A woman is a woman is a woman

Here's a nice piece--that's very well written--on McCain's veep pick, Sarah Palin. Shockingly, this came from Fox News...

And I quote:

...I think I understand a few things about Hillary’s base in the Democratic party, and why so many women have been so loyal to her, and if John McCain thinks that simply picking another person with similar anatomy is going to win their votes, he’s about to learn a very important lesson in gender politics.

Nothing again Sarah Palin. To be honest, I don’t know her. She is a newcomer to the national scene, new enough to make Barack Obama look like an old-timer.

She has been governor of Alaska for less than two years. Before that, she was mayor of a town in Alaska that is smaller than my immediate neighborhood. Sort of makes serving in the Illinois legislature look like secretary of state. She had the guts to take on the corrupt Republican establishment in her state, and she deserves credit for that.

She has executive experience, even if it is in a pretty small pond, and she deserves credit for that. Not much, but some. She is also mired in an investigation as to whether she tried to get her ex-brother-in-law fired which does not exactly fit with her image as an ethical reformer. Best as I can tell, she has absolutely no foreign policy or national security experience.

Can John McCain really say that he looked far and wide and she is the most qualified person in Ameerica to be his running mate? Would she have been selected had she not been a woman? She seems like a cool lady. Then again, Barack Obama certainly seems like a cool guy. Cool isn’t the issue.

The reason so many women supported Hillary Clinton, and the reason that number grew, as did the intensity of their support, as the campaign went along, is not because, or at least not solely because, she is a woman. If that was her only claim to the top seat, she would have lost straightaway.

It is because many of us saw her as the most qualified candidate in the race, without regard to race or gender, the one who had earned the job, was ready to do it, and instead of being respected for that, she was treated with scorn and condescension and outright sexism by so many in the media and even in the Obama camp itself.
What woman above a certain age – women in their prime, I call them – has not been there and done that, could not identify with the woman who was fighting for a job she was more than qualified for, only to be demeaned for her clothes and her cackle and her cleavage, only to be mocked for her ambition even as a guy with far less experience was applauded for his.

Hillary tapped into something deep in the hearts of women across the country; not,as Nancy Peolosi wrongly described it, the politics of victimhood, but just the opposite, the unwillingness to be put down or dismissed, the courage to hang in and keep fighting and prove your mettle even when others doubt you. Her speech Tuesday night only reenforced all the reasons that those of us who admire and respect her do so. It was because she wasn’t a victim, and neither are we.
...

I will note however that I don't think McCain ever meant to substitute Clinton with Palin. No repub would ever vote for Clinton so that's kind of a ridiculous claim. However i do think he's using Palin as a stand-in for the Dem's appeal on the race, youth and gender fronts.

And on an unrelated note, I just have to point out: Palin is almost HALF McCain's age! (*eyes bugging out sound*)

Trouble the Water

This film looks amazing! Perfect timing...

Morning Edition, August 29, 2008 · A week before Hurricane Katrina decimated parts of the Gulf Coast in August 2005, Kim Rivers Roberts bought a video camera.

"My state of mind was like, this could come in handy," Rivers Roberts tells Steve Inskeep. "My plan was just to film something I could sell."

So when the aspiring rap artist and her husband, Scott, became trapped in New Orleans' Ninth Ward by deadly floodwaters, she turned that camera on herself and her neighbors. What she filmed became part of a documentary, Trouble The Water, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival...

Vinegar

It must be the greatest thing since sliced bread... and baking soda. Check out all of the uses here.

Here are some faves:

Stop cats from fighting with each other with a spritz of a white distilled vinegar and water solution.

Kill weeds and grass growing in unwanted places by pouring full-strength white distilled vinegar on them. This works especially well in crevices and cracks of walkways and driveways.

To shine chrome sink fixtures that have a lime buildup, use a paste made of 2 tablespoons salt and 1 teaspoon white distilled vinegar.

Some stains on clothing and linens can be soaked out using equal parts milk and white distilled vinegar.

Remove perspiration odor and stains on clothing, as well as those left by deodorants, by spraying full-strength white distilled vinegar on underarm and collar areas before tossing them into the washing machine.

Get cleaner laundry! Add about 1/4 cup white distilled vinegar to the last rinse. The acid in white distilled vinegar is too mild to harm fabrics, yet strong enough to dissolve the alkalies in soaps and detergents. Besides removing soap, white distilled vinegar prevents yellowing, acts as a fabric softener and static cling reducer, and attacks mold and mildew.

Eliminate bad breath and whiten your teeth by brushing them once or twice a week with white distilled vinegar.

When boiling or steaming cauliflower, beets or other vegetables, add a teaspoon or two of white distilled vinegar to the water to help them keep their color. This will also improve their taste, and reduce gassy elements. This also works when cooking beans and bean dishes.

Dem Convention - TV spectacularganza

Here's a good analysis of the horrendous TV coverage of the Democratic Convention. There's a hilarious bit in there about Karl Rove defending Bill Clinton on "Hannity and Colmes."

It's only 5 min.

A Plot From 24?

City and federal authorities said Monday night that at least three people were under arrest on firearms and drug charges in connection with a possible plot to kill Senator Barack Obama during his speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday night.

Organic Brew - Hangover-less?

Here's a funny test: Does an organic-alcohol hangover hurt as bad as a non-organic one?

Check it out.

Sandy Allen, World's Tallest Passes

My mom sent this to me about the recently deceased world's tallest woman, who incidentally was from Indiana... I feel an ache in my heart reading this, as I imagine that any trouble my 6' 1" ma faced due to her height would have paled in comparison to that faced by Ms. Allen.

I saw her once. She came into Easy Spirit shoe store at Glendale Mall, where I worked for a couple years as a teenager. Her friend pushed her in a wheelchair to the till and, assuming we didn't have her size, set to order a pair of size 15 or 18 (I can't seem to remember correctly) sneakers. It was hard not to stare. Besides her great size, she had something of an air to her. Not exactly a star quality or anything but a sense of her right to be there and to not be ogled. A steady confidence perhaps. Or maybe I had mythologized her.

Here's her obit:

SANDY Allen: superhero. That is how I perceived the world’s tallest woman, 7 feet 7 1/4 inches, from my vantage point as the tallest little girl in Delmar, N.Y. Ms. Allen, who died last week at the age of 53, appeared invincible in her photograph in the Guinness Book of World Records. I imagined her wearing a red cape all the time, printed with the slogan, “The weather up here is fabulous.” She must have been madly popular.

But when I drove to Shelbyville, Ind., last year to interview her, I found her alone in a claustrophobic convalescence-home room, made smaller by her 8-foot-long bed. She lived down the road from her childhood home, on $54 a month in discretionary income.

She greeted me with a hug and a joke: “If you ever want the ceiling painted, put a hat on my head and tell me which way to walk.” It was a hypothetical joke. Her legs were too weak to hold her 400 pounds, and she had recently summoned the fire department to lift her into her bed after she had slid off it. She was fighting organ failure caused by her gigantism. Excess growth hormone had wreaked havoc on her body. “I’m the oldest giant that ever lived,” she told me with pride. “All the women who held this record before me died quite young.”

Had Ms. Allen been born 20 years earlier, she would have been a circus performer, which, while not ideal, would have provided a steady income. It was a well-trod path: Anna Swan, a Canadian who was perhaps 7 feet 4 inches tall, was displayed in a museum by P.T. Barnum and thrived on the freak-show circuit with her husband, Martin Bates, who was 7 feet 2 inches, in the 1870s. The Alton Giant, Robert Pershing Wadlow, the tallest man in history at 8 feet 11 inches, toured the country in the late 1930s as a superstar, with 40,000 people attending his funeral.

But the circuit dried up in the 1960s, when audiences began seeing giants not as magical creatures but as sufferers of a medical ailment. Zoo-style objectification — of hair-covered men, of midgets — was out of fashion. It was the era of civil rights: We’re all the same on the inside, and we’re going to treat people as equals.

Everyone except very tall people. Unlike the cultural rules for weight or ethnicity or looks or disability, the social mores for height still allow bystanders to stare and say whatever they’re thinking. Which for a very tall person, let alone a giant like Sandy Allen, means: “Wow, you’re really tall!” (possibly while whipping out a cellphone camera).

I am 6 feet 3 inches tall and attract a fair amount of goggling and commentary, much of it complimentary, some of it not. It does not begin to compare to what Ms. Allen experienced. Her friend Kim Blacklock describes walking through New York City with her two decades ago: “People weren’t kind. Just the screaming. It was like — that kind of shock where they can’t even stop their mouth to think that a human being is going to be the recipient of their reaction.”

Ms. Allen spent long stretches of time not going outside. But she tried not to give into bouts of depression, which are shared by other giants, who live in isolation and poverty. Shortly after Guinness mailed her a certificate in the 1970s, she bought a van with the words “World’s Tallest Woman” printed on it. She appeared in a Federico Fellini movie, playing a woman who arm-wrestled in bars.

“I try to be friendly with everyone I meet,” she told me last year. “Some make it tougher than others. But I think that I’m this way so that I can encourage people not to give up if they’ve got problems in life.” She visited classrooms, preaching the wonders of difference — and letting kids try on her shoes.

The decency was rarely returned to her. She trusted everyone, including tabloids, which printed fabricated stories of an affair between her and the world’s shortest man. The Internet was particularly unkind. The first time I searched for her, I found a Web site where someone compared the size of her genitalia to a small Japanese truck. Her appearance on Howard Stern’s radio show was a train wreck of vulgarity, and he backed her into admitting that she was a virgin.

She shouldn’t have had to live so alone and die so alone. She was just 18 inches taller than everyone else. In a world of Michael Phelpses and teeny gymnasts, she wasn’t so different. She had a button nose, smooth pale skin, clear blue eyes. If she hadn’t grown in all directions, “I probably would have gotten married, settled down and had umpteen million kids,” she told me.

I learned of her death from a friend who is 7 feet 2 inches tall. He wanted to talk about the loss of the sunny Ambassador of Height. We discussed what might have made her life better. If every time strangers spotted her, they focused on how they identified with her, perhaps her Indiana drawl, her Pacers hat, her jewelry (Allen loved jewelry, the only mainstream women’s apparel she could fit into), things would have been different.

No stares, no questions, no cellphone cameras. No hiding inside a nursing home, no abandonment. She would have loved that, I think. She would have been madly popular.

Arianne Cohen is the author of the forthcoming “The Tall Book: A Celebration of Life From on High.”

Irradiated Veggies, No Thanks

The FDA is to allow irradiation of spinach and other veggies in order to remove the danger of harmful bacteria, etc. like e.coli and others. This is incredibly short-sighted and a stupid solution to something we already have the "technology" to solve.

“The agency is choosing to have a high-tech expensive solution to a problem that needs a more thorough approach and one that really starts on the farm,” Ms. Smith DeWaal of the science center said.

Totally agree. But not just on the farm; in schools, at dinner tables, in the produce section. We need to educate ourselves and children about how our food gets to our table and have a real, honest discussion about the way the food industry currently operates.

Massive farms that produce tons and tons of spinach for shipment across the globe have huge implications - on our water supply, the health of our oceans (as all that "product" must be shipped aboard gigantor tankers that guzzle oil), the politics of our fuel supply, and --oh yeah-- the health of the people consuming the food, as large-scale operations are more prone to such bacterial outbreaks and are more likely to use harmful pesticides and other chemicals to make such a business at such a scale profitable and viable.

But its not viable. The very practices that keep agro-corps in business will eventually lead to their denegration as the soil corrupts, the atmosphere darkens in plumes of polluted air, the water table drops and becomes contaminated, and people figure out that their food is killing them and their planet.

Simple solutions require great courage.

Dumb Science

The stupidest study I've ever heard of:

According to a new study by researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey, several commonly used skin creams may cause skin tumors – at least in mice, Reuters reported.

Dr. Allan Conney, professor of cancer and leukemia research at Rutgers, discovered the risk while testing a theory that caffeine could prevent skin cancer, according to the report.

"We sort of got into this by accident," Conney told Reuters. "We wanted a safe cream that we could put the caffeine into."

Conney and colleagues stumbled across the findings after they exposed hairless mice to ultraviolet radiation to mimic sun exposure. Afterward, they applied four popular moisturizers to the mice.

What they found was that all four — Dermabase, Dermavan, Eucerin and Vanicream – caused tumors to grow on the mice.

Hmmmm, I wonder if the UV ray exposure had anything at all to do with the cancer...

Electrifying

From Flickr: "On Sunday night my wife wanted to go to lower Manhattan, and I went with her to take some shots along the river. I had just set up when it started to rain. Feeling frustrated, I got under cover and decided to take shots of some of the old ships, even though the position was not ideal. But at least it was dry! Suddenly giant lightning bolts started shooting out of the sky, hitting the ships and all around them, very close to where I was standing! I began shooting them as fast as I could instead of cowering in a ball on the ground, as I probably should have done..." (Click on the photo for the rest of the story and more pix)

Greenest Person in the World, Vancouver contender

On Earth Day of this year (April 22), an outfit called 3rdwhale.com launched the 2008 Greenest Person on the Planet competition. More than 600 applicants from 25 countries applied. Voting is now in its last round, and there's a local girl among the five finalists.

This is Vancouver Emily's claim to greenness: She lives in a condo within walking distance of everything. She recycles everything, walks or cycles everywhere and doesn't own a car, works for a green company, eats locally-sourced organic food and offsets her infrequent air travel.

Right now it's a near dead heat between Emily and the guy from Malaysia. Care to vote? Do so before August 18th, the deadline, over at the official contest page.

Here's a recent interview CTV did with with the 22-year-old:
- Granville magazine

White Ravens on Qualicum Beach?

National and international media flocked around a pair of white ravens spotted in Qualicum Beach, on Vancouver Island, in June 2008. White ravens are not only of interest to Vancouver Island bird watchers and nature lovers, they also play a role in First Nations culture.

Weird lookin'...

Best of its kind... Email scams from Africa are the best!

------ Original Message
From: flora manis [david208manis@yahoo.co.jp] [NOTICE THE JAPANESE EMAIL ADDRESS]
Reply-To: [florajoymanis1@yahoo.co.jp]
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 04:16:03 +0900 (JST)
To: [david208manis@yahoo.co.jp]
Subject: Dear lovely one

Dear lovely one [OH, HOW FLATTERING! OR IS THIS PORN SPAM?]
how are you for today ?,
I got you contact though this site, i would like you to email me though my email dress florajoymanis1@yahoo.co.jp

I am 19 years old gril, I was born in COTE D'IVOIRE , and I school in Liberia but I couldn't finish my education because of the thing of the world, I have no brother nor sister, I lost my mother when I was 6 years old I can't tell a story of my mother. I was living with my father but in the year 2006 I lost my father in Kumo hospital by 9.30 am [SUCKS!]

I must tell you the comment of doctor ,he told me that my father was poisoned [POISONED?!], but I know that it must be my uncle that did it, I say this because after the death of my father he turned against me because my father had alot of money, he wanted to collect all of my father's belongings. my father's name is RICHARD MANIS who was the director general of cocoa export corporation in Cote D'ivoire

Now he has taken all the property, and send me out of our family house because he found out that my father had some documents of a deposit of 8.5 millions US dollars made by my name as the next of kin (EIGHT MILLION FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND he deposited it in the bank here in my country. According to my father, he said that he deposited the money because he intended to use the money for his international business transaction before his dearth

Now my uncle is going around Cote D'ivoire looking for me to collect all the documents that covers this money , note that my father told me that I should not give it to any body or show it to any body but it should be the one that I trust who will help me to retrieve the money [UMMM, HI? HAVE WE MET? YOU MIGHT WANT TO RECHECK YOUR LOGIC...]

Now I want you to help me to transfer this money into your account [SOUNDS EASY ENOUGH] and help me to come over to your country for a new life. I will give you my pic in my next E-mail but we must do this with trust, please can you give me your phone number so I can call you and tell you more about these and I will also give you the contact of the bank where the money was deposited

waiting to hear from you
your new Friend [AW, THAT'S NICE. I LOVE NEW FRIENDS!]
FLORA MANIS

------ End of Original Message

Predicting running mates, insulting women

Here's a snippet from the NYTimes's short list of probable vice presidential candidates to run on the Obama ticket:

Ms. Sebelius is not only the governor of Kansas but also the daughter of a former Ohio governor. Those two credentials offer a biographical bookend that would create a narrative Mr. Obama is searching for: an ability to appeal to red-state voters. Then again, even Ms. Sebelius would surely agree that winning Kansas is a stretch for a Democratic presidential candidate, and Ohio voters are looking to the future. Also, if a woman were to be placed on the ticket, could it be anyone other than Mrs. Clinton?

Yes, only Mrs. Clinton has the right to such a post... because there are no other women intelligent enough, quick enough, qualified enough or as well-rounded as she. How insulting. Finding such rhetoric in The New York Times is infuriating, as it reaches far more people than some right-wing crazy man's blog--therefore making it seem more acceptable to have such a narrow-minded opinion. Unacceptable.

Another force of nature tries to sabotage China's Olympics

A massive algal bloom in Qingdao, China, that threatened the sailing events in the upcoming Beijing Olympics has been successfully cleaned up, reports The New York Times. According to a Chinese official, barriers were installed in order to keep additional algae from infiltrating the waters that are slated for competition. The algae first appeared in late June and quickly spread, at its peak covering one third of the waters in the area. But by Monday, volunteers and workers had cleared over 700,000 tons of algae from the water and surrounding seashore.

Harmful algal blooms (often referred to as red tides) can occur due to an excess of nutrients in an aquatic system, which often results in a significant reduction of oxygen. Other blooms are natural, seasonal occurrences. Still others can be attributed to factors such as influxes in iron-rich dust and climate changes. The cause of the Qingdao bloom has yet to be determined. --Power & Motoryacht Editors blog

Incentive Mentoring Program

Check it out! My pal Sarah from high school has started this amazing nonprofit that helps "troubled" youth graduate from high school and go to college. It's actually a really impressive outfit. Here's the blurb from the website:

The Incentive Mentoring Program is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that provides intensive academic and social support to Baltimore City teenagers who are in immediate danger of being expelled from high-school. IMP has achieved a 100% graduation and 100% college acceptance rate by engaging students in activities that build self-worth,academic pride,and social responsibility. IMP strives to unite the people and resources of Baltimore in an effort to break the cycle of poverty, drugs, and lack of education. Generations of IMP alumni will create a powerful force of social change and establish a new cycle of learning, service, and social well-being.

Although only 38.5% of Baltimore City children will receive a high school diploma on time, all fifteen members of the original IMP class of 2007 graduated high school with a combined total of 123 college acceptances and $1,000,000 in scholarships. IMP alumni are currently attending:

* Bowdoin College

* Purdue University

* Frostburg State University

* University of Maryland Eastern Shore

* And more...

Wow! 100% success rate?! I'm sooo going to write a story about this...

Community reeling after sand sculptures vandalized

While I have no doubt as to how incredibly disheartening it must be to have all the sand sculptures from the event vandalized, this is a hilarious headline--especially because it made the front page (with photo) of today's newspaper.

Oh, John!

ABC News is reporting that John Edwards, the former Senator from North Carolina and presidential candidate, “repeatedly lied during his Presidential campaign about an extramarital affair with a novice film-maker.”

ABC says that in an interview for broadcast tonight on Nightline, Mr. Edwards told ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff he did have an affair with the woman, Rielle Hunter, but did not father her child, as has been reported by the National Enquirer.

Mr. Edwards told ABC that his wife, Elizabeth, and others in his family became aware of the affair in 2006. The network said that Mr. Edwards “made a point of telling Woodruff that his wife’s cancer was in remission when he began the affair with Hunter.”

Craaaa-zzy!

Stormy seas...

God's Pottery

I've never heard of these guys but holy eff i love their photo!

Ethanol requirements and the EPA

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency rejected on Thursday a request to cut the quota for the use of ethanol in cars, concluding, for the time being, that the goal of reducing the nation’s reliance on oil trumps any effect on food prices from making fuel from corn.

How backwards! How are we reducing the nation's reliance on oil by giving people a crutch (a.k.a. ethanol and biofuel) to rely on? We'll still be "reliant" on oil, just in a different form--and we'll destroy the wetlands and rainforests further to get it. How about the government recommend and implement a program for ACTUALLY curbing our addiction to oil that would require people to lower their usage of the stuff through lifestyle choices, and would require companies lower their usage BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY? (For example, last night at the grocery store, strawberries from California were cheaper than strawberries from B.C. ... We live in B.C.! How can you ship strawberries hundreds of miles and still sell them for cheaper? It's an adddddiction! And a shame. And a real slap in the face to B.C. farmers.)

It's time to own up to it, folks - times have changed! And yet, this is sooo not new news...

Where to get raw pet food in Vancouver

Here's a great resource for anyone wanting to buy raw pet food in Vancouver, B.C.

Penn & Teller's No. 1 Fan, Noel Sheppard

What a wonderful way of illustrating how much you hate environmentalism: by using Penn & Teller comedy routines that break Al Gore's ballz to support your own claims that the media are sensationalizing the issue of climate change (true or not) and that the concept of environmentalism is really just a veiled attempt to push through a liberal, anti-globalism/anti-corporation agenda.

Obviously, Noel Sheppard (associate editor, Newsbusters.org) has never been on a hike, smelled a flower or gone swimming in a glacial lake. If he had done any of these (or communed with nature in any other way), his position on environmentalism would seem as silly as it is. Worthy of snickers and giggles, not ink on a blog (such that it is). While environmentalism may complement socialist ideals well, and in fact there may be many people out there doing just what he accuses us all of doing, the fact remains that our lifestyle choices and excessive consumption of all things consumable are having a deleterious affect on the earth (to say the least).

Diversity of plant/animal species and the longevity of our own species (that means humans, Noel!) are important issues, and it's ridiculous to think that environmentalist only care about these things as they relate to liberal idealogical domination. Only someone whose interests lie only as far as the material world of business and commerce are concerned would see the world through such distorted lenses.

NDP in BC

Here's an interesting (but poorly written) look at why to vote NDP in B.C. I don't know enough about Canadian or B.C. politics, but it strikes me as odd how much the author needs to apologize to the reader for planning to vote NDP. Why does the case need to be made? Does the party have such a terrible track record?

I think it's interesting, though, how much the tides have changed as regards the importance of "The Environment" in electing to govt. I hope this is a trend that lasts. The Environment could use a good (long) run in popularity.

Thirsty?

Why vote the traditional way with paper ballots and headaches, or even the new-fangled way with electronic blackholes that don't give you a printed record of your democracy in action? Why, I ask, when you can savour the simple pleasure of casting your vote and enjoying a delicious, sugar-drenched soda pop all in one go? I present to you, the future of voting...

There is no "yours" in air travel

Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop’s contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.