Useless trivia for the day

We all know that in America, we drive on the right and in Britain they drive on the left. But did you know the British Indian Ocean Territory, including Diego Garcia, where the US and UK run a joint military facility, drives on the right while the U.S. Virgin Islands drive on the left?

The stuff you learn from Wikipedia.

Etiquette question for open discussion

Last night I was at my favorite haunt, the College Perk Coffeehouse. [By the way, if you stop by, try their peach and flowers unsweetened iced tea, it is quite good.]

Anyway, I went with my friend Caroline, and it happened to be poetry slam night. Much of the poetry was gawdawful and was all this junk about inner angst and such about lost love and all that what not. So I was inspired to write some faux anger poem, as it were, about how these hippies should shut up their whining and actually write poetry about stuff we care about, like hating the crappy commute to work, the drudgeries of a work day, stuff like that. Get out of this self-important exploring the mysteries of the universe and the human soul mode and deal with the nitty gritty of life.

But I thought delivering that might be deemed as offending my audience, although the artsiest among them might say, "Nah, he doesn't really feel that way, he's just adopting this persona to express the view of many who don't understand poetry slams. So it's a clever use of irony and juxtaposition, and blah blah blah."

So would it have been rude to in essence insult my audience via my poem, or is the nature of poetry slams such that the topic matters rendering can and should be biting and cutting and edgy and sometimes offensive?

I personally think the latter is or should be the case, within reason.

Practical, detail-oriented reporting

University of Maryland Diamondback reporter Justin Fenton gives a helpful heads-up to interested Maryland readers with, um, team spirit who wish to see if that cutie from chem lab is in fact the centerfold.

You've heard that story before, the one about the average girl next door - a cheerleader, or perhaps a Catholic schoolgirl who grows up with dreams of appearing in Playboy, and ends up shedding her clothes to help pay the tuition bills.

Here it is again.

Sophomore Yen Hoang is a 19-year-old bisexual biology major who went to an all-girls school in Bowie.

Junior Emily Hamner, a 21-year-old government and politics major, is a former cheerleader with bleach-blonde hair who hails from the small town of Madison, Conn.

Same story, new girls.

...

Over the course of the six-page spread, Hoang appears fully nude on page 136 with a silver belt wrapped around her stomach; Hamner, wearing black lingerie with her breasts exposed, is on page 138; and "Vanessa King" and "McKenzie Jolie" appear back to back with cut off biker clothes on page 132.

Just waiting for the spate of angry e-mails to the Diamondback, mostly, of course, coming from hairy-armpitted feminists. If and when the really, really moronic ones get published, I'll be sure to post it.

Everybody and their sister is blogging about Dan Rather

And I've been AWOL on it. Oh well, I'll probably get around to it a bit later today, especially since Bob Dole has weighed in on it. When the second-most infamous Republican moderate (the first being John McCain) comes out guns blazing about the liberal media, you know it's over.

In other news, I've determined that DC area traffic is out to get me. Today, when I had a good early start on the day, traffic conspired to make me late to work. Seriously. I got my morning coffee at the College Perk Coffeehouse in College Park, Maryland, and had already obtained my orange juice and Washington Post. The time was 8:12 a.m. ET and I was making good time. If traffic cooperated, I'd be at work by 8:48 at the earliest, about 9:02 at the latest. But no, traffic had to be backed up the moment I got onto the BW Parkway. [I don't take the Beltway since the traffic tie-ups at the Wilson Bridge are a daily occurrence, whereas BW Parkway traffic has better odds.]

Oh well.

If proved guilty, 64-year old alleged deserter Sergeant Robert Jenkins...

...deserves the death penalty. True, the maximum he now faces is life, which is a shame.

Call me a hardass if you will, but 40 years ago, he knew damn well what he was doing when defecting to North Korea, a country at which were were then, and still are at war (the cessation of hostilities on the Korean peninsula in 1953 did not end the de facto war, it just stopped hostilities between the combatants). When a soldier deserts his post in a war zone and defects to the enemy, he becomes a traitor and deserves the ultimate punishment.

The fact that Sgt. Jenkins has aged considerably and is quite feebler and frailer than in his youth is of no consequence, particularly if the following are true, as reported in the Boston Globe:

Jenkins is charged with deserting his unit along the demilitarized zone in January 1965 and defecting to the North, where he lived for 39 years. He is one of four suspected American deserters the Pentagon had confirmed were in the North. Two have since reportedly died.

He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Major John Amberg, a Zama spokesman, said Jenkins is also charged with two counts of encouraging disloyalty, one of aiding the enemy, and two of soliciting others to desert.

While in North Korea, he made propaganda broadcasts, played devilish Americans in anti-US films, and taught English at a school for spies. Suspicions have been raised that he might also have been involved in the brutal interrogations of US sailors captured in the 1968 USS Pueblo incident.

Don't get me wrong. While the system should be able to charge him with the death penalty, I'd probably be okay with a presidential commutation of sentence to life in prison, or perhaps under the circumstances, a term of 10-15 years. The dictates of justice call for punishing the crime and sending a strong signal of deterrance to would-be deserters in the future in our military. The interests of mercy, however, would allow for presidential clemency.

In an ongoing war on terror it is woefully weak-willed to show an unwillingness to harshly punish desertion, especially when it is accompanied by the freely-willed defection to an enemy of the United States. Congress should, but probably won't work to correct this error in the military justice system.

I close, however, on this caveat. Should the evidence prove that Jenkins was kidnapped and brainwashed, let's say, and he is acquitted of the charges against him, then justice has been done and he should go and live the rest of his days in peace. I'm fairly confident a full and fair rendering of the case will prove the exact opposite however. Hopefully the members of the court martial will be fully prepared to do the hard but necessary duty of meting out the strongest punishment possible, and with it, the strongest message possible: growing old during your tenure as a fugitive from justice does not in and of itself excuse you from the hefty consequences of your misdeeds.

###

Let's get this straight

BOTH the Bush and Kerry campaigns have said that the American people will be less safe if the other wins the election. It's just that Dick Cheney (arguably) said so in more direct terms the other day.

John Kerry has said the President's leadership has encouraged more terrorism. The logical conclusion of expanded terrorism encouraged and aided by a Bush presidency is that the ratification of Bush policies by reelecting him will continue to encourage and aid terrorism, terrorism which will inevitably result in more deaths and injuries to American military and civilians, both abroad and at home. In other words, we'll be sorry if we don't get rid of Bush and put Kerry in office, who will stop encouraging terrorism by reversing Bush's policies.

Dick Cheney argued, in essence, that John Kerry's strident message and policy proposals will send a strong signal of weakness to terrorists and signal a lack of resolve to combat terrorism as strongly as we have since September 11th 2004. Cheney's point is certainly arguable and should be debated and if considered wrong, refuted, not outright denounced.

The fact of the matter is that terrorists see a huge gulf between George W. Bush's decisive action against terrorism and against recalcitrant secular Islamic dictators, whereas John Kerry is seen as a man chained and encumbered by a need to compromise to the point of reaching pan-European consensus on the national security interests of the United States of America.

So if you're a terrorist, who do you prefer for commander-in-chief of your number one avowed enemy: a man who has withstood domestic political pressure to keep the heat on both Islamic terrorists and states which may sponsor them, or a man with a very left-wing foreign policy history, who opposed the first Gulf War, has been a knee-jerk critic of the second, and is very fond of the more pacifist multilateral foreign policy of the United Nations?

That, I think, is the real heart of the argument in an ongoing war on terrorism. It's not so much whom Europeans love and respect, it's whom our enemies fear. I fail to see much that terrorists will fear from John Kerry.

Shepherd's Pie Classic: A look back at classic posts

Unlike my liberal blue-stater type friends, I have seen and blogged about (click links for reviews) both controversial movies of 2004: Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Passion of the Christ (recently released to DVD). I also blogged about the Vagina Monologues, which I saw in February, produced by students at Frostburg State University. See, I'm the kind of guy who believes in judging a work of art on its merits, rather than believing the carping of the madding crowds.

So the point of this post, besides pointing you back to my previous reviews, is challenge my ostensibly open-minded liberal friends who refused to see The Passion but flocked to F-9/11 to see the former on DVD, renting it from Blockbuster or such.

The gauntlet hath been thrown.

"Ken, blog more about your personal life"

I hear that a lot, but I don't usually follow such advice. I don't want to bore you all with my personal life. Additionally, I don't want this blog to be too revealing about the real me. That's something I want to come out through people knowing me directly. But that said, I'll give away some personal stuff. It won't be too juicy.

Recently my girlfriend and I broke up. It was pretty much mutual, but she brought up the idea. Truth be told, we had sorta broken up a few times before and there were moments of frustration in which I felt that it would've been prudent to break it off with her. But I was committed to sticking it out and accomdating what I thought were just her eccentricities and personal issues regarding relationships. She had a very bad breakup a few years prior, most of the relationships she knows are dysfunctional, etc.

That said, I'm realizing now that not only was she not as open with me as I'd have liked, I wasn't as communicative about my feelings as I should have been.

Yeah, see, this is getting boring already. So why does this matter to you? I dunno. Just some observations:

1) When you're in a relationship, by 1.5 or 2 months into it, if you feel there's a chemistry between you and you share similar values, plunge yourself heart first into it and don't hold anything back.

2) Always communicate what's on your mind and heart. Set apart one day each week or two to expressly talk about things that are concerning you, even if, or especially if, they are tiny character traits or idiosyncracies that kinda drive you a little nuts or run contrary to what you expect or are used to from the other person from past relationships.

3) Have resolved or resolve to resolve any hangups about past failed relationships, especially if you suspect you still have feelings for an ex. And be honest with your current significant other that you suspect these feelings are there, and that you have to deal with them, and then decide the course that's best for your relationship in the meantime as you resolve those past issues.

Anyway, that's about it for that. The ex and I are friends and are resolved to remain friends despite the initial social awkwardness and discomfort. It's not that bad though, except when other parties remark at how "cute you are together" or how you're a "cute couple." It's a pain when everyone else seems to agree but the person you were dating.

Oh well.

New York Yankees to Hurricane Frances victims: Drop Dead

If there were an entry for "asshat" in Webster's dictionary, rest assured Yankees President Randy Levine should be the cardinal or secondary definition thereof. Yes, even before John Kerry.

In their long history, the Yankees have endured more than their share of craziness, but yesterday's events were unique.

The Yankees arrived at the Stadium by noon for a scheduled 3 p.m. doubleheader. But only one game against the Devil Rays was played, and the Yankees cried foul. They want a forfeited win.

That won't happen, according to Bob DuPuy, baseball's president and COO. "The commissioner intends to reschedule the game," he said, adding that it will be done as soon as possible.

But the Yankees argued that Major League Baseball should at least put off the game until Oct. 4, the day after the regular season is to end, and investigate why the Devil Rays did not arrive at Yankee Stadium until about 6 p.m. yesterday.

"Treat this as you would any other baseball team," Yankees president Randy Levine said. "Look at the facts. The Yankees are the innocent victims who tried to accommodate everyone and should not be prejudiced in any way by the events."

The Yankees believe the Devil Rays ignored Major League Baseball's request to leave Florida by Saturday afternoon, before Hurricane Frances was scheduled to hit the Tampa area. DuPuy confirmed that request was made, but Devil Rays general manager Chuck LaMar said his team's plan always was to leave after the storm.

"We made the choice to stay in Tampa Bay with our families," LaMar said. "It's the right choice. I know it's caused some problems with Major League Baseball and with the doubleheader. But we'd make the same choice right now."

Someone slap the shit out of me if I ever get this pretentious

I transcribed this from tonight's abbreviated edition of NewsNight with Aaron Brown, which ran from 11:30 to midnight, immediately following analysis by CNN anchors on President Bush's acceptance speech.

Dowd, among other things, sort of psychoanalyzed President Bush, wondering at why he didn't schedule a speaking slot for his father, the 41st and most recent former Republican President of the United States. Dowd also said, and I kid you not, that Zell Miller was a master stroke for convention planners because he made Cheney look better by comparison. In Dowd's exact words, Cheney "seemed sort of like a crazy person" but was made to look sane after following Miller.

In another line which she probably practiced all evening and was dying to give, she mused that, "Lee Atwater somewhere is looking up or down or wherever he's from and smiling."

Ha, ha, I get it, Lee Atwater is roasting in hell, like all Republicans should. Very clever, Maureen.

But the most arrogant, made-me-wanna-slap-the-shit-out-of-her line is in bold below:

CNN
NewsNight/special GOP convention coverage
2 September 2004

~11:52 p.m. EDT

Aaron Brown: "This is the final question. What is it about Mister Bush that sort of more than anything seems to get you nuts?"

Maureen Dowd, New York Times columnist: "Um, oh, they don't get me, the Bushes are the ones who keep talking about The New York Times, it's quite flattering, although, at least the father reads the Times before he critiques it, like the son did tonight."

Brown: "He obviously, I mean, you write about him a lot, you don't write about him kindly, what is it, what, what's going on there?"

Dowd: "I always tweak power, Aaron, whoever's in power."

That's great, Mo. You get paid by a very liberal paper to write very liberal screeds against conservatives you hate. But please don't insult our intelligence by making yourself out to be some great champion of truth, justice, and the American way by "tweaking" power. It so utterly haughty and contemptible and snooty sounding, and well, so, so New York Times, I suppose.