And another undergraduate at Denial State

Rick Perry, apparently forgetting which party's nomination he's trying to win, cost himself a big-bucks supporter in SC. But he doesn't think it's a big deal, any more than Newt's crew believed the VA primary fiasco was anything more than a minor Pearl Harbor.

"It's unfortunate and disappointing. But at the end of the day we are marching on," Dawson said. "It won't have any impact." (Dawson is the unfortunate person who represents Perry in SC.)

Another Kilpatrick Scholarship Awarded

A while back, I was listing the various Michigan pols who were at risk of a period of free public housing, and I mentioned Mark Siljander, an outstanding example of our West Michigan public servants, who was accused of representing and lobbying for a terrorist organization. This week, he got his year-and-a-day in jail for doing it and (of course and as is customary,) lying about it afterwards.

One more note on snakebite as a global epidemic

As I said to our long-suffering friends at dinner, this weekend, here I go with another note about snakebite as a global disease, ignored by everybody except po' folks in the third world. The link is to a previous post of mine on this subject, and this one is just a quick update on one pair of numbers. Namely, the annual number of snakebite deaths officially stated to occur in Bangladesh (2000) and the actual likely number (46,000.)

The reason for this appalling difference is that those who report deaths in the underdeveloped world are typically urban doctors, and urban doctors in Bangladesh seldom see snakebite victims. However, rural snake charmers, who, according to a New Scientist article, treat bites by chanting mantras, see most of them, since the people most likely to get bitten are the rural folks, living way out in the countryside, and working in the fields. They a) can't easily get to any place with modern treatment, and b) are still partly convinced that the snake charmers are doing the right thing, anyway.

Found an even older post with a link to WHO's web site on snakebite.

Maybe - just maybe - a centrist fight?

So Romney stomped two out of the three weapons-grade lunatics in New Hampshire. It was disappointing that Ron Paul did as well as he did, but it was a GOP vote, after all, and they still have a large number of mentally deficient voters, apparently, just not deficient enough to back Newt and he who must not be named.

Paul is not giving up, saying "We're nibbling at his heels." This is a superb example of Paul-speak, by the way. The image of several mangy little vermin, squeaking and tumbling around while they take small bites out of the feet of ... well, a large, well-groomed vermin, is one I cherish. In fact ... yes, I do seem to remember something along these lines! Can it be? Is Ron Paul a Jefferson Starship fan?!?

You know, Tyrannosaurus Rex was destroyed before
By a furry little ball that crawled along
The primeval jungle floor
And he stole the eggs of the dinosaur
CLOSE YOUR EYES & CREATE THE SOUND
OPEN YOUR HANDS & REBUILD THE GROUND
We are egg snatchers ...
Mau Mau, Kantner, Slick, and Covington

That last line could just as easily be, We are heel-nibblers!

What the NH outcome suggests is that this year's Presidential campaign might be between two people, Obama and Romney, who, regardless of what other schemes they might have, are not absolutely committed to the destruction of the constitution and the total elimination of the middle class. (Whew. Lotta commas in there.) The poor are screwed, regardless, but that's a given, and has been for decades.

What will be really interesting, of course, is not the GOP circus, but the Democratic medicine show. To what extent will the Occupy-your-frontal-lobes crowd try to stage a repeat of the 1968 convention protest? The Charlotte, NC, Police Department doesn't have the reputation that the Chicago Cops do (or did -- I actually don't know dick about the Chicago PD now, forty-four years later) for outright mayhem, and they don't have Rahm Emmanuel as a Mayor, either. So maybe the outright suppression of dissent will be more ... discreet ... than it was the last time we had a bunch of crazy, mixed-up kids challenging authority and imagining the future and being violently non-violent and all that. I was talking earlier about Starship and the Blows Against the Empire album; consider this:

You know I remember the 23rd of November
To the abyss of Chicago you can see the barbed wire -
pigs around a lot of nothin' ...
Hijack, Slick

Now, the Republicans hold their convention first, this year, in Tampa. If I were a boot-licking, heel-nibbling lackey of the power elite, on the Democratic side, here's what I'd try to pull off: I'd broker a secret agreement with the GOP to crack down hard on any kind of protests at each of our conventions, in order to distance ourselves from extremists on either side ... and then, after they'd done so, I'd renege on the deal, leaving them holding the bag and showing up on TV, world wide, bashing heads and pepper-spraying people, while the Dems invite the Occupiers in for a nice cup of tea and loudly call for investigations of brutality. I'll bet they're dumb enough to go for it.

Does this sound in any way familiar?

"By A.D. 1150, in the latter part of a severe 15-year drought, the Richland farming complex was mostly abandoned, eliminating an integral part of Cahokia's agricultural base. At about the same time, a 20,000-log palisade was erected around Monks Mound and the Grand Plaza, indicating increased social unrest. During this time, people began exiting Cahokia and, by the end of the Stirling phase (A.D. 1200), Cahokia's population had decreased by about 50 percent and by A.D. 1350, Cahokia and much of the central Mississippi valley had been abandoned."

Please re-read that carefully; the reference is to a pre-contact municipality in Illinois in the twelfth through fourteenth centuries, not to Detroit forty or so years ago -- or this week, for that matter.

There's more work being done these days on Cahokia, mostly due to some salvage archaeology related to bridge construction. It was a bigger deal, in its day, then we thought. The link is to a summary piece, since you have to be a subscriber to Science to read the full text.

Bachmann Bachs Off

Michelle Bachmann, holder of the coveted "Not quite as misinformed as Sarah Palin" award, dropped out of the GOP race after being told by the citizens of her birthplace to sit down and shut up. See here for my ongoing scorecard.

Never realized ...

I recently purchased my semi-annual new pair of jeans. I was aware that it was necessary to specify waist and inseam, but I never knew that gender preference figured in the sizing of mass market clothing.

Voted most likely ...

... to be overlooked in the great scheme of historical commemoration, 2012 (coming right up, here -- a matter of a few hours) begins the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812. For a good summary of this clumsy little sideshow of the Napoleonic wars, see John Elting's Amateurs to Arms!. For an even more abbreviated and less readable summary, look it up in Wikipedia. And for a completely abbreviated list of 1812's main events, see below.

Date	Event	Approx Location	Notes
6/18/1812	Declaration of War	38 52 N 77 2 W	Pres. Madison was honked off about the Brits stopping our trade and hijacking seamen ("Hello, Sailor!")
7/12/1812	US invades Ontario, from Detroit	42 19 N 82 02 W	As noted below, this didn't work out all that well for us.
7/17/1812	Surrender of Ft. Mackinac	45 51 N 84 37 W	The Brits in Ontario got the memo about war first and staged a preemptive strike on Mackinac Island.
8/16/1812	Surrender of Detroit	42 19 N 82 02 W	The US invasion force in Ontario turned around, retreated to Detroit, and then surrendered. Most of the Northwest Territory -- certainly Michigan and the western Great Lakes -- were now back in British hands.
8/19/1812	USS Constitution vs HMS Guerriere	41 42 N 55 33 W	The first of a series of disheartening defeats suffered by the Royal Navy at the hands of US heavy frigates
10/13/1812	Queenston Heights	43 9 N 79 3 W	Another US attempt to invade Canada went very wrong, with a thorough defeat at Queenston Heights, near Niagara.
10/25/1812	USS United States vs HMS Macedonian	30 39 N 27 11 W	Another of our heavy frigates trounces a British ship of nominally (but not actually) equal force.
12/29/1812	USS Constitution vs HMS Java	13 21 S 31 21 W	Just barely in 1812, a third British Frigate is administered a whuppin' by the fledgling US Navy. The Constitution, of course, is the famous Old Ironsides (42 22 N 71 3 W).

Banned words

Lake Superior State University has published its annual list of "banned" words. It should be noted that the words are not really "banned," in any sense at all (for example in the sense that kids saying "naked chimichanga" in schools seems to be banned -- don't ask) except the opprobrium which appearing on the list brings to the utterer. Nevertheless, although using them won't get you an appearance on COPS, here they are, with my own take on the choice.

• Amazing: LSSU essentially caved to overwhelming pressure from around the English-speaking world to include this word, which people perceived as amazingly overused. I tend not to watch/read/listen to the media that were blamed for overusing it, so I have no comment.
  
• Baby bump: meaning the visible evidence of pregnancy. Vulgar, for sure, but again, not widely used in the flow of communication that reaches me, so I don't care one way or the other. I guess I would have banned other phrases beginning with "baby" first -- "baby momma," "baby daddy," etc. Even more vulgar, in my considered opinion.
  
• Shared sacrifice: huh? Who says that?
  
• Occupy: I agree completely. If I never hear it again, it'll be too soon.
  
• Blowback: apparently meaning, according to LSSU, push back or resistance. Technically, it means a simple form of automatic weapon action, in which the direct pressure backwards of the propellent explosion on an unlocked breach forces the gun to cycle and chamber a new round. I would not expect the folks at LSSU to know this.
  
• Man cave: Evidently, this is the new "den." I don't care if you don't.
  
• The new normal: Whatever the speaker thinks is inevitable, as in "Being a moron is the new normal." Well, OK, as long as I can continue to define myself as not normal, I don't really care what some imbecile thinks is the new one. I think I'd have preferred to just ban "The new *" -- essentially, any trend-spotting banality that claims something other than X is the new X. "Type II body armor is the new black," for example. If "the new" is banned, I pledge to edit this post and remove the list item above.
  
• Pet parent: I hadn't even heard that one. I prefer Linda's description of herself as a dogma, personally, although I guess it makes me a dogpop.
  
• Win the future: meaningless rubbish. Right up there with "How's that ... working out for you?" Ban it, by all means, for all the good it'll do. They'll just think of something worse.
  
• Trickeration: oh, come on. Never heard it, don't believe anyone actually says it. The claim is that it has something to do with football, which would explain why I'm not familiar with it, I guess.
  
• Ginormous: meaning "big." This I have heard, and I'm fine with banning it as long as "huge" goes with it. I use that one far too much, myself, and I'd be glad to have someone dope-slap me every time I do.
  
• Thank you in advance: for not whipping out an Uzi and shooting everyone in sight. For not molesting the rattlesnakes. For not voting Republican. Back in the Eighties, we were at a national park in Ireland, and they'd created or restored a traditional cottage, complete with thatched roof. Apparently, there'd been some vandalism (or just sheep nibbling at it,) since they had a very polite sign that read, "Kindly do not interfere with the thatch." I would support a global replace of the "Thanks in advance" phrase with something more along these lines, if I thought the average Joe Bagadonuts would have any idea what it meant.
  

Although I applaud LSSU's ongoing attempts to sweep out the linguistic stable floors from year to year, there are a few words or phrases I'd have nominated for banage ahead of the entries above. Here are mine.

• Making a noun, describing a process or attribute, by adding "age" to a verb, like I just did above when I said "banage." Again, if it makes the banned list, I promise to quit doing it.
  
• Poop: can we just stop? What changed to make this extremely vulgar word OK? It's not cute, it's not any more acceptable than some other euphemisms for feces or the act of defecation, and I'm really tired of hearing adults say it.
  
• Newt Gingrich: another highly vulgar term, but if we banned it, a large amount of useful mockage would go to waste. So I withdraw the nomination, at least for now.
  
• Tea Party: not the phrase, the group, a crew of feces-heads whose moronage is so amazing that if I were to win the future, I'd be tempted to demonstrate some blowback by confining them in a man cage.
  

Oh, enough for one night. Time to go think about making dinner.

A dangerous man

I don't often agree with the Manchester Union Leader, but this time, I couldn't have said it better myself. Come to think of it, I did. Over and over again.