11.28.06
Be careful whom you hire
A pregnant woman in this Dallas suburb [Allen, TX] came home to find a strange man in her bedroom with a frightening story: He warned her that he had been hired by her husband to kill her.
“Your husband wants you murdered,” the man told Roxane Sterling, according to police reports. He then told the woman, who is eight months pregnant, to call police.
The man had entered the empty house while the woman’s husband and their 3-year-old son were visiting relatives in New Mexico.
The husband, Albert Jackson Sterling II, faces two counts of criminal solicitation of capital murder, one for his wife and another for the unborn child. He was being held in lieu of $1 million (?760,000) bail in the Otero County jail in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
An extradition hearing is set for Friday.
The man who entered the couple’s home was not charged with any crime, police said. They did not release his name.
“He did not go there with the intent to murder her,” said Capt. Robert Flores. “He went with the intent to warn her.”
Investigators said Albert Sterling, 38, offered the man a large amount of money to kill his wife while he was away and helped him get into the home.
Albert Sterling flew to visit family in Alamogordo on Nov. 21. That afternoon, the man stood in the couple’s bedroom and warned his wife, Flores said.
Police said they had not been called to the family’s home before and there was no indication that Albert Sterling had any prior convictions in Texas.
Roxane Sterling, 37, left for Louisiana to be with her family.
A truly amazing pantomime act
If you’re like me, you have a certain tolerance for an open season on pantomimes, but this guy deserves protection as some sort of national treasure. It’s French, but of course, with pantomime… Anyway, watch the video. Remarkable.
Bush asking Maliki, “What’s your plan?”
Don’t you find it odd that Bush is asking Maliki what his plan is for ending the Iraq War? Bush is the commander-in-chief and the guy who started the war. Shouldn’t Maliki be asking Bush what his plan is? I know there are lots of people who would love to know.
Raw Fear: Christianist Evangelicals of Barack Obama
“Christianist” is a useful term, coined (apparently) by Andrew Sullivan. It refers to the radical right Christian political group, just as Islamist refers to the radical political branch of Islam. Just as Islamism differs from Islam, Chritianism differs from Christian. I like Christianists as a term better than “theo-cons”, which I’ve also seen: the Christianists who believe that the state should not be secular, but should enact and enforce laws to require the behavior that these radicals espouse.
Now the Christianists are apoplectic about Barack Obama appearing to speak to a group of Evangelical Christians:
Following up on an item from last week, the religious right continues to be apoplectic about Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) speaking from Rick Warren’s pulpit at Saddleback Church in California, 30,000-member megachurch. The reaction is far more telling than the invitation.
Warren and Obama apparently became friends last year, and have kept in touch. When Warren’s Saddleback Church decided it would host an event on the international AIDS crisis, it made sense to invite two leading senators on the issue, one from each side of the aisle, so he extended invitations to Obama and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.). Both accepted and the event will take place on Saturday.
In the meantime, the right is acting as if Obama planned to blow the church up. Kevin McCullough got the ball rolling two weeks ago with a bizarre World Net Daily column accusing Obama of advancing “inhumane, sick and sinister evil,” which may “represent the views of Satan.” Then the rest of the religious right joined in.
Christian leaders from across a wide spectrum of theologies and missions are rising up together to urge Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren to rescind an invitation to Sen. Barack Obama to speak from Warren’s pulpit. […]
“You cannot fight one evil while justifying another,” a joint statement from dozens of leaders of Christian groups said in condemning Obama’s support for abortion and Warren’s support for Obama.
“The evangelical church can provide no genuine help for those who suffer from AIDS if those involved do not first have their ethic of life firmly rooted in the Word of God,” the group said. “Accordingly, we call on Pastor Rick Warren to rescind his invitation to Sen. Obama immediately.
The Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, a spokesman for the Christian Defense Coalition, went so far as to say, “Having Sen. Barack Obama speak on issues of social justice is like having a segregationist speak on civil rights.” He wasn’t kidding.
Good use for Ta-da List: Queue extension
The Netflix queue is, unfortunately, limited to 500 movies. As a result, when I find a new actor or director or series and want to add a bunch of movies, I often bump against the limit after adding just one or two titles.
But with Ta-da List right at hand in another tab in the browser, it’s quite easy to add the titles there under “Movies to see.” Then, as opportunity permits, I can put the titles in my Netflix queue and remove them from the Ta-da List.
Hmmm. I wonder if Ta-da Lists are limited in the number of items per list.
How to forge fingerprints
With people starting to use fingerprints as the “ultimate” security check, I expect we’ll start seeing fingerprint-forging kits appear. Until then, here’s how. So maybe stick with passwords for a while longer?
Bush still “Stay the course”
Remember when Bush said he wasn’t “stay the course”? That seems to be no longer operational—i.e., he was lying. Here’s the report as of today. Bush knows very little, but he does know his own mind. Note that the mission is now also no longer accomplished. We should have pulled out of Iraq the day that sign went up.
President Bush, under pressure to change direction in Iraq, said Tuesday he will not be persuaded by any calls to withdraw American troops before the country is stabilized.
“There’s one thing I’m not going to do, I’m not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete,” he said in a speech setting the stage for high-stakes meetings with the Iraqi prime minister later this week. “We can accept nothing less than victory for our children and our grandchildren.”
A bipartisan panel on Iraq is finalizing recommendations on Iraq. The group led by former Secretary of State James Baker III and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., is expected to present recommendations to Bush next month.
The commissioners are expected to debate the feasibility of withdrawal timetables.
Recent U.S. elections added fuel to the argument from Democrats that U.S. soldiers need to come home. But Bush has resisted that, even while projecting the need for a different approach.
“We’ll continue to be flexible and we’ll make the changes necessary to succeed,” the president said.
Bush pushed back against skeptics of his goal of spreading freedom across the Middle East. “I understand these doubts but I do not share them,” the president said.
Time to learn a new language?
I, of course, recommend Esperanto, but in case you’re interested in evolved languages, the Foreign Service Institute offers free, public-domain language courses. Check it out. (Esperanto is, of course, much easier: it was designed to be a universal second language, and so it was designed to be easy to learn—few rules, no exceptions, easy way to build vocabulary through affixes, etc.)
Total Power in the Executive Branch
Glenn Greenwald and Jeffrey Toobin remind us that, regardless of the outcome of the election, we still have a problem because the Bush Administration believes that it cannot be limited by laws passed by Congress. The Bush Administration follows the thought of Cheney, John Yoo, and David Addington that the President is, in effect, an absolute ruler.
In an excellent new New Yorker article, Jeffrey Toobin documents how Arlen Specter lambasted the Military Commissions Act as a tyrannical, unconstitutional, profoundly unjust atrocity, only to then, like the good boy that he is, cast his vote in favor of it. After his habeas corpus amendment failed, “Specter, visibly angry, left the Senate chamber. He told reporters that he thought the habeas ban was ‘patently unconstitutional’ and vowed to vote against the detainee bill.” The next day — the next day — he voted in favor of it. That’s just sad.
But one of the most glorious results of the midterm elections is that it has relegated former-Chairman Specter (such a nice-sounding phrase) to an inconsequential afterthought. The more important aspect of Toobin’s article is that it provides an important and potent reminder that while it is nice that Democrats, rather than Bush-loyal Republicans, now control Congress, the people who occupy the White House don’t think that matters because they believe — literally — that Congress has no power to restrain what they do. Read the rest of this entry »
One reason Texas gets so little respect
And the medal for most imaginative ethics ruling goes to… Texas! From The Houston Chronicle:
A Texas official who receives any sum of cash as a gift can satisfy state disclosure laws by reporting the money simply as “currency,” without specifying the amount, the Texas Ethics Commission reiterated Monday.
The 5-3 decision outraged watchdog groups and some officials who unabashedly accused the commission of failing to enforce state campaign finance laws.
“What the Ethics Commission has done is legalize bribery in the state of Texas. We call on the commission to resign en masse,” said Tom “Smitty” Smith, who heads Texas Citizen, an Austin-based group that advocates for campaign finance reform.
Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, a Democrat, said the “currency” interpretation would render it “perfectly legal to report the gift of ‘a wheelbarrow’ without reporting that the wheelbarrow was filled with cash.”
Presumably that trick would also work with a bathtub, a piñata, or any other vessel that you’d care to give your lawmaker or state official.
Earlier this year, the commission ruled that a gift of checks, no matter the amount, could simply be disclosed as “checks.”
The ruling stems from a case last year, when Houston millionaire and GOP attack group funder Bob Perry gave Bill Ceverha, a member of the State Employees Retirement System board, a $50,000 check, which was disclosed only as “check.” According to the Chronicle, “[b]oth men have said the check for $50,000 was supposed to help cover legal fees Ceverha incurred defending himself against a civil lawsuit related to his role as treasurer of former Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s Texas fundraising operation.”
Nancy LaMott: Greatest cabaret singer ever
Terry Teachout thought that Nancy LaMott, 1951-1995, was the greatest cabaret singer ever. Certainly she sings an elegant and beautiful song. You can get her CDs here—try a few. Here’s her story, from the second link:
Nancy LaMott, probably the greatest singer of American Popular Standards of her generation, was on the verge of stardom when she was struck down, at the age of 43, by Uterine Cancer.
Nancy came from the Midwestern town of Midland, Michigan (or, as she used to call it, a suburb of the Dow Chemical Company.) She coped with a childhood that was less than idyllic by singing with her father’s band, and by developing Crohn’s Disease, a serious but little known bowel and immune disorder that surfaced in her late teens.
Although she was often hospitalized and desperately ill, she knew she had to get out of Midland and pursue her dream as a singer. At the age of 19, she and her brother Brett, who was her drummer, headed out to San Francisco.
Nancy soon became one of the most sought-after cabaret singers in San Francisco, but her illness continued and she found herself alternating between singing triumphs and hospital stays. In addition, Nancy often had long periods where she had to be on cortisone and prescription pain killers for her disease, and addictive patterns and eating disorders became an added burden for her. But still, her singing triumphed, and soon she realized she had conquered San Francisco and needed to head for New York.
Unfortunately, due to her illness and her tremendous medical bills, Nancy had no money, another problem that would plague her throughout her life. But as so often happened, a loyal friend and fan had such belief in her that he gave her a plane ticket, and she was on her way to New York.
The pattern that had occurred in San Francisco recurred in New York. Nancy quickly became known in the small circle of the cabaret world as one of the great singers of her time, but her momentum toward success was always interrupted by illness, surgery and the resulting lack of funds. People were captivated not only by Nancy’s talent, but by her simple goodness and beauty of spirit, and she made many good friends, including David Zippel, Mark Sendroff, Bill McGrath and Bob Baker, who were there for her triumphs and helped her through the bad times. Still, somehow she remained New York cabaret’s best kept secret. But all that was about to change. Read the rest of this entry »
Psychotic ignorant people overwhelmingly prefer Bush
Not too surprising: psychotics live in a chaotic world, and a strong, authoritarian figure is likely to be comforting. Read the details here.
UPDATE: More on the psychology of conservatism:
Politically conservative agendas may range from supporting the Vietnam War to upholding traditional moral and religious values to opposing welfare. But are there consistent underlying motivations?
Four researchers who culled through 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism report that at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:
- Fear and aggression
- Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
- Uncertainty avoidance
- Need for cognitive closure
- Terror management
“From our perspective, these psychological factors are capable of contributing to the adoption of conservative ideological contents, either independently or in combination,” the researchers wrote in an article, “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition,” recently published in the American Psychological Association’s Psychological Bulletin. Read the rest of this entry »
Serotonin tree ornament
More serotonin for the holidays! A tree ornament made in the shape of a serotonin molecule, but much, much larger.
Lots more molecular jewelry and ornaments at the link.
Snowflakes: how they get that way
The above diagram via this cool post on Asymptotia, which caught my eye because The Niece has reported snow up in the hinterlands.
The good people at the US Postal service do produce some splendid sets of stamps on quite a regular basis. Today, to my delight, I was offered this set as one of my choices at the post office:
There’s so much physics behind the microscopic lattice of H2O molecules underlying such a lovely shape, with the pleasant C6 symmetry of the macroscopic result – the snowflake. I found a lovely “morphology diagram” [above - LG] showing the sorts of shapes you get depending upon temperature and supersaturation of the water vapour that condenses to form the snowflake. It is from the lab website of Kenneth G. Libbrecht, of Caltech. Go there (particularly to the snowflake primer) for much more information.
You just have to sit back and admire sometimes:- Nature’s just fantastic, you know.
-cvj
[Update: Bee has a post about patterns and symmetry on Backreaction, where she talks about snowflakes too, among other wonderful things.]
Skype handset that doesn’t need a computer
Now there’s a computer-free Skype handset. It does require an always-on Internet connection, though. It works with both Skype and a traditional landline analog connection. $206.
Best pie crust ever?
Home bakers seem to fall into two categories: those who make cakes and those who make pies. My mum was a cake woman, but her friend Marjorie made marvelous pies. They used to trade—mum could not make a pie crust to save her life, and Marjorie was hopeless at cakes.
But maybe there’s hope for the cake bakers. Via Megnut, the best pie crust ever:
Several pie recipes recommended using two fats (I’d always used just one) to achieve a depth of flavor and flakiness for the crust. So after I spotted Karen Barker’s Basic Pie Crust at Ed Levine’s site [and below the fold - LG], I knew I had one to try.
Folks I am here to report this is THE BEST PIE CRUST EVER!!!!!
As a Former Professional Pie Baker, I have made many many pie crusts, using lard, Crisco, and butter. And Karen Baker’s Crisco-and-butter combination produces the nicest crust I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. The magic started long before I ate it. Simply combining the ingredients (she said to use the food processor but I just used my hands), I ended up with a crumbly mixture that pulled together almost instantly when I added a small amount of water. After chilling, I rolled it out and was astounded at how easily and quickly it rolled into a perfect round. No tearing. No breaking or crumbling. It rolled out, I lifted it up, and I put it in the pie pan. After I added some apples, I did the same for the top. Did I say it didn’t even break a teeny tiny bit?
I can’t really explain how well this crust worked — it was a pleasure it was to make a pie with it! And then the taste: flaky and light, almost melt-in-the-mouth. While I’ve tasted better crusts in my day (not that this wasn’t really good), it was the ease of preparation plus crust flavor that makes this a hands-down winner. I will never use another crust recipe again. And I’m going to be making a lot more pies from now on. No more once-a-year pies for me. More like once-a-week!
Megs enjoys some sunshine
Megs enjoys some morning sunshine. True to her nature, she’s sitting on something that makes her taller. She’s a petite kitty—9 pounds—and of the type who would wear very high heels if she could.
