Internal Monologue

I'm expecting a lot more of this as the right-wing loses its grip on political power throughout much of the country: George Tiller, the Wichita doctor who became a national lightning rod in the debate over abortion, was shot to death this morning inside the lobby of his Wichita church. Tiller, 67, was shot just after 10 a.m. at Reformation Lutheran Church at 7601 E. 13th, where he was a member of the congregation. Witnesses and a police source confirmed Tiller was the victim. Police said they are looking for white male who was driving a 1990s powder blue Ford Taurus with Kansas license plate 225 BAB. The vehicle is registered to an owner in Merriam, which is in the Kansas City area. Yglesias : Random murder of civilians in order to coerce political concessions doesn’t have a great track-record. But direct action terrorist violence against abortion providers has, I think, proven to be a fairly successful tactic. Every time you murder a doctor, you create a disincentive for other me...

Could be awesome . Could suck. Very curious.

Maybe we paid too much for our house : A record 12 percent of homeowners with a mortgage are behind on their payments or in foreclosure as the housing crisis spreads to borrowers with good credit. And the wave of foreclosures isn't expected to crest until the end of next year, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Thursday. The foreclosure rate on prime fixed-rate loans doubled in the last year, and now represents the largest share of new foreclosures. Nearly 6 percent of fixed-rate mortgages to borrowers with good credit were in the foreclosure process. At the same time, almost half of all adjustable-rate loans made to borrowers with shaky credit were past due or in foreclosure. The worst of the trouble continues to be centered in California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida, which accounted for 46 percent of new foreclosures in the country. There were no signs of improvement. Well, I know we paid a good price compared to other similar nearby houses, but that's no protection from s...

I want posters like this one to announce my next performance:

The nomination of Sonia Sotomayor has brought this issue to the forefront. Here's Paul Campos of Lawyers, Guns, & Money : On the more general point, I think the correct etiquette in these situations is for the non-native speaker of the language from which the name is derived to try and fail to pronounce the name as it's pronounced in the person's native language, and for the person to ignore the mispronounciation. That's what I do anyway (in both directions).

This video mentions: A male fetus masturbating in utero A woman who could achieve orgasm by having her eyebrow stroked Another who orgasmed when brushing her teeth Another who could think herself to orgasm in one minute Orgasms are a possible hiccup cure

Maniak, Internal Monologue's resident military hardware expert, estimates the yield on the recent North Korean nuclear test at about 2 kilotons. Update: Maniak has revised the estimate to 3.7 kilotons.

My composition on this instrument . Now, thanks to this wonderful little flash applet , you can be your own minimalist composer! It took me only a few minutes to "compose" the work you see above, and I am most pleased with the results. It reminds me of the music of Steve Reich . Sullivan quotes I Heart Chaos : This visual musical synthesizer by Andre Michelle is one of the most awesome things I've ever encountered anywhere. It's incredibly simple, effective and provides instant positive feedback in that almost nothing you do will produce an awful bit of music. I want my entire house plastered in something that does this. It also wants me to spend an entire weekend on drugs, just fucking around with this thing.

That door could use a paint job

This is from the link I just posted. I should get a better iPhone blogging tool.

http://www.mapthefallen.org/2009/05/for-past-two-years-ive-been-working-on.html [I sent this from my iPhone, so please excuse any excessive brevity or typographical errors.] --Zachary Drake

via Mad Latinist over email, who got it from a friend.

Why does the media act like anyone cares what the fuck Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich are saying?

I'm very happy our new house is in a walkable environment. This clip is an ad for the "new urbanism" movement. I hope it catches on, for both environmental and aesthetic reasons. If more areas were nice and walkable, the price of nice, walkable areas would be lower, and more people could live in them.

What if the UN human development index were applied to individual states? Well, you'd get this map . The correspondence between human development and voting Democratic in recent federal elections seems pretty high. Though who knows which way the causal arrows are pointing. UPDATE: There are some problems with this map, apparently. A better version here .

Here's something to applaud the Obama administration for doing: The Obama administration's new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting "a war on drugs," a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use. In his first interview since being confirmed to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske said Wednesday the bellicose analogy was a barrier to dealing with the nation's drug issues. "Regardless of how you try to explain to people it's a 'war on drugs' or a 'war on a product,' people see a war as a war on them," he said. "We're not at war with people in this country." I'd like it more if we weren't at war with people in other countries, either. But this is a good start. I really hope the tide is turning on the harsh criminalization of drugs.

Republican Strategist #1: Oh, here's a welcome bit of good news: The Republican Governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, will run for senator in 2010 ! He has high approval ratings from Republicans, Democrats, and Independents! When Crist announced his intention to run, Congressional Quarterly shifted their rating of this race from "tossup" to "leans Republican". This is great! What can we do to support him? Republican Strategist #2: I know! Let's get behind a right-wing challenger, Mark Rubio , and spark an ugly primary battle that will force Crist to tack to the right, damaging his standing with the Democrats and independents! That way, we can either replace our enormously popular candidate with one who is less popular, or at least damage Crist enough so that he'll be more vulnerable to a Democratic rival! He may still win, but we'll have to spend a lot more money and energy than we would otherwise have to! Republican Strategist #1: Sounds like a grea...

I am pleased to hear this : [May 7, 2009] WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama 's $3.55 trillion budget proposal, released on Thursday, eliminates spending for programs that teach U.S. schoolchildren sexual abstinence and shifts funds to programs aimed at reducing teenage pregnancy. The administration's $78.4 billion spending plan for the Department of Health and Human Services, which must be reviewed and approved by Congress, includes support for teen pregnancy prevention. "The program will fund models that stress the importance of abstinence while providing medically accurate and age-appropriate information to youth who have already become sexually active," the budget proposal said. That's why I voted for and supported this guy. You still got a lot of work to do, though, Obama. Internal Monologue is all up in your business!

This is actually Quinn hunting for Easter Eggs, but today it's Quinn looking for Mommy Sarah to wish her a Happy Mother's Day!

Quinn's fever is much less and we feel much better! [I sent this from my iPhone, so please excuse any excessive brevity or typographical errors.] --Zachary Drake

Photo of Connie Culp before being shot in the face with a shotgun, after, and after a facial transplant. More surgery will be required to remove the excess skin from the new face. Photo from Cleveland Clinic via Newsweek . I have to admit that my interest in this is probably more ghoulish than scientific. But it is absolutely amazing what can be done now. This reminds me of something I've heard said about author William Gibson (or maybe I invented it): He used to write science fiction novels about weird, fantastical futures. Now he writes contemporary thrillers set in the weird, fantastical present. Science fiction used to help us think about possible futures and the future impacts of technology on human beings. But now we need a literary genre just to help us deal with the implications of what's already happened. Which in turn reminds me of what Nietzsche's madman said about the death of God : This prodigious event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reach...

Via Silvia on Facebook , here's something I didn't know: current California law allows youth under 18 to be sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole. This is not done in countries outside the United States, and it seems to be one of those laws that is more about moral posturing than actually protecting society, delivering justice, or rehabilitating criminals. SB 399 is an attempt to reform that law and create a review process that would allow the possibility of reduction of sentences for those who committed crimes before they were 18 and who demonstrate maturity and change. It's coming in front of the appropriations committee on May 11th. Now would be a good time to exert what pressure you can on the California State Senate. You can start here to look for ideas . I emailed Loni Hancock, my State Senator.

Update: Obama pledges to change this policy in a May 5th handwritten letter to a soldier. Sent to you via Google Reader Obama Fires A Military Linguist It's the commander-in-chief's first persecution of a servicemember critical to national defense and intelligence. The man is Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and officer in the Army National Guard who is fluent in Arabic and just returned from Iraq. Obama is firing him because he's openly gay. And he has no plans to change that policy, despite a clear campaign commitment. [I sent this from my iPhone, so please excuse any excessive brevity or typo graphical errors.] --Zachary Drake

The seller agreed to lower the price. Not by as much as we were hoping for. But enough to make it make sense and be a good value and be competitive with comparable houses. Lots of work to do. ZOMG WE'RE BUYING A FRICKIN' HOUSE!!!!!!!!!!

School lunch in France : Here’s what students in one Paris school district ate for lunch last Tuesday: cucumbers with garlic and fine herbs; Basque chicken thigh with herbs, red and green bell peppers and olive oil; couscous; organic yogurt and an apple. For snack, they had organic bread, butter, hot chocolate and fruit. Like the Japanese (see the last Country Watch post), the French take school lunch seriously. The mid-day meal is supposed to teach students good manners, good taste and the elements of good nutrition. Recommendations from the French government assert that eating habits are shaped from a young age and that schools should ensure children make good food choices despite media influence and personal tendencies.

I've been seeing a number of arguments against life tenure for Supreme Court justices around the blogosphere. Here's a Wall Street Journal opinion piece back from 2005 on the subject. I tend to agree: lifetime appointments encourage the appointment of justices who are young, so you can "stack the deck" as long as possible. This is not a good incentive. A fixed term would also discourage the practice of justices hanging on too long, waiting for an administration they like, while their physical and mental capacities deteriorate.

From the New York Times : Today’s idea: Painting roofs white in the hot parts of the planet could reflect huge amounts of solar radiation back into space and offset greenhouse gas problems caused by the world’s cars. So calculate three California energy experts.

Sirota on OpenLeft : Here's what we know: - 12 Democrats ( listed here ) voted against allowing bankruptcy judges to compel banks to renegotiate mortgage terms so as to prevent homeowners from being foreclosed on and thrown out of their homes. - Bankruptcy judges currently have this "cramdown" power to renegotiate mortgage terms on vacation homes and investment properties. - Vacation homes and investment properties are disproportionately owned by very rich people. QUESTION 1: Out of the hundreds of professional "journalists" who work in Washington, can someone - anyone - please ask these 12 Democratic senators why they believe it is perfectly fine for bankruptcy judges to cram down mortgages for very rich people's vacation homes and investment properties, but not mortgages for regular people's homes? I wasn't harping on this enough. Not that this blog or some email I sent to a Senate office would have made a difference. But I feel bad for not bein...

Souter is retiring . Obama gets to nominate a Supreme Court Justice.

While looking for pictures of a recognizer from the movie Tron , I found this article . Some interesting trivia: lisberger wanted to correct a rumor that peter o'toole was to play sark. o'toole wanted to play tron! he said he interviewed o'toole in a hotel room and o'toole was jumping back and forth between two beds to prove he could do the part. That would have been awesome if Peter O'Toole had been in that movie. I think the dialogue was pretty lame, though, so I don't know if he could have overcome that. Here's another thing I didn't know: while discussing how they as actors were the first to do what is commonplace now, act on a blank stage with characters that aren't there, bruce mentioned that jeff was flynn. jeff was always playing the battlezone video game they had on set. lisberger added that jeff got so good at the game he took it places it's designers never intended. CGI was a lot harder back then: bill kroyer gave the following exam...