've all seen the pictures (haven't we?) of the motor pool parking lots where the hundreds of school buses were parked, also drowned, and the dozens of NORTA city buses, also drowned, which could have been used to evacuate the city's poor and carless. Instead, they went to the modern day Black Hole of Calcutta, the Superdome and environs, which had no food or water on hand for the hapless crowds that showed up. The City of New Orleans had a disaster plan, which was not followed, and was totally inadequate for the situation in any case. And hundreds, perhaps, thousands, are now dead because of that fact.

Ultimately, it comes down to this: Many of the poor people of New Orleans had been dependent upon government largesse their entire lives. That's not the sort of thing that encourages people to look out for their own self-interest, because they expect the government to look out for them. Well, the government let them down, and that's the lesson we all should learn from this tragedy: IF YOU TRUST YOUR FATE TO THE GOVERNMENT, YOU WILL EVENTUALLY BE LET DOWN. And that's local, state and federal. You have to look out for yourself.

Finally, I heard a lot of "What took so long?!" when the National Guard showed up with food and water on Thursday morning, about 96 hours after the hurricane made landfall and less than 72 hours after the levees failed, drowning much of New Orleans. Well, folks, that is NOT a long time for the feds to get those relief supplies together, stage them and then bring them in on guarded military convoys. The logistics involved would probably boggle your mind, if you knew about them. And anyone with any sense who lives in an area where hurricanes hit KNOWS that you're probably going to be on your own for at least 3-4 days after a major hurricane hits your area, and plans accordingly. If you don't have enough food and water to last for three days or longer, then you're just begging to suffer if disaster hits.

I saw those poor people suffering on the overpass on Wednesday and I wondered, "Why don't they just drop a couple of pallets of bottled water and MREs onto that overpass?" And then, after thinking about it for a moment, I knew the answer: Because there would have been a stampede for the supplies if there was not someone armed with an M-16 to hand them out. Remember that little stampede on the Baghdad bridge where almost a thousand people died? Well, it would have been something like that, and then we'd hear stuff like "See! George Bush hates black people so much that he drops supplies on the bridge to make them stampede and kill each other!" And don't tell me we wouldn't have heard just that. You know the sort of silliness that the press has been putting out. The funniest thing I read was some idiot named Randall Robinson, a "civil rights activist," who last week claimed that the poor starving black people were being forced to eat the bodies of the dead to survive, because George Bush and the federal government were so slow getting relief in to them. I just had to roll my eyes and laugh at the man's stupidity.

I liked this article by Ben Stein: Get Off His Back

Perfect!

Dodged the Bullet?

Maybe not.

When Katrina weakened a bit before landfall and moved a bit farther east of New Orleans, it looked like the city had dodged the worst-case scenario. However, this morning we're watching rising waters on television as levees have been breached and water floods into New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain. The video of housefires burning out of control with no way for the fire department to put them out, of rescuers chopping holes in roofs to rescue people forced to their attics by rising water, of water spreading everywhere as far as the eye can see... It's sobering. The damage to coastal Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama is catastrophic. Today would be a good day to make a donation to the reputable charity of your choice that will be providing help to the many hundreds of thousands of people affected by this disaster. American Red Cross, Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, whatever's your style...

New Orleans: The New Atlantis?

There's a certain sick fascination with watching a slow-moving inevitable disaster, such as Hurricane Katrina has become. It's now a strong Category 5 storm with 175 mph sustained winds and gusts over 200 mph, and it's heading straight toward the Crescent City. Of course, as huge as this storm is, it's going to cause catastrophic damage in a huge swathe of the Gulf Coast. It's the size of last year's Hurricane Ivan, with an intensity similar to 1969's catastrophic Hurricane Camille. It wouldn't have taken a storm of this magnitude to destroy New Orleans, which lies well below sea level and only exists because of a system of levees and pumps which keep the city from being flooded on a normal day. Tomorrow is not going to be a normal day. It may be the worst natural disaster our nation has ever seen, and as slow as the evacuation from the city has been, there will likely be huge loss of life, as well as unprecedented destruction of property. New Orleans itself may end up under 20-30 feet of water. This will make Hurricane Andrew and last year's Florida hurricanes look like nothing by comparison.

Katrina has really become a monster. The central pressure is down to 907 millibars, making it one of the strongest hurricanes in recorded history. Hurricane force winds extend out over 100 miles from the center, so when it hits, the wind is going to blow at hurricane force for several hours. The destruction we will see afterward is likely to be unbelievable. This would be a good time to say a prayer for our neighbors in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. They're in for a rough ride.

The Hand of Providence or Plain Dumb Luck

That's what apparently protected us Thursday night. On Thursday morning, the forecast track for then-Tropical Storm Katrina was right over the top of us. Then, after she hit Fort Lauderdale, the storm tracked southwest instead, through Monroe County and the Everglades, and exited in Florida Bay after just seven hours overland. Instead of getting 50 mile per hour winds and several inches of rain, we got 20 mile per hour winds and almost no rain at all, since almost all of the rain was in the southern half of the storm. For us, Katrina was a non-event, except for all of the schoolkids and others who got Friday off.

It was strange, because normally hurricanes move west and north. They don't normally take that kind of a southwesterly turn. As the hurricane forecasters noted, if they had predicted it to happen, they would have been wrong 100 times and right once. Well, this was the once, and those of us in Southwest Florida are grateful for our good fortune. I went into the break room a couple of times on Thursday night and looked at the satellite imagery as the eye of the storm crossed Monroe County, which is mostly uninhabited swampland. The storm paralleled Alligator Alley (I-75 running east-west between Naples and Miami), and all of the rain was falling south of I-75.

Since the storm was only over land for about seven hours, and much of that time was over the warm, swampy Everglades, it didn't weaken much. Once it was back out over the water, I knew that it would strengthen again rapidly. Our only concern was that it might make some kind of crazy hook and come back and nail us, but that didn't happen. My prediction at work on Thursday night was that it would miss us completely, continue west and then turn north and whack the Florida panhandle as a Category 3 or 4 storm. I knew that the gulf water was about 90 degrees, and that would be like tossing a match into a puddle of gasoline in terms of how the storm would strengthen. It looks like my prediction was off only on how far west the strike would be. It does not look good for the people of New Orleans and southeastern Louisiana. This may be the disastrous hurricane that they've always feared would happen. And given how important that area is to our gasoline supply, prepare for the price at the pump to go up even more, very soon.

Going Out With A Bang Twice

You might have seen the story over the weekend about the Hunter S. Thompson memorial service/fireworks display on Saturday night in Aspen, Colorado. The gonzo journalist's ashes were blown up at the peak of the fireworks, so he went out with a bang, again. The first time, of course, was his shotgun suicide six months ago. The event was timed to be exactly six months to the day from his death. Why not a year to the day? Well, do you really think they wanted to be outside at night in February in Aspen? An August night was certainly more pleasant.

While I didn't agree with some of what he wrote, I thought his death was untimely and tragic. It's hard to know whether he would have liked his grand finale, or whether he would have gone all gonzo on the celebrities sipping champagne as he took his final journey. Maybe both.

The Zen of Chocolate

If, like me, you are a connoisseur of chocolate, you know that there are gradations of quality. At the base of the chocolate pyramid, there is generic chocolate, your Hershey bars and so forth. At the apex, you find fine gourmet chocolate imported from small, otherwise insignificant European countries like Belgium and Switzerland, tasty and expensive. Somewhere in between, you find Dove chocolate, which is the high-end of the mass-produced chocolate market.

Our topic today is not just the chocolate in the Dove Promises, but the packaging as well. Each Dove Promise is wrapped in foil, with a little message on the inside. It's sort of like the chocolate version of a fortune cookie, and each morsel gives not just pleasure for the palate but a little psychological comfort as well. Reading the messages gives us an insight into who the Dove company thinks their customers are. We must assume that they have done exhaustive marketing research, after all. So what do the messages say?

Here are a few for your perusal. First, one that I like: "Don't think about it so much." This is good advice for just about everyone. Most of us worry and obsess about one thing or another, and sometimes not-thinking is the best kind of thinking. This is a very Zen concept.

Next: "Go against the grain." Aha! Dove chocolate fanciers obviously are supposed to be non-conformist rebels. If we were conformists, we'd eat Hershey bars. (Well, sometimes we do, but that's neither here nor there.)

"Smile. People will wonder what you've been up to." Not original, of course. I've heard it before. Perhaps Dove Promises eaters are a bit grumpy and need to smile more.

"Smile before bed. You'll sleep better." Again with the smiling? Yeah, we're damn grumpy people before we get our chocolate fix.

"Laugh uncontrollably -- it clears the mind." Uh-oh. Someone must have taken more than the recommended five-piece serving of chocolate. Serotonin levels must be off the charts...

"Age is nothing but a number." Hmmmm... While this is not gender-specific, women usually are more sensitive about their age than men.

"Buy yourself flowers." Hmmmm again. Maybe they meant, "After you finish binging on the entire bag of Dove Promises because your no-good boyfriend/husband is out playing poker with the boys and didn't even buy you any flowers, go out and buy them for yourself."

"It's definitely a bubble-bath day." Well, THAT gives the game away, doesn't it? It seems that Dove thinks that their customers are primarily thirtyish women with insufficiently attentive partners.

Or not. You make the call.

Hot Time

Sometimes you just know it's going to be a rough day at work.

My first clue last night was arriving at the time clock and learning that the air conditioning wasn't working properly. Apparently Florida Power and Light (FPL) had been doing some kind of power transfer and did something that bollixed up the local power grid at work and fried out two of the four big "chillers" that cool the building. The front of the building was hotter than the back; my machine is closer to the back than the front, so it was cooler there. It was still warmer than usual, and especially in the first hour or so, when I had to trudge back and forth from my machine to the front of the building in search of empty equipment. By the time I got everything in place an hour later, I was starting to overheat, so I went to the restroom and ran cold water over my forearms and splashed cold water on my face to cool off. I regretted very much wearing jeans instead of shorts. Hindsight's 20/20.

While printing out my labels for the trays, both of my printers ran out of labels. I normally print two sets at once, and oddly enough, both printers ran out on the same label, number 55. Very strange indeed.

Next, I started having problems with my machine. It took two hours to fix it. It turned out that not only had a diverter gate gone bad, but one of the light barriers also went on the fritz at the same time. Losing that much run time meant that we had to reorganize things a bit. Fortunately, our mail volume wasn't particularly heavy and we got both of our dispatches out on time. All's well that ends well.

This and That, #3

I'm watching the NASA channel right now, viewing the grainy analog image of the astronaut trying to repair the gap filler on the belly tiles of the space shuttle. On the one hand, it's cool to be able to watch it live in real time, but on the other hand, the video quality leaves something to be desired. I'm sure that 20 years from now I'll be complaining about the quality (and the lag time!) of the video coming from the Mars mission.

Yesterday, Fox News came up with their latest salacious teacher scandal, this one involving a 42-year-old woman teaching at a Catholic school in Albany, New York. The teacher, an attractive blonde, is married to a prominent banker and is the mother of four children, three daughters and a 17-year-old son who is a friend of some of the boys (plural) who were boinking his mother. This story is a bit more sordid than some of the other ones recently, since the teacher had repeated sexual encounters with the four 16- and 17-year-old boys at many places: On the football field at the school, in her house, in cars, etc. She even had sex with two of them at once while the others listened in on the telephone!

A few thoughts on this: First, where were these teachers when I was in school? Second, if I'd known the Catholic kids were having that much fun, I might have thought about converting. Finally, it might be a double standard, but these boys weren't "victims," they were "lucky," and they may never find another woman that wild in their entire lives, so I hope they savored every minute of it.

It's Been A While, Hasn't It?

Well, yes it has. I've been lazy. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Today, I finally put the old car out to pasture. I'm now the owner of an Impulse Red Pearl-colored 2005 Toyota Corolla CE. For the first time in ages, I have an automatic transmission. My last three cars all had sticks. The new Corolla is peppy and seems to want to drive over the speed limit. I will have to try to rein in that tendency. And it has that new car smell... Mmmmmmm.

Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Dem Dry Bones

I spotted a rather creepy postcard in the mail last night. It was from a town in the Czech Republic and the picture was of a chandelier made of human bones. The picture is from the ossuary at Sedlec, a suburb of the Czech town of Kutna Hora. The entire interior of the church is decorated with the bones of tens of thousands of people (I read 30,000 in one place and 40,000 in another). Rather morbid. It does fit with the medieval mindset, which emphasized how transitory life was and how death and decay awaited all, meaning that they should focus their attention on the afterlife rather than worldly pursuits.

(Update: After a little more research, I found that the church wasn't decorated with the bones until 1870! The artist was a Czech woodcarver named Frantisek Rint. It is actually kind of disappointing, since it would be a better story if it had happened in the Dark Ages. Alas, sometimes the truth isn't quite so entertaining.)

Here is a site which has a gallery with pictures from the ossuary: Frisco's Kutna Hora - Sedlec Ossuary Page

Enjoy.

Looks Like A Shitty Day

We're not going to catch the full brunt of Hurricane Dennis here in southwest Florida, but we are going to have a windy, rainy, thundery day. It's going to pass to our west, but we'll still get tropical storm force winds. I had already completed my hurricane preps, so I'll just stay home today and ride it out. Hopefully the power will stay on.

If you're the praying type, you might want to say one for the folks in Cuba who are getting hammered now, and for the people living along the northern Gulf Coast who will get hit tomorrow.

Ill Winds and Silver Linings

"It's an ill wind that blows no good."

"Every dark cloud has a silver lining."

And I'm sure there's an aphorism about the bright side of splitting out the seam of your pants along the back pocket (and if not, there should be). Why? Because I managed to parlay that particular "wardrobe malfunction" into an early out this morning, getting an early start on my vacation by an hour. I'm not exactly sure why the CFF (Catastrophic Fabric Failure) occurred, because the jeans I was wearing weren't particularly tight. They were a bit worn, well broken-in, the way a good pair of jeans should be. I think the CFF occurred when one of the gates was accidentally left open on our last run of the day, and mail started flying out. I quickly stopped the machine and then squatted to pick up the letters on the floor. A little later, I paid a visit to the restroom and noticed that I had about a two-inch long rip along the inside seam of the back pocket. I was wearing a t-shirt which covered part of the blowout, fortunately. I went and found one of the supervisors and managed to talk my way into an early out at 6:30. The jeans, alas, will have to be retired.

Earlier this week, someone at work was cleaning out one of the desks in the office and happened across several group pictures taken in early 1992. We were able to pinpoint the year because some people were holding up signs saying "Get well soon, Ron," for one of the Tour 3 supervisors from that time, who unfortunately passed away. It was fun to look back at the pictures from 13 years ago, seeing some old friends that I haven't thought about in years, as well as seeing the old LSM machines (which have been extinct for almost a decade) in the background of some of the pictures. Most of the people in the pictures are long gone from our facility, having bid out to one of the stations, retired, been fired or just moved on, but several of the others are still around. Some have changed dramatically in appearance over the years, while others look almost unchanged. I was happy, however, that it was only Tour 3 people in the pictures, so that I didn't have to confront the image of my much younger self.

The Death of America

Here lies America
Born July 4, 1776
Died June 23, 2005
Murdered as she slept
By five black-robed assailants.

Too strong? Perhaps. It may be that the country will survive, although the American Dream apparently will not. If you are a property owner, you went to bed on Wednesday night secure in your Fifth Amendment property rights, keeping the government from taking your property by eminent domain, except in cases where it is necessary for the "public good," and with appropriate compensation.

Yesterday, our black-robed masters at the Supreme Court ruled by a vote of 5-4 that we no longer have those Fifth Amendment rights, and that local governments can now take your property for solely commercial development, arguing that "increasing the property tax rolls" falls under the rubric of "public good." It is as if the Supreme Court all got together to deliberate over a big bowl of stewed prunes, then five of them went and took a great big healthy dump (often a major accomplishment for our nation's senior citizens) and then wiped their asses with the Constitution.

How ironic is it that President Bush and the Executive Branch have been extolling the virtues of an "ownership society," and now the Supreme Court (Judicial Branch) is actively working against private property ownership? Our Founding Fathers must be spinning in their graves. Indeed, if we could harness the energy from that spinning, we could probably be energy independent for the next couple of decades.

What does it all mean? Well, if you own a single-family home in a nice location, say by the beach in Connecticut, and some big developer greases the palms of the local government (city council, county commissioners, whatever), then if you refuse to sell, they can take your property and give you what THEY think is fair market value. You might get half a million, while the developer then takes your property and makes twenty or thirty million by building luxury condos on the site. You lose your home and have to move somewhere else, and that half a million you get probably won't replace it. That was probably the worst thing about this Connecticut case. And as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor noted in her blistering dissent, no property owner in America is safe any more. We are all vulnerable to being forced out by the highest bidder. This could set off the largest land grab since the Oklahoma Land Rush, only this time it would be the government doing the grabbing.

This case shows the need for either term limits or a mandatory retirement age for our unelected, unaccountable Supreme Court justices. Only Clarence Thomas is under age 65, and most of them are physically infirm; it would not be surprising to learn that there were some mental infirmities as well, due to advancing age. I would think it would take a severe case of senility for such an horrific interpretation of the Fifth Amendment. This is probably one of the worst Supreme Court rulings in my lifetime.

Don't Be Such A Dick, Durbin

Warning: Screed mode ON. Read if you dare, flee if you must.

Some Democrats continue to wonder why they lost so badly in the last election. They can't understand how anyone could have voted for Bush or any Republican. Well, it was easy to do. When it came to defending this country against terrorism, the Republicans were the only adults in the room. Putting the political leaders of the Democrat party in charge of our nation's defense would have been as irresponsible as handing a 16-year-old the keys to his daddy's liquor cabinet and Ferrari.

Exhibit A: Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, the second-ranking member of his party's delegation to the Senate. Senator Durbin, like many of his Democrat colleagues, reminds me of nothing so much as a parrot, capable of learning a few words and phrases and repeating them ad nauseam without the slightest idea of what they actually MEAN: "Hitler," "Nazi," "gulag," "Pol Pot." They know that the words mean something really, really bad, but they aren't exactly sure what. On Tuesday night, Senator Durbin read the following into the record before a nearly-empty Senate chamber:

When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here [at Guantanamo Bay]--I almost hesitate to put them in the[Congressional] Record, and yet they have to be added to this debate. Let me read to you what one FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report:

"On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. . . . On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor."

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime--Pol Pot or others--that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.

How dare you, Senator Durbin? How dare you compare conditions at Guantamo Bay with the Nazi death camps, the Soviet gulag or Pol Pot's killing fields? How many millions of people have died at Guantanamo Bay? How many total? ZERO. The very comparison shows a colossal ignorance of history. Lavrenti Beria and Reinhard Heydrich would look up at you from whatever circle of Hell they currently occupy, ask, "How many millions of prisoners have you killed?" and when you told them "Zero, but we made some of them VERY uncomfortable," they would laugh at you for the rank amateur that you are.

Senator Durbin needs to visit the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. and maybe make a road trip to Cambodia to visit the museum there that commemorates the two million people killed by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. He needs to look at the pictures from the liberation of the Nazi death camps by Americans at the end of World War II, he needs to re-read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's works, and then he needs to ask himself the question: What do all of these have in common? The answer: In every case, the prisoners were systematically being starved to death. Starvation is the tool in every tyrant's toolbox. Contrast with the prisoners at Gitmo, who actually have GAINED weight while in captivity. They are probably better fed, better housed and receiving better medical care than they ever have in their lives. And then there's another question: How many people in Cuba, outside of Guantanamo Bay, even HAVE air conditioning at all? How many of our soldiers in Iraq? Damn few.

Finally, Senator Durbin needs to remember exactly who these prisoners are. One of them is the man who was believed to be the "20th hijacker" from 9/11, who was turned away by an alert Customs agent. The jihadis at Guantanamo Bay would slit Senator Durbin's throat as soon as look at him, and would ululate "Allahu akbar!' while they did it. Indeed, if not for the heroic actions of the passengers of Flight 93 on 9/11, jihadis just like those at Gitmo would have flown that plane into either the White House or the Capitol Building where Senator Durbin works. Frankly, on 9/11 and for about year thereafter, I would have had no problem if the guards at Gitmo had repeatedly Tasered the testicles of every jihadi there to get them to talk.

These prisoners are not legitimate prisoners of war covered by the Geneva Convention; they were in civilian clothes and as such could have been shot out of hand when they were captured. The fact that we didn't do that shows more loudly than Senator Durbin's windy speech that we most assuredly are not like the Nazis, the Soviets or the Khmer Rouge. And consider that many of them have been repatriated and of those, about a dozen have been recaptured, with others doubtlessly killed fighting against us. If anything, we have been too kind to them.

One last word for the Senator: Don't be such a Dick, Durbin.

Out of Sorts

Don't know why, but I've been feeling more surly, more grouchy, more curmudgeonly over the past couple of days. There are a number of possible reasons why, but it doesn't really matter which one (or ones) are the root cause. I'm just feeling out of sorts. All I want is to get June over with and get to July, since I have a week off at the beginning of next month.

I spent some time this morning reminiscing about the "good old days" at work with one of the few grizzled veterans who remain from when I started in Automation 14 years ago. It brought smiles to both our faces. The stuff we used to do was kind of juvenile, but quite entertaining. Alas, things have become dull and gray.

Arlene: Not So Bad

At least she wasn't too bad here. We got a lot of rain and a little wind the last couple of days, but it could have been worse. We've already gotten more than our normal rainfall for the entire month of June. The sun is out now, though, for the first time in about a week. Things are looking up.

My brother Karl had asked me back in April what I wanted for my birthday. Unusually for me, there was actually something in particular that I wanted. I told him he could send me the new book "1776" by David McCullough, although it wouldn't come out until late May. Well, I got the book in the mail the other day and it's really an interesting read. If you're a history buff, you'll want to read it. I really enjoyed McCullough's biographies of John Adams and Harry Truman, and this is another one to add to the list.

Annoyance Factor: 11

It was the Monday from Hell today at work. My Annoyance Factor peaked out at 10 and then went to 11. Everything that could go wrong did, starting with having to try to track down two racks that some weasel stole off of my machine, and only being able to find one of them. Neither of my dispatches went out on time. I don't like Mondays anyway, and this one was worse than most. At the end of the day, a hapless clerk from the day crew came along and tried to steal the trays that I had stockpiled on top of my racks to use to retray them. It was actually therapeutic to yell at him: "HEY!! DON'T STEAL MY TRAYS!!" He grumbled about being yelled at, but he put the trays back. I immediately went to work on retraying the racks before any of the other day crew scavengers came around. Normally I try to get the racks retrayed before the day crew arrives at 6:30, but today it just wasn't possible.

Small World

First, a little personal background: I was born in Texas and lived there until I was eight years old. My family moved around the state several times, based on my dad's military career and his teaching career after that. My last stop in Texas was Denton, where my dad finished up his Master's Degree at North Texas State University in 1968. From there, we moved on to St. Joseph, Missouri, and later to Kansas City.

Well, the other night, I was working with one of our new PTFs who is originally from Chile. We got to talking about our backgrounds, and when I mentioned that I lived in Texas as a kid, he mentioned that the first place he lived when he came to the U.S. in 1975 was: Denton, Texas, where he studied at North Texas State University on a soccer scholarship. It is, indeed, a small world. I'm not going to put the "after all" at the end of that sentence because I'd probably owe Disney royalties if I did.

Dressed to the Nons

I watched the results of yesterday's French referendum on the European Union Constitution with what I can only describe as disinterested interest, not being a European myself. The French gave the measure a resounding defeat by more than 55% of the vote. I think they did the right thing, although many of them may have done it for the wrong reasons.

I went to the E.U. site on the link above yesterday morning and tried to actually read the proposed E.U. Constitution, and my eyes glazed over after about 30 pages or so. It runs a couple of hundred pages, and it prescribes in minute detail how the the E.U.'s subjects would be allowed to live their lives under its provisions. There is so much small print that just about anything could be hidden in there that would be useful to the Eurocrats who actually run the E.U. While paying lip service to individual rights such as "freedom of expression," it also abridges them by saying that:

"The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary."

In other words, any speech that might be perceived as infringing any of the other rights in the E.U. Constitution would be prohibited and punished. Indeed, at that point, about the only thing the French would really be free to say would be "Bonjour!" Such a provision would be unconstitutional in the United States.

I think the main difference between our constitution and the one the E.U. proposes is that in America, the people are sovereign and have inherent rights, and grant such powers to the State as it needs to function, and no more. In Europe, the State is sovereign and has inherent power, and grants such rights to the people as it deems necessary, and no more. We are a people who have a government; they are governments who have people. This is why so many of the leadership positions in the E.U. are unelected and unaccountable to the people they rule.