Silflay Hraka

What with one thing and another, I had let slide the series of Sid Says posts that I'd started with such enthusiasm last year. The wife would say that this was nothing more than typical, that I flit from interest to interest like a butterfly from flower to flower, or a fly from one pile of shit to another, more like, never staying with one thing. For two weeks she can't get me to shut up about the passion du jour, then I never speak of it again.

When I bring up the fact that the blog has been around for over two years now, she accuses me of keeping it alive just to annoy her.

She's probably more right than she knows.

So, anyway, the pace of the Siddall posts had slackened, though if anyone had asked I would have said it was due more to a lack of available material than dwindling enthusiasm. The only sources left for information on Siddall's life are in collections of papers located in out-of-state libraries--all of which want me to pay for access. I don't mind researching John M.--rather like it, in fact, but having to pay for the privilege slows down the process somewhat. It also cut into the sheer enjoyment of it all.

When I first started the series, I had nothing more than a vague feeling that the Siddall essays, and practically everything else over a certain age in my library, should be put on the web--not that they had any great value to me, but because I had the idea that they were bound to have value for someone, somewhere, at some point in time. To me it was a close equivalent to putting a message in a bottle and tossing it out to sea, not because I needed help, but because I wanted some stranger to have the thrill of finding it. Everyone wants to find a message in a bottle, don't they?

Everyone wants to, but no one expects to. Yet every now and then someone does. The thrill of finding a message in a bottle must be great indeed, but I wonder...Is it really a bigger thrill than knowing that someone has found one of yours?

Thank you very much for your comments and information on John Siddall, my great-great uncle (my grandmother's uncle, my great-grandfather's brother). Thanks to you I ordered and now have the best two of the three "Sid Says;" both my 88-year-old mother and I am enjoying his essays. I had made copies from the old American Mag in library stacks of many for my uncle, also a journalist. But the book is priceless. I had not known about the John Reed reference. Thanks again. I must read the Ida Tarbell biographies..have searched some for references.

There are relatively few Siddall descendants, but we are very proud of his life and legacy. Thank you for keeping them alive.

How could I not be deeply offended by the latest testimony in the Lynndie England Abu Ghraib prison hearings?

A soldier pointing at some guy's Johnson? Yawn.

A soldier holding a prisoner by a leash? Unfortunate, but I'll get over it.

The truth is much more horrible than I imagined. The testimony is clear. Thousands of miles from home, and in an unfamiliar land, Lynndie England was getting action.

There's Lynndie sneaking into another part of the prison late at night to get it on with another soldier. There's Lynndie skinny-dipping on a Virginia beach. There's Lynndie posing topless for photos. There's Lynndie involved in (yikes) "oral sodomy".

Let's take a look at Lynndie. You know the old scene where the girl thinks she's ugly, but her mom tells her she has "inner beauty?" Lynndie's mom probably used the words "inner beauty" at some time during her childhood. We can assume she hadn't heard about the oral sodomy at the time.

Lynndie does not possess traditional beauty. She's a troll.

On the scale of human beauty, she is roughly the female equivalent of this guy.

Maybe she's a little better. It's tough to say. Apples and oranges.

Back to the reason for my offense. I am not pretty, but I've got that guy beat. I am at least the male equivalent of Lynndie, but throughout my twenties I struck out about as many times a year as Sammy Sosa.

If the horizontal bop had been readily available to males of Lynndie's relative attractiveness, I'd have had action eight days a week. I don't think I would have participated in any oral sodomy, but it would have been nice if someone had offered.

The 98th edition of the Carnival of the Vanities is hosted by Seldom Sober this week.

If you'd like to host the Carnival, drop us a line. Information on how to join the Carnival can be found here. If you would like to be added to the Carnival announcement list, send an email to cotvanities-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

August 11th - The Smallest Minority
August 18th - Fringe
August 25th - Ego
September 1st - Blogo Slovo
September 8th - Food Basics
September 15th Silflay Hraka - The Two Year Anniversary
September 22nd - The Eleven Day Empire
September 29th - Last One Speaks
October 6th - Incite
October 13th - Conservative Dialysis
October 20th - The People's Republic of Seabrook
October 27th - The Twins Tell the Truth

All other dates are currently open for hosting. Also, be sure to check out the Carnival's offspring:

The Bharteeya Blog Mela
Bonfire of the Vanities
Carnival of the Capitalists
The Kissing Booth
Carnival of the Canucks
The BestOfMe Symphony
The Carnival of the Cats
Carnival of The Consumers
The Tangled Bank
The Carnival of The Liberated
The Christian Carnival

I'm the happiest girl in the the whole world!

And, as some of the subordinates of a man-of-war captain are apt to invoke his good wishes and mollify his conscience by making him friendly gifts, it would perhaps have been an excellent thing for him to adopt the plan pursued by the President of the United States, when he received a present of lions and Arabian chargers from the Sultan of Muscat. Being forbidden by his sovereign lords and masters, the imperial people, to accept of any gifts from foreign powers, the President sent them to an auctioneer, and the proceeds were deposited in the Treasury.--from White Jacket, by Herman Melville.

When they attend this year's memorial services for the victims of the 3rd anniversary of the September 11th attacks, I wonder if President Bush and his family will be wearing the some of the almost $130,000 dollars worth of fine jewelry they accepted from Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince in 2003? (login available at bugmenot)

While it's true that the Constitution (Article I, Section 9) prohibits anyone in the US Government from receiving a personal gift from a foreign head of state without the consent of Congress, the First Lady and daughters aren't members of the Government.

So the only thing preventing Laura, Jenna and Barbara from pocketing their blood-covered baubles is the type of moral sense Rudy Guiliani displayed when he told Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal to shove his $10 million dollar check where the sun doesn't shine. Since such an act isn't described in the above article, I can only assume that such a sense is not possessed by the Bush family, and that they accepted the Saudi gifts with all the alacrity of a nest of magpies pouncing upon some scraps of tin foil. Perhaps when W talks about "family values" what he really means to say is "family value," as in the price it takes to buy his.

Somebody should let Kim Jong IL know that the best way back into the good graces of Washington isn't through negotiations, it's via the open palms of the Bush administration. Why should they turn up their noses at his 30 pieces of silver, when they'll happily take those offerered by the equally despotic House of Saud?

Perhaps we're not the policeman of the world after all. Perhaps we're its bellhop instead. No wonder the French are pissed. Accepting money from despots is their main line of business, and now George Bush is crowding their territory.

"I've turned down your bedsheet, Monsiuer Aziz, and some of the staff who object to your presence in the Hotel U.S.A. have been removed from the premises to a free speech zone where they won't bother anyone. Would Monsiuer like a whore? I can have Miss America brought to your room, or perhaps a nice boy?"

Mind you, nothing would make me happier than to be proven wrong, and I'd like to think that if Kerry was President he would have the common sense to throw gifts from despots back in their faces, but I don't think either will happen.

Update: Edited for clarity.

Postscript: Thanks to reader Kevin M, a complete list of the 2003 gifts.

The Democratic National Convention is now over and the Republican National Convention will be here before you know it, and I have begun wondering what the point is of even having them. While watching bits and pieces of the DNC, I was struck by how these conventions do little to persuade voters to switch from the party they have already chosen. It is just like preaching to the choir. The minister stands before the congregation and tells them that people should believe in God and attend church……..which does little to improve church attendance or bring in new members.

I guess the point is to simply get exposure and encourage those already within your party to support your candidate and get out and vote, because surely the speeches don’t sway enough people to make it worthwhile. I caught myself several times during last week thinking, “I agree with that,” or “He is a good speaker,” while I’m sure Republicans sat in their homes thinking, “Jackass,” or “He is lying through his teeth” while watching the same presentation. The conventions are just glorified pep-rallies, and while I may watch your team celebrate, I sure as hell won’t pull for them just because they had a bigger bonfire and chanted cooler slogans.

In politics we often get into one party and never even look at another party, all-the-while telling ourselves that it is the members of the other party who are unwilling to look at their candidate in a critical manner. Those voters who really are undecided will most likely vote based on whatever “crisis” has occurred closest to election day. Perhaps Kerry will admit that he stole one of his purple hearts and people will vote against him. Or maybe a secret document will surface proving that Bush lied to the American public in order to lead us into war and the tide will sway in the other direction. As of today, I believe the election is close, and it could be determined by who demonstrates the greatest amount of damage control in the days leading up to the election.

For now I guess we will continue to have these conventions in the same manner as in recent years, even though I believe it would be more useful to have debates 4 nights in a row instead of a parade of speakers telling people how great their political party is. However, I wasn’t asked, so I guess I will just sit back and wait to see what cheers the Republicans will yell at their convention. I’m sure the congregation will love it, whatever the hell it is.

Speaking of the minivan--this is the minivan that's barely a year old, mind you, the minivan that managed to have two consecutive flats on two consecutive days on one tire last month, the minivan that the Father-in-Law backed into in his own driveway, leaving a couple of thousand dollars in damage in his wake, the minivan that had to have the muffler replaced less than a month after we bought it, you remember, that minivan?

It's being recalled.

There are special blessings that come with having two kids instead of one.

Take impromptu screaming contests in the back of the minivan, for instance. One hardly ever gets those with only one kid. But with two it's just a matter of time.

If a parent is extra lucky, lucky like me, for instance, their two will start said contest when the parent isn't actually in the minivan with them, causing the parent to stub the ever-loving flibbertyshit out of his toe when he rushes back from his one final check of the door locks to pull the dingoes off his children.

But that's only the lucky parents, of course, the parents who are fortunate to have not only that fillip of extra spice added to the whole experience but a whole 'nother--the joy of pulling off half a toenail later on, say, or the warm glow of appreciation engendered by a spouse's observation that some people are perhaps a little obsessive-compulsive when it comes to checking and rechecking the damn door locks.

As for the screaming contest itself...it's kind of hard to step on that kind of thing when the baby is bubbling over with mirth at the sight of his sister doing her best Janet Leigh impression.

Aside to the Grandparents: Of course we let her watch Psycho--as much as she wants, day after day after day. It's one of her favorite movies. She's so cute in her little chair, rocking back and forth, talking about how she wouldn't hurt a fly. We're thinking of getting her The Exorcist DVD for Christmas.

I'm not sure how it started. Possibly the boy gave an impatient yell when I went back in the house. He's gotten like that lately. When going bye-bye is mentioned, by gum bye-bye needs to happen PDQ. He will not stand for delays in the process. He has places to be.

What is it with you and my damn pants every time we go somewhere? It's all clear down there, dammit! We gotta hit the road! Time's a-wasting, you ponderous old coot!

Ngnat apparently volleyed the scream back to him, and they were off. He was entranced because he had happened upon a way to make his sister repeatedly do interesting and wonderful things, much as pressing a certain button on the computer again and again makes Daddy do interesting and wonderful things. She was entranced because he erupted into a truly astonishing series of hiccuping belly laughs every time she screamed back.

I was pretty sure they couldn't keep it up for the entire 10 minute drive to the grocery store, but as it turned out, I was wrong.

It's had not to think of the results of the latest Tyson fight as his just desserts, but there's no reason his bankruptcy planners should view his defeat as unalloyed negative.

With a bit of marketing, there's no reason a certain Mike Tyson defeat shouldn't be as financially lucrative as the certain Mike Tyson victories used to be. Surely there are a number of people that will shell out hard cash to Pay-per-View in hopes of seeing him humiliated over and over again by palookas and he would have reduced to paste in his heyday.

Update: Another contender!

For George Bush--not John Kerry.

Yes, it's only the Iowa Electronic Markets, not a poll--but then the Electronic Market has historically had a smaller error rate than most polls when it comes to predicting a political winner, so don't dismiss it out of hand. The results may change over time, so for the sake of reference I'm storing a copy of the current graph here.

If the market is right, then the weekend polls now being conducted shouldn't show much of a Kerry bounce no matter how hard they are spun when published on Monday, and Mickey Kaus will gleefully return to his predictions of Democratic panic.

I'll be interested in what William Saletan will have to say about it, given his five-star review of the Kerry acceptance speech. Will he

1.) Recant his counter-intuitive review of the speech.

2.) Blame the news media's inadequate coverage of the convention, or

3.) Resort to that hoary practice so beloved of the Left and blast the American people for their bovine-like stupidity?

I like Saletan, so I'll go with 2. From now until election day--and afterwards, should Kerry win--it will be an article of faith among the committed that the Thursday speech was a rhetorical homerun rather than the carb-free gruel it appeared to be to those outside the Kerry Kool-Aid drinking circle, so 1 is probably too much to expect. Choosing 3, on the other hand, would imply that I think Saletan is blindly prejudiced and intellectually unserious, and that would be rude, given that I don't know the man. Nor have I seen anything in his previous writings that would cause me to suspect Saletan of creeping Moore-ism.

Of course, there's always 4.) The Iowa electronic markets are wrong, and there is a post convention bounce for Kerry, in which case 1, 2, and 3 should be applied to me, not Willie.

Moo, I say. Moo.

Did William Saletan see a different Kerry speech than I did last night?

The power of the speech, reflected in a deafening series of ovations that consumed the FleetCenter tonight, came not from Kerry's biography or the themes he brought to the campaign two years ago. It came from his expression of widespread, pent-up outrage at the offenses of the Bush administration.

Now admittedly, he probably saw more of the speech than I did, as the Sainted Wife and I could only stomach more than a minute or two of it at a time before being driven off by the sheer woodenness of it all, but we kept returning, such was our dark fascination with what we considered to be a slow-moving train wreck. But in the parts we did watch I saw none of the "explosions" Saletan writes about. What I saw were shots of delegates dutifully clapping their hands and not much else. Certainly they weren't undergoing the ecstatic transports of Peronista-like passion that Saletan somehow detected.

For us, the most potent effect of Kerry's speech was in the instant nostalgia for Clinton it produced.

"Do you remember how we couldn't turn away when Clinton was on?" I asked her.

"Yea," she replied, wistfully. "Dammit! He's doing that thing with his hands again!"

Hands in. Hands out. Hands together. Hands out. One thumbed fist twist . Repeat ad nauseaum.

Clinton literally mesmerized us on Monday night (we weren't the only ones), and Kerry drove us away on Thursday. I don't doubt that he did the same to a million other households--if even that many were watching. If Kerry has any sense and Clinton actually does campaign for him, Kerry won't send Clinton into a state he plans to visit later. The letdown is just too much. The Clinton House of Wonders needs to follow the Kerry Cliché Burlesque, not the other way round.

As Nick Gillespie in Reason said, It may well be true that, as a number of pundits have claimed, Kerry gave the best goddamned speech of his career last night. But that's a little like saying Yoko Ono's latest CD is her best-ever: It may well be technically true, but so what?

So why does Saletan so obviously think Kerry hit it out of the park? Well, check out who else thought it was a great speech.

What matters in a speech like this is the gestalt of it... and the gestalt of it was indeed 5 stars, QT ... "my guy" (well, okay, Teresa's guy :) did us all wonderfully well tonight with such uplifting vision of social and moral purpose, turning our backs decidedly on the dark intrigues of fear and backroom corruption -- with his well-toned checkmarks against the Halliburton and Enron tribe -- but only as pinpointed counterings which dramatized JUST how much Kerry is the leader of hope and help and vision and honor.

I'm one thrilled supporter!

Kerryisms aside, Saletan's reaction obviously puts him in the Kerry supporter crowd. The only people who think his speech last night rose above the quality of something you scrape off the bottom of your shoe are those who are so used to the aroma around it that they are able to speak at length about the nuances within. It's like listening to some drunk in a bar preach on the subtleties of hop and malt he's detected in his Rock Green Light.

Oh, hell no!!! George is once again trying to replace Yankee stadium, a kick he has been on for a number of years now. I realize that the place could use some upgrades, and should be modernized in various ways, but replacing it just seems wrong. It would be like replacing the Alamo, or building a new White House. Some things should be preserved and Yankee Stadium is one of them. What would their new slogan be? "The house across the street from the house that Ruth built?" George, be thankful that you own the richest team in professional sports. Be thankful that you are the envy of all the other owners in the league. Be thankful that you are rich and people put up with your stupid comments. But damn sure leave well-enough alone. Improve the park you have, but please don't replace it.

The problem with this proposal is that George and others are claiming they will pay for it all, which has to be music to the city's ears. Well, at least they will be staying in the Bronx. The Manhattan Bombers just didn't have the same ring to it.

Two soldiers clad in green stood on either side of a wooden door in the lowest level of a prison in Baghdad. Not Abu Ghraib, but one darker, more secure and above all, more secret. Still they stood, still as statues, as screams, horrible screams, issued forth from the cell on the side of the door.

"Aieeeeee! .....Ahh! Mother of Allah!.....Please, O Lord, I beg of theeee!"

Finally, one of the soldiers could stand it no longer.

He set his rifle against the wall and banged heavily on the wooden door separating himself from the prisoner within. "Quiet in there, or I'll come in and give you something to moan about, shitbag."

An exhausted, teary voice replied from somewhere on the other side. "I'm in pain, asslamb of the infidels!"

"I don't care if beetles are devouring your eyeballs from the inside out. One more noise and I'll go West Virginian on your ass!"

In the summer a young child's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of....giant giraffe balls.
(lv dustbury)

Update: More apologies required--to Sir Mix-a-Lot

Geoffrey's Rap

I've got big balls and I can not lie
You other mammals can't deny
That when a 'raffe walks by with an rutty nutty brace
of round things in your face
You get stung
Wanna hide your head
Cuz you notice that my front is stuffed
Full in the jeans I'm wearing
You're hooked and you can't stop staring
Oh, baby you wanna get with me
And see where I micture-
Rate. I done tried to warn ye
But with those balls I got
Ooh, baby, you so horny
Ooh, rub all of that smooth skin
You say you want my vas deferens
Well use me, use me, cuz you ain't that average groupy

Estupido addresses a gathering of Pennsylvanians and tells them, "We need to turn back some of the creeping, un-Pennsylvanian and sometimes un-American traits that are coming into some of our politics."

Colin McNickle, a reporter from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, asks Stupide what she meant by the term "un-American". In a brilliant riposte which totally ignores the fact that her speech and the current interview are being recorded, Stupido replies, "I didn't say that." McNickle, perhaps astonished by such a pitiful and obvious lie, rephrases the question a few more times, only to receive the same answer. Estupido takes a moment to confer with The Wizard, played in this piece by Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell. Rendell is unable to offer Estupido a brain, and when she returns to McNickle moments later, she repeats her lie, and tells him to "shove it."

(Quick aside: Calling someone or something "un-American" is inflammatory. Ever since old Joe McCarthy's time, when you toss around the phrase "un-American", them's fightin' words. If you're going to use the term for political gain, you should be prepared to defend it, or at least have the spine to admit you said it.)

The dominant media decides that something newsworthy happened here. It isn't Teresa Heinz Kerry lying for political gain. It's Teresa Heinz Kerry telling some non-entity reporter to "shove it."

The candidate himself is asked to weigh in, not on the prevarication in the name of his candidacy, but on the "shove it" issue. "I think my wife speaks her mind appropriately," he dodges.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, who slept her way to the top at least one man quicker than Heinz Kerry, leapt to her defense. "A lot of Americans are going to say, `Good for you, you go, girl,' and that's certainly how I feel about it."

And that's it.

The combined efforts of two truly accomplished liars and a media willing to obfuscate the real issue are enough to make a story go away.

Don't worry about Estupido, though. She'll be back. Certainement. Certamente. For sure.

Now that I have children, attending concerts continues to slide down my list of priorities. I either don't want to have to go to the trouble of lining up child care, or I am not sure that a particular band is worth the $65 it now costs to attend many shows. But this week the God's of rock and roll must have smiled on me, for I was able to attend my first concert in over a year. Late last week I realized that Kiss was coming in concert to the Alltel Pavilion in Raleigh (with Poison and some other band) opening up for them. I had seen Kiss once before, but that was over a decade ago, when they were not wearing their makeup. It was kind of like seeing the Lone Ranger without his mask, or Pamela Anderson without her fake boobs. It was okay, but it was not how it was supposed to be.

I saw that they were coming, so I gingerly mentioned this fact to my wife and said, "Would you like to go?" The look on her face told me much more than her words ever could. I have dragged the wife to many a concert that she probably would not have seen on her own, and she appears to go willingly, but this time she obviously was not going to leap at the opportunity. However, she did reply, "I don't mind if you go." All of the married men with children will appreciate my reaction, which was "Sweeeeeeeeeet!!!" A night out without any guilt. I had to seize the chance.

My next mission was to find someone to go with me, and that was a very short list. There are only a few people I would like to go to a concert with, and fewer who actually like the same music I do. So, I started my search. I was quickly greeted with a, "Oh, hell no," from Kevin, a reader of this site and longtime friend to me, Bigwig and Keehar. I also heard from Bigwig who suddenly was quick to mention work he MUST complete. Following his no was a very sarcastic IM which simply read, "I'm so very, very sorry." I sent out a few other feelers, one to Clover (another reader and friend) who mentioned work commitments as well, when it suddenly dawned on me. I knew who would go with me, if I could just get in touch with him.

I emailed Mason (another friend and reader) who is the only other person with whom seems to like the same kind of music I do. Yes, quickly moving towards our 40's, we still enjoy the "Heavy Metal" music of the 80's. I heard back from him within minutes, and within the hour he had purchased his ticket and we had made plans to meet. Unfortunately, I had bought my ticket a few days earlier and only paid just over $20 for it. I told him this so he went to buy his ticket and was forced to pay over $30 (I must have logged on during a special or something). Nevertheless, I had found someone to go with me, someone who wouldn't constantly say, "Why did I agree to this?" to me during the show.

I picked Mason up and we headed to the show. The first thing that struck us was a big, blinking sign in the parking lot which read, "NO ALCOHOL ALLOWED IN LOT." WTF??? Isn't this a rock show? A concert without beer is like peanut butter without jelly, Hall without Oates, or Siegfried without Roy. It just isn't right. Would they put this same sign up at a Buffett concert? Surely not. We still drank a couple just out of spite and headed in the gates. Some band we never heard of was opening up, so we took our time finding our seats. It wasn't long before Poison played and then it finally got dark.

After a little while, and after a few rednecks were able to shout, "Freebird" at the top of their lungs, the lights went black and a familiar voice could be heard saying, "Raleigh, you wanted the best and you got the best. The hottest band in the world......KISS!!!" For those of you who hate rock, and especially Kiss, I realize this doesn't mean a thing, but for us, it was the reason we dropped our $20 (and one of us $30).

The show was great, but there were a few things we decided. First, Paul Stanley definitely sings better than Gene Simmons. Secondly, really old people (I mean really old) go to Kiss concerts. One lady had very gray hair, and looked older than my grandparents (they are dead) and was wearing a black t-shirt (what is up with all rock shirts having to be black??) with the faces of the Kiss members on it. It was odd. Finally, we decided that we will not be too shocked to learn, years from now, that Paul Stanley is gay. He plays the "I'm a lover" card a little too much if you know what I mean.

The show was great, and with the exception of one song, the music was great as well. Still, it is weird to see men in their 50's dancing around and acting like they can still get the chicks at this age, like they could 30 years ago. For me, this means that my attendance at rock concerts may have to stop in the next 10 years before kids start pointing at me and saying, "Old people really shouldn't dance." That time is coming, I know it, but at least it didn't get here before this concert.

Got the following from a university backdoor into the ScienceNOW paid subscription site, so there's no direct link to the story, but I thought someone besides myself would find this interesting.

Two articles published this month in the Journal of Economic Perspectives suggest that betting markets can out-forecast the polls. In one, Paul Rhode and Koleman Strumpf* of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, relate that from 1884 to 1940, when election wagering was wildly popular, the betting favorite won in every year but 1916, when Woodrow Wilson beat Charles Evans Hughes with a last-minute upset in California. After 1940, because polls were perceived as more scientific, the gambling markets faded from public consciousness, says Strumpf.

But the current betting markets--led by Web sites such as www.intrade.com, tradesports.com, and fairbet.com--may outperform opinion polls. In the last four presidential elections, according to a paper by Justin Wolfers of the University of Pennsylvania and Eric Zitzewitz of Stanford University, the University of Iowa's Iowa Electronic Market has averaged an error margin of ±1.5% in the week before the vote, compared with ±2.1% for the Gallup polls. More recently, traders picked John Edwards as John Kerry's running mate 2 months before Kerry did.

Of the three sites listed above, I can only find election data at Tradesports and Intrade.com, and neither show enough information for me to see which candidate the market is predicting will win at the moment--though this graph of Bush's price shows a decline in his relative value. There are also graphs showing the likelihood of each winning the popular vote--though we know from 2003 that doesn't mean that the candidate will also win the election. They also seem to be brand new markets, so their predictive value is low, but for what it's worth Kerry's chances are commanding a higher price than Bush's.

Caveat: Those markets are so new that a couple of trades may render the above information incorrect by the time you see this. Treat it as a description of the markets in their infancy.

However, Bush partisans can take heart from the also mentioned Iowa Electronic Markets 2004 US Presidential Election Winner Takes All Market, which gives Bush a slightly higher price than Kerry at the moment.

They all seem like something worth an obsessive daily check or two on my part. Surely the information displayed is at least as valuable as what I get from Rasmussen.

*Yes, that Koleman Strumpf

Over the past two days I've been participating in an effort to upgrade our Blackboard software from version 6.0 to version 6.1. I say "participating" because any upgrade of Blackboard is a massive effort, not to be undertaken by any team that is small in number or faint of heart. Our team is composed of two sysadmins, two testers, and one dba. Frankly, we could use more testers.

This is, at least so far, our second successful migration of Blackboard in just under a year. That's out of four attempts. The Blackboard software and tech support being what it is, we basically have to suffer through a major migration failure in order to learn enough to achieve a successful one later on.

Aside: A while back, during a teleconference, a Blackboard tech support guy once warned me that a server configuration we wished to try was "unsupported." I asked him how exactly we would be able to tell the difference.

FoH skippy the bush kangaroo has achieved his 15 seconds of fame--in Internet time, which is faster than real time, as I can well attest--thanks to a mention on CNN.

The 97th edition of the Carnival of the Vanities is hosted by Jeff Doolittle this week.

If you'd like to host the Carnival, drop us a line. Information on how to join the Carnival can be found here. If you would like to be added to the Carnival announcement list, send an email to cotvanities-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

August 4th - Seldom Sober
August 11th - The Smallest Minority
August 18th - Fringe
August 25th - Ego
September 1st - Blogo Slovo
September 8th - Food Basics
September 15th Silflay Hraka - The Two Year Anniversary
September 22nd - The Eleven Day Empire
September 29th - Last One Speaks
October 6th - Incite
October 13th - Conservative Dialysis
October 20th - Open!
October 27th - The Twins Tell the Truth

All other dates are currently open for hosting. Also, be sure to check out the Carnival's offspring:

The Bharteeya Blog Mela
Bonfire of the Vanities
Carnival of the Capitalists
The Kissing Booth
Carnival of the Canucks
The BestOfMe Symphony
The Carnival of the Cats
Carnival of The Consumers
The Tangled Bank
The Carnival of The Liberated
The Christian Carnival

Now here's a hell of an idea for a blog--surf p2p networks, looking for secret/private documents, then post what you find to the web.

I remember typing "credit card" into a Kazaa Lite search running on the mother-in-law's desktop a year or so ago. What came back was just scary.

Scotty began whining practically as soon as the SW had gotten him out of his crib and changed him this morning. He yelled as she carried him down the stairs to breakfast. He smacked his morning egg and Froot Loops around with an irritated air, and voiced severe displeasure with the choice of juices available to him.

Once what I'd have to label as one of the least pleasurable breakfasts of 2004 was finally over SW wiped Scotty down and plopped him on the floor in front of his train set. Normally this is a panacea for all sorts of complaints, but not today. The boy sat there and bitched, then stood up and bitched.

Thunderclouds were gathering about the temples of the wife, and I started sucking down the last of my coffee, eager to depart before the storm broke about me. I wasn't doing anything wrong, mind you, at least nothing more wrong than is normally achieved by the simple fact of my existence on the planet as a married male, but what's she going to do, yell at the boy for his non-specific ennui?

Transference, the psychologists call it. As married men progress through life, little poison darts of transference come flying through the ether at the most unexpected times, jabbing deep into the most sensitive portions of our fundament. As a consequence, we're a jumpy lot. Certainly my fight or flight response was telling me to jump up and get the hell out of there.

The still yelling Scotty took two steps and fell over. He struggled up, took two more steps, and fell over again, like he'd lost all sense of balance.

That's when we noticed, finally, the odd state of his pajama shorts. One leg hole had no legs. The other had two. No wonder the poor kid was bitching.

The thunderclouds vanished, taking my flight instinct with them, and we re-arranged the boy, inserting the proper number of legs into the proper number of leg holes.

As I left he was happily toddling around the living room, free at last.