« June 2005 | Main | August 2005 »
July 31, 2005
Planet X!!!
It looks like we've got a tenth planet circling way out there, and it's at least as large as Pluto, probably much bigger. And no, it's not some wacked out relgious cult or desparate SF author making the claim. It was a JPL effort of computer analysis that turned it up.
I'm not that up on my Roman mythology, but who's left for naming planets after? Bacchus, Juno... maybe Proserpine would be more appropriate. Or maybe we'll get to visit Vulcan after all?
Blog by Dan | Permalink | Comments (2)
July 29, 2005
Fish Need Air
This isn't my narrative, but it's a great little true story of how greed overcame stupidity and laziness to save some fish.
Narrative by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
Pat Sajak on Optimism
I just made a brief spot by Pat Sajak's place, where he had a word or two to say about optimism from his latest vacation:
I’ve recently returned from an extended European vacation which included a virtually total information blackout. I carried no computer and no cell phone...
...
However, this strange juxtaposition of my information cut-off while being surrounded by growing signs of a connected world resulted in a long-absent feeling upon my return: optimism. It’s something I hadn’t felt in years. Optimism about the world and my kids and their futures. It’s something 9/11 had knocked out of me. It’s something the daily drumbeat of 24-hour news channels had kept me from feeling. How could we survive in this world where everyone hates us and everyone is out to get us?
Well, it turns out everyone doesn’t hate us. Most people are too busy taking care of their families or working or shopping to care much one way or the other. Without the prisms of CNN and “The Twin Times” of New York and Los Angeles to remind me of how terrible a country we live in and how despised we are, I had to rely on real people and actual events to show me the world, and it seemed to be a much more hospitable place.
As for the “wired” gondoliers, even they fueled the optimism. It's becoming more and more difficult to keep a society in darkness. As that tool of dictatorships and despots and thugs is taken away, it will become impossible to hold the next generation in check. As people-to-people communication seeps into places like North Korea, goofballs such as Kim Jong Il will find it harder to convince people they are world-class athletes or brilliant scholars. It will be harder for terrorists to justify their means. And, yes, it will be harder to portray America as Satan incarnate.
Politics by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday 5: Secret Signatures
Today's question, allegedly, comes from me, but there's been no confirmation of that.
With the recent unveiling of famed Watergate source "Deep Throat", a great mysterious chapter of journalism has been closed. However, you now have the chance to leak some incredible secrets to a young, new reporter. What would those five secrets be, and what would your code name be for each of them?
- Lance Armstrong has been secretly receiving injections… of FLU SHOT. That’s right, as someone deep within the billing department of his physician’s office, I can tell you that several months before each of his seven Tour de France victories he was given an injection of the flu vaccine – even though he did not actually have the flu!! If you need more information, call me at the embassy and ask for the “French Tickler”.
- The 9/11 attacks had nothing to do with the Israeli crackdown on the Palestinian town of Jenin. I know the common wisdom promoted by the likes of Juan Cole lays out a clear trail of cause and effect, but I have used my top secret “calendar” device to determine that the incident in Jenin actually occurred six months after the 9/11 attacks, and furthermore, no time travel was involved! If you need me again, just whisper out for “Clue by Four”.
- Ted Kennedy is an alcoholic and a drunk driver. Call me “The Lady of the Lake”.
- All software ships with bugs, but it’s nothing to worry about. It’s going to work fine 99.997% of the time, and when there is a failure, a simple reboot or removal of the offending modules will get things going again. Feel free to contact me: hal9000@discovery.gov.
- Fast food has intentionally been made in such a way as to make you eat it again and again. They have spent billions in research to achieve a particular series of chemical and neurological reactions that will make you think back on the experience pleasantly. In a sign of their depravity, they refer to this insidious undermining of your free will, “making the food taste better.” I’m going to try to sneak in and get more physical evidence of their duplicity, and then I’ll be in touch again. Surreptitiously yours, Hamburglar.
Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
July 27, 2005
A new low for counterfeiters...
While I'm very much opposed to various form of IP piracy and IP theft, this particular bit of counterfeiting is a new low. Here's a story from the WSJ (not sure how long the link will be live):
Mark Cohen, avid cyclist and top U.S. counterfeit fighter in China, has seen a lot of fakes. Fake car windshields, fake drugs, fake Rolex watches, fake Hollywood DVDs. He has seen Chinese companies masquerading, in toto, as American ones.
But what really got him were the knockoff "Livestrong" bracelets that started popping up on the streets here a few months ago. The Texas-based Lance Armstrong Foundation, named for the seven-time Tour de France winner, sells the popular yellow wristbands for $1 a pop to raise money for cancer research.
Slightly off-color versions now go for about half that price in Beijing, with nothing left over for charity. "That, for me, was a new low," says Mr. Cohen, who first saw the knockoffs at Wind Speed, the city's premier bike shop. "Everyone was impressed I had a real one."
That really, really sucks.
Blog by Dan | Permalink | Comments (1)
Kelo Kowboys?
As many have suggested, the recent Supreme Court Kelo decision is not just a minor point of academic law. Does a stadium qualify as a "public use" because it generates tax revenue?
Property owners near the site of the new Dallas Cowboys stadium have sued the city of Arlington to stop officials from taking their land.
The lawsuit by eleven property owners alleges that the city is violating the Texas Constitution by using powers of eminent domain to condemn homes for a football stadium, according to records filed yesterday in district court in Tarrant County. The city has been acquiring property for the needed 200 acres. The process included eleven deals the City Council approved last night.
The lawsuit says eminent domain can only be used when land is taken for public use such as school and roads. City officials have said the stadium will generate jobs and sales tax revenue, constituting a public benefit.
We'll see how this plays out. There's been some noise in Texas about trying to trump the U.S. Supreme Court with state laws/amendments.
Politics by Dan | Permalink | Comments (1)
July 26, 2005
Annoying radio ads
I've been listening to a modest amount of radio lately as I drive, and I've run into a couple of ads that have annoying me mildly. Read on for a couple of mini-rants.
Hey, everybody, look at my shiny new medical degree! Let me cut into your face!
There's this ad for a new cosmetic procedure called "thread-lift", and they're calling it the "lunch hour face-lift". Ok, sounds interesting, and quick. A great grind-them-out assembly-line system.
And to prove that the doctor knows what he's doing here, he boasts of having done sixty of them. That's right, not just fifty or fifty-five, but sixty!
Excuse me, but if this is the kind of thing you can crank through in an hour, and you're saying you're super experienced at it, like something you're doing everyday, then shouldn't you be bragging about having done hundreds? Or over a thousand?
Instead, I'm left with the impression that he's been doing this for, golly, two or three whole months! That's who I want to trust my face to.
Oh yeah, that's the kind of physicisist I want pointing a laser at my head!
In an effort to move me away from glasses to laser eye surgery, they're reminding me of how my summer fun is always being ruined by having my glasses fog up everytime I go inside.
Inside? I don't know about anyone else, but my glasses fog up when I go outside. In fact, I'm pretty sure the physics of it requires that in the summer. My glasses are cooled inside in the dry A/C'd air. I then take them OUTside, and the moisture in the warm humid air condenses on my cold glasses.
So, with that grasp of thermodynamics, is this the guy I want to point a laser into my eye?
Blog by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
July 22, 2005
Missed my Blogiversary!!
Oh man, I just realized that I missed my one-year Blog-anniversary. I'd marked it on my mental calendar for this past Sunday, the 17th, but I forgot. I've had a lot on my mind lately, so I've been forgetting a lot of stuff.
But anyway, I've had this blog up for a year now, with 340 posts and about 6600 visits. Many thanks to Marvin who pointed me towards several resources and to HappyTester who got me started over on LiveJournal almost two years ago.
Well, anyway, not all that much to say about it, but I'd been thinking about it.
Blog by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
Austin Bay
I added Austin Bay's blog to my sidebar a while ago. He's a journalist/columnist who writes mostly about national security issues. He's also a reservist who has done a tour in Iraq and also been there as an embedded journalist. He tends to write from the right, but since he's also out there on the battlefield, it's clear that this isn't just political posturing.
He just got back from a recent tour of Iraq and Afghanistan and has been blogging up a storm, so I thought I'd point him out. In particular, a recent post points to a story of courage and compassion under fire that highlights the best of our soldiers.
Blog /Politics by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday 5: Wonderful Words
Today's question comes from Gord:
What are your five favorite words (in any language), and why do you like them so much?,
Ah... I've been remiss here lately, but here's one that at least won't require too much navel gazing.
- Pants: It works so well in so many little jokes. It's funny just about everywhere. "Have you tried pants?" "I find your lack of pants disturbing." "Use the Pants, Luke."
- Snorkle: It just sounds too funny to be a real world, like something you say when sneezing in the middle of a hiccup.
- Grok: It filled such a nice gap in the English language, not just by recognizing the gap, but by creating it.
- Spoo: A Centauri staple. It's great precisely because we don't know what it is.
- Sadomasochisticnecrofecalbestiality: This was a word we invented in college. I'll leave its meaning as an exercise for the reader. Mostly though, we used it in a take-off of a classic Mary Poppins song:
Sadomasochisticnecrofecalbestiality,
When you stop and think of it, it really is quite nasty!
Sadomasochisticnecrofecalbestiality!
Sadomasochisticnecrofecalbestiality!
Dum diddle diddle diddle dum diddle di,
Dum diddle diddle diddle dum diddle di!
...
Other Friday Fivers can be found perusing their dictionaries here.
Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
July 21, 2005
Women and Coffee
I had a nice evening out with MAW tonight. The food was good and the service was excellent. With dessert, MAW ordered a decaf, and when our waitress brought it back she asked, "Would you like cream in that?"
MAW said no, and this was no surprise to me, since I know she takes her coffee with nothing added. But not satisfied with that, my brain took a sharp left turn, and it was the best I could do to repress my grin until after our waitress departed.
"What is it?" MAW asked.
"My wife likes her coffee the way she likes her women: hot, black, and decaffeinated."
MAW sputtered so hard I almost wore that decaf home.
Narrative by Dan | Permalink | Comments (1)
July 20, 2005
Scotty, Beam Me Up!
James Doohan, a.k.a. Scotty, died this morning.
Starfleet will miss him.
Blog by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
July 13, 2005
Invoking Power
And lest you think I'm all about misogyny, here's another recent one:
This one started out merely as an attempt to copy a pose and hairstyle from a pinup image I found online. (Dan? Downloading porn? Say it's not so!) In the end, it became something else.
Render by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
False Hope
I've actually done several renders lately, and I haven't been posting them all here, because I didn't want to tilt the blog too heavily towards the rendering, nor did I want to incur all the bandwidth hit. (Ooooo yeah, baby, I've got like three people reading these...) Anyway, if you're interested in seeing all my stuff, check out my gallery on Renderosity. The tricky bit, though, is that they require us to flag anything with nudity, and you have to register to see any of them -- that whole "save the children" thing. Anyway, it's free registration, so you only have to give up your soul. (To be clear, I'm not associated with Renderosity. It's a large computer graphics site, and I am merely one of its thousands upon thousands of members.)
Anyway, enough with the preamble. Here's an image I did recently called "False Hope", where the first commenter in my gallery said, "Normally, Poser pictures with women being tortured are misogynistic and ill conceived, but this one works really well..."
Of course, the reviewer then went on to say, "It tells a story and really conveys a feeling of dread without being sick and twisted. Everything is suggested and not overtly stated." Which is pretty much what I was trying to get across.
The title comes from the thought that such a prisoner would hear the footsteps above and perhaps wonder if it were a rescue or just another jailer come to inflict another beating. I was hoping to capture that emotional transition as she recoils from what she'd hoped was rescue but suddenly realizes is torture.
Render by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
July 08, 2005
Wow... there are now DOZENS of weblogs
I couldn't help but laugh at this and pass it on. From an article discussing the growing power and role of blogs in political battles such as the coming nomination(s) to the Supreme Court:
Political groups preparing to battle over the first U.S. Supreme Court nomination in 11 years have a powerful new tool -- Internet blogs -- to spread information quickly and influence decision makers without relying on traditional media.
Web logs likely numbering in the dozens provide a way for the thoughtful and the passionate to publish their views. Politicians are taking notice as they prepare for the first high court nomination fight since the Internet became common in American households.
Wow... there are now dozens of blogs? Golly! Jim, Wally, and I had better investigate this. We'd thought there maybe eight, tops -- and that's including those two LiveJournal gals.
Tinfoil Beanie by Dan | Permalink | Comments (2)
July 07, 2005
The London Bombing
On this morning of the London bombing, I am reminded of a concert given shortly after the 9/11 attacks. It was an annual event, a concert series called the Proms held in England in the late summer through early fall.
This particular concert was the last in the series, and it was the first held after 9/11. The orchestra's conductor was an American, something that had been a bit of a controversial choice a few years earlier, but all had come to accept and embrace him over time. There was no mention of 9/11 until almost the very end, when he addressed the audience.
He thanked them for all their support over the previous years and in particular the outpouring of support in that prior week. "I know that this, the last night of the Proms, is supposed to be a happy and joyous occasion, but as you know, my nation is in grief. In England, your national music of grief is...", alas, my memory fails me. "In my country, it is Barber's Adagio for strings."
What followed was the most heart-rending performance of that piece I have ever heard. You may not be familiar with the piece, or you may know it without realizing it. It was most famously used as the end-title music for the 1986 movie, Platoon. Sufficed to say, by the end, the audience was in tears.
It was followed by a full-chorus performance of that timeless British anthem, "Jerusalem", a piece known so well, the audience gladly joined in.
In many ways, England is the father of the American nation, and while they fought in America's adolescence, they have come to appreciate each other: the father proud of his son's accomplishments, the son proud to have come from such a lineage.
Today, America weeps for its father.
Narrative by Dan | Permalink | Comments (1)
July 06, 2005
The Roe Amendment
Unless you’ve been living under a rock in a foreign country currently enforcing a news embargo on penalty of a J-Lo movie marathon, you’re probably quite aware that Sandra Day O’Conner has announced her retirement from the Supreme Court. This has the left up in arms that Roe v. Wade is a mere three months from being overturned, with the nation-wide criminalization of abortion to follow immediately. (Insert additional dire predictions here, but I’m limiting myself to the abortion discussion for the moment.)
For the moment, I’m going to discount the possibility (or the probability) that the left is doing this strictly pro forma, that no matter which judge retired, there would have been a great cry over some issue that the judge had supported. The cynic in me says that someone on the left has a set of press releases and opinion articles ready to go for the retirement or death of any judge on the Supreme Court. (And no, I will not refer to it as the SCOTUS, an abbreviation far too close to “scrotum”.) But as I said, for now I will ascribe them only the purest of motives, that to preserve a woman’s right to choose. I do not mean that with sarcasm, for it is a cause I agree with.
Let me start out by saying that I don’t think that the selection of a single Supreme Court justice is going to lead to the abolishment of abortion in this country. For that matter, I don’t think two or three will do it either. For that matter, I don’t think that even overturning Roe v. Wade will do it. Why? Because at the bottom line, Americans have gotten used to abortion as an option, and they’re not about to give it up.
Even the Republican majority in Congress knows this. While they play lip service to pro-life lobby, I am confident that they understand it would be suicide for the party to outlaw abortion. Now, here I’m making two assumptions that I cannot back with hard fact. First, it is well known that a significant majority (something like 60-75%) of Americans are in favor of having the abortion option, at least in the general sense – I’ll discuss certain exceptions below. I say that this is an unprovable assumption because it’s one of those things I’ve heard so many times that it’s just become something that “is well known.” It turns out that many things that are “well known” are actually quite false. This could be one, but I have no reason to believe it. As each year goes by, the citizenry becomes more pro-choice by the simple fact of inertia, i.e. don’t make big changes. Second, politicians… well, especially elected, majority politicians are generally a shrewd bunch politically. They can read the tea leaves better than any commenter such as myself, and unless they’re really ready to convince that large majority to change its mind, then they’re not going to push the issue.
Of course, there has been some pressure on abortion from Republican corners, but these have been at the fringe of the issue. Three cases come to mind: parental notification for girls under 18, partial-birth abortion [1], and pre-abortion counseling. Now, I have heard arguments on both sides of these, and I’m not going to rehash them here. I just want to point out that these regulations or suggestions are a far cry from outlawing all abortions. The left, however, sees these in one of two ways. Some vocal Democrats see any infringement of the right of abortion as an unacceptable attack on women’s rights, and that the woman’s right to choose is the only moral issue. Other Democrats or left-leaning moderates fear these not for what they actually are, but for the step they take down a perceived slippery slope toward the abolishment of abortion. This second group may see the validity of these Republican proposals, but they dare not embrace them for fear of more. [2]
I have stated that I don’t think that abortion is in any real danger, so let me make my meaning more explicit. In the course of development for a fetus, it goes through various stages on the path towards being “viable”. To be “viable” it must be able to have a reasonable chance of surviving outside the womb. This is mostly tied to lung development, and the threshold is around 26 to 30 weeks out of a 40 week term. In other words, it’s at about the end of the second trimester and heading into the third. I suspect that abortions before the line of viability are in no real danger of ever being outlawed barring some apocalyptic change to the body politic. [3]
Since I believe that Roe v. Wade primarily legalized first trimester abortions (though I confess my knowledge here is spotty), this is a broader acceptance. This belief that these pre-viable abortions will remain legal is not based on a fine reading of the Constitution or mind-meld with Congress. It’s just a feeling that the common man (and woman) on the street would accept it as a reasonable place to draw the line. This is not to say that all abortions after that should be forbidden, but I think support for them will drop off as the weeks ratchet up. If it were left to the states, I suspect Kansas would cut as close to 26 weeks as possible, requiring a doctor’s opinion on viability afterwards, while Vermont would push it as late as the feds allowed.
But this isn’t supposed to be about majority votes or the whims of the body politic, right? It’s supposed to be about a fundamental, Constitutionally guaranteed right. Well, that’s where we run into the problems. Depending on your judicial philosophy, it’s either there, or it’s not. I’m going to butcher some terms here, but this fight is between originalists and constructionists. (I’m pretty sure about the first term as valid, but not the second.) The originalists take a very limited reading of the Constitution, and try not to read too much into it, basing their legal rulings on the text of the Constitution or the law in question. The constructionists take a broader view, looking for such things as the intent of the founders or legal authors and discerning how they would view the case at hand. Neither philosophy is inherently pro-choice or pro-life, but they can come down with markedly different rulings across a variety of issues, from gay marriage to medical marijuana and eminent domain.
Now, personally, I lean more towards the originalist side of things. The role of the judiciary is to interpret the laws, not to summon the spirits of authors long-dead and discern their intent on an issue they had never imagined. Legal authors have given us their words to express their intent, and they chose those words with care. If those words now express an unpopular or repressive opinion, it is not the role of the judiciary to reinvent the law. That task falls to the legislative branch with some involvement of the executive.
Now, from an originalist point of view, the right to abortion is not in the Constitution. [4] This aspect is not under much debate. [5] The left knows that an originalist will not find the right to abortion in the Constitution because it just isn’t there in the text. That is why they are so opposed to the nomination of one, and Bush has made it clear that is the kind of judge he intends to nominate. The legal right to abortion was created by judicial fiat and can be removed by judicial fiat.
Does that mean that originalists are bad for the country and for the rights of its citizens? I think not. I think originalists are good because they increase the predictability of the interpretation of the law. With a court full of them, we would not have the stretching of the commerce clause in the recent medical marijuana case nor the sweeping Kelo ruling on eminent domain. They are not against protecting rights. They are against inventing rights, but they are also against inventing powers. Yes, I’m aware that there have been some good rulings to come out of the constructionist viewpoint, so it pays to have some of both, but I still lean towards the originalist viewpoint because it has fewer surprises.
So, where does that leave us Roe v. Wade, and where does it leave us on abortion? As I’ve stated before, the two are separate questions. As for Roe, an originalist court could very well overturn it or limit it or, with help from the constructionist end of the bench, reconstruct on a different legal foundation. Either way, in five or ten years, we may be talking about some other case as the fundamental legal ruling on abortion. But as for abortion, I don’t think it’s going away unless a pro-life construction court finds a penumbra to declare it illegal.
So, what should the left do? It could choose to fight the nomination to the last man, but that strategy has not helped them in the past. It cost Daschle his seat, and it has hurt the Democratic Senators in the polls as the filibuster fight played out this spring. Should they embrace the devil just to get a pro-choicer onto the bench? Some would argue that that is precisely what they are doing by hinting their support for Attorney General Gonzales, a pro-choice judge who just months ago was being labeled an advocate and enabler of torture by some of the same Democrats who now support him for the Supreme Court.[6]
No, in my opinion, the left should take a page from the right. If they start getting rulings they don’t like, then they should take it out the hands of the judiciary. In this case, that would mean amending the Constitution. After all, the founders recognized that their words were incapable of addressing all future issues, so they gave us a mechanism for updating those words. If my first assumption about the quiet pro-choice majority is correct, then there is support for this. Now, it’s unlikely they could enshrine partial-birth abortions into the Constitution, but they could still get something that covered the vast majority of cases. Thus, I suggest something like:
The rights of female citizens of the United States, who are of eighteen years of age or older, to abort a fetus prior to the twenty-seventh week of gestation shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State.[7]
Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
It won’t satisfy all, but I believe it will satisfy enough to pass. It won’t be easy, because the same politics that make for a Republican or divided Senate will make for a difficult passage in the various “red” states of the American heartland. On the other hand, not all Republicans are truly anti-choice in this area. I believe that most recognize it as practical reality in the land and want to move beyond it. Meanwhile, if there really is a pro-choice majority out there, then this vehicle would be an excellent vehicle for the Democrats to reach and energize those voters. Rather than being seen as the party committed to obstructing judicial confirmations, they could be seen as the party taking real steps towards securing the rights of women in this country.
Then we can return judicial confirmations to a review of qualifications rather than the abortion brawl they have become.[8] At least, that is, until gay marriage emanates from a penumbra of the Equal Protection clause. But that’s another blog entry.
I have just one final postscript to add in my support of the dual strategy of originalists and amendments. There are many legal rights that have been recognized by the courts over the years (privacy among them) and that various parties wish the courts to recognize. Relying on the courts this way is dangerous, because what they can grant they can take away. It is far better to establish these rights in the Constitution and then not let the courts get so adventuresome on either rights or powers.
- - - End Notes - - -
[1] I must confess that partial-birth abortions are one of the few things about this debate that gets my ire up. The procedure in itself seems to be a barbaric practice, and after witnessing the birth of my three children, I find it quite disturbing. But whether something disturbs me should not be a guide to rights in this country. What really gets my ire though, is that it is defended primarily as a procedure to protect the life of the mother. Well, I’ve seen the trauma of a feet-first delivery (something required in this procedure), and I’ve seen women getting over a C-section, and while the C-section recovery seems to be about 50% longer, it is rarely considered risky. I suppose what I’d really like to see is to put the doctors involved in front of an AMA review board to explain why a C-section of a viable fetus was too risky for the mother. I’m not a doctor nor a mind-reader, so I can’t pre-judge any such explanations, but I must confess that to my layman’s observations I suspect they would have a hard time making a convincing argument. At the same time, not everything that is wrong needs to be illegal, any more than making everything virtuous mandatory.
[2] The left is not alone in this kind of paranoia. Many on the right would support stem cell research, but they are worried that it will begin an ethical slide into something much different.
[3] Put the conspiracy theories down. A second Bush term does not count as an apocalyptic event.
[4] At the same time, I’m not so sure where the Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate abortion, though the commerce clause seems to fill in for just about anything these days.
[5] To be appallingly brief, the Constitutional support for abortion in Roe v. Wade was an extension of the right to privacy established in an earlier Supreme Court ruling, but even that “right to privacy” was tenuous in its Constitutional support. It was that ruling that gave us the oft-parodied phrase “penumbras and emanations”. So, I guess Roe v. Wade is an extension of an emanation from a penumbra. A true originalist would never stand for such reasoning and would stand ready to sweep the legs out from under Roe v. Wade.
[6] Apart from any feelings towards Gonzales’ performance in the Justice Department, I think it would be impractical for him to be on the Supreme Court. With various legal issues regarding POW and enemy combatant detention practices working their way through the courts, Gonzales would have to recuse himself if any of those got to the Supreme Court as they seem destined to do. Given that such a ruling will have profound impact on the foreign policy of the United States, I would not want to see the Supreme Court divided four to four.
[7] I was tempted to add a clause to the effect that the power to regulate abortions after the twenty-seventh week would be left to the States but denied to the United States. That would prevent a federal law limiting abortions to just those protected by the amendment and allow it to vary state by state as local desires dictated. However, I didn’t see that kind of language elsewhere in other amendments, so I held off.
[8] In a pragmatic, cynical matter, this would also give both parties the chance to muzzle certain loyal but troublesome elements in their ranks who have tried to make abortion the only issue in American politics.
Politics by Dan | Permalink | Comments (4)
July 04, 2005
Happy Fourth of July
I hope everyone's having a happy Fourth of July. Over at Renderosity, it's common to work up an appropriate holiday image, so I've done one for Independence Day. Mind you, over at Renderosity, an "appropriate" image implicitly requires a naked woman, so I obliged.
After all, Stars and Stripes, a naked woman, and an M16... what more could a redneck ask for on the Fourth of July?
Some of you who are more familiar with my photography may recognize this shot from a picture I took some time ago. My best wishes go out to those involved in its production.
Render by Dan | Permalink | Comments (2)
July 02, 2005
There are worse ways to go...
Here's a quickie I knocked out before bed, the life and death of a lollipop.
There Are Worse Ways To Go
That's what I get for listening to "Lollipop".
Render by Dan | Permalink | Comments (0)
July 01, 2005
And what do you want to do with me?
Like RoninJedi, I'm waiting on the computer, so I'm posting the same meme he did:
I want anyone and everyone who reads this to post in here something they'd like to do with me someday. Then post this in your journal to find out what I want to do with you.
Now get that evil smile off your face and say something nice. Or naughty. Naughty might be better.
Meme by Dan | Permalink | Comments (1)