Posted 9:22 PM by Floyd

On Tuesday many school bond proposals were rejected by voters. Nothing bugs a liberal like a failure to tax someone. Here is a Mercury News letter-writer fulminating against super-majorities:

THE headline read ``Mtn. View rejects schools tax plan'' (Page 1A, June 4). This is misleading. Better it should say, ``Minority steals will of majority who want improved school funding.''

The anti-tax voters stole the will of the pro-tax majority? So, like, they had some device that they would press against your forehead and turn you into tax resister?

Musta worn off real quick.

Look at the numbers. All but one of the Bay Area school parcel tax measures received a majority of ``yes'' votes. But many were defeated because they didn't reach the two-thirds majority that is currently required. In fact, all but two were above the 55 percent threshold proposed for such votes by Assemblyman Joe Simitian.

Maybe it is time to have an initiative that a political candidate must get a two-thirds majority in order to be elected. How many of our leaders could achieve that? President George W. Bush didn't even get 50 percent of the vote.

It is time to change this outdated, unfair law calling for a ``super majority'' for local tax measures. It cripples our public school system and lets a small minority sabotage the will of the majority.

Mary Bitondo
Los Altos

Okay Mary, I hear that more than half of Americans polled think abortion should be illegal. So we implemented your political theory and banned it. Hope you're happy!

Posted 9:13 PM by Floyd

In places like Afghanistan and Iraq we are running out of people to shoot at. How come there are no shortage of asshats like this:

Not-so-special effects
FILMMAKER: GIMMICKS, VIOLENCE PUT BAD FACE ON U.S.
By Philip Kennicott
Washington Post

WASHINGTON - Americans, who are protective or even prickly about the meaning of what happened Sept. 11, 2001, may find filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi's view disconcerting:

When you're reading a book or watching a movie, it may be appropriate to look for meaning of symbols. September 11th was not a work of fiction; it was historical fact. A group of Muslim fanatics murdered several thousand people, and their leader videotaped his reasons for doing so. People who go on about the "meaning" of September 11th are passive-aggressive whiners who have the outlook of a conspiracy theorist but lack the conspiracy nut's courage to be mocked for his stupidity.

``You can be 100 percent sure that if these Hollywood films were not being disseminated throughout the rest of the world in such a way that everyone can see these special effects . . . that September 11 probably wouldn't even have happened, it would not have become part of the imagination of the people.''

Uh huh. It's Pixar's fault. And those Star Wars scenes where the Death Stars got blown up gave me the idea to build a missile to blow up the moon.

I got the fucker in my basement.

I wonder what film Guderian was watching that gave him the conception for Achtung Panzer?

This is not an ``America's to blame'' argument but an argument about the power of images, made by a Kurdish Iranian film director for whom images are sacred.

And if a woman gets raped and I tell her the clothes she was wearing were too sexy, that's not a "victim to blame" argument but an argument about the power of fashion.

...

He has a strong distaste for American special effects and the sheer density of violence in American films, and he warns, ``The films coming out now are probably the worst advertisement of and PR for the American people.''

Did Ghobadi speak out against any actual violence? I must have missed it.

Ghobadi was against the war and against Saddam; he wanted only to see Saddam finished.

Well what do you know: In a world where cannibals roam around the Congo at will, hacking limbs off people and roasting them, where an Arab dictatorship has children's prisons and children's graves, Ghobadi chose to speak out against one specific act of violence, the liberation of Iraq. What were the odds?

But let's not lose sight of how Ghobadi was "against Saddam". He wanted to "see Saddam finished". Ghobadi just wasn't willing to approve of any specific action to do so. Apparently Saddam was supposed to vanish in a cloud of, well, special effects.

Posted 2:52 PM by Floyd

In my previous post I called someone an idiot but spelled it "iidiot". That makes me look real smart, right? Like a genius, in fact -- I'm too busy delving into the mysteries of the universe to worry about proper spelling!

Oh, and I would never spell "idiot" wrong by mistake because of how stupid that would look. Clearly I'm being ironic.

I'm glad we cleared that up.

Posted 10:54 PM by Floyd

Michael Lewis wrote a book I liked very much -- Trail Fever, in which he followed around the nine candidates for the Republican presidential nomination in 1996. A later book of his, "The New New Thing", portrayed Netscape founder Jim Clark as he founded Healtheon and built a massive computerized yacht. This effort did not interest me as much but it was still solid and has some good writing.

(By the way, the comments section is there for you to tell me that I need to read "Liar's Poker".)

Two weeks ago I was driving home and flipped through some FM stations. I listened to 92.3 KSJO and heard the DJ interviewing someone. "Great", I said to myself, "some iidiot is going to interview a porn star." Actually, the DJ was interviewing Michael Lewis! I learned two things: First, for five minutes in its 35-year history, KSJO elevated its level of discourse above that of rutting sewer rats; and Michael Lewis had a new book out called Moneyball. The subject was how Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane built a contending playoff team with one of the smallest payrolls in the league.

The next day I bought the book, and tore through it in two days. It is by far Lewis' best effort to date. Aaron Haspel sung its praises a few days ago, and he and Matt Welch linked to this longer review by Dr. Manhattan. I don't need to add my praises, especially as I know little about baseball.

Instead, I'll note that many people are calling Moneyball Beane's book, and believe that it's Beane's ego trip. I told two friends of mine who are big baseball fans about the book, and they shrugged it off: "Yeah, Beane's a genius and everyone else is an idiot." It's true that Lewis thinks a lot of Beane, but fortunately for his readers, his respect and admiration for his subjects falls short of hagiography.

I noticed that two sports journalists who write for the local paper made the mistake of asserting that Moneyball is Beane's book. First Bud Geracie had this throwaway line in his collection of musings, "In the Wake of the Week":

With former Athletic Cory Lidle at 8-3 for the Blue Jays, the Toronto G.M. could write a book.

"Well maybe he could," I yelled, "and so could Billy Beane, since he hasn't written one yet". (Never mind that Toroto's GM is a Beane protoge.)

Then Tim Kawakami wrote the following in today's Merc

DOES TENSION PRODUCE PLAYOFF-SERIES VICTORY? It works for the Yankees, every now and again. But we'll see in October how it works with the A's, who have been relatively tension-free heading into the past three postseasons, and we've seen exactly how effective that was.

This season, clearly, there are increased stress levels, from the Miguel Tejada contract situation to the prolonged fallout from Billy Beane's book to the new managing tenure of Ken Macha to, of course, the Thad Bosley departure.

Posted 10:52 PM by Floyd

Last week I made fun of a San Jose Mercury News reporter who reported verbatim the astonishing claims of the Anti-Junior Sex League, for instance that they could decode any commonly used encryption scheme. (I suppose from the government body point of view, there is no harm in undertaking projects that will require funding until the heat death of the universe.)

No mockery of servile journalism would be complete without a mention of the Merc's "Mr. Roadshow", Gary Richards. Richards is completely and utterly unable to doubt the word of a safety or transportation issue, viz:

Q A co-worker told me that it's against the law, and you can get ticketed, if you have a for-sale sign in your car and it's parked on the street in front of your house. He also said that you can drive with the for-sale sign, but if you park you have to take the sign down. Is this true?

Martha Denning
San Jose

A True. Since 1958, San Jose has had municipal code section (11.36.100) on the books to prohibit vehicles for sale on a public street, and so does the state. The reasons for this law are to keep car dealers from turning streets into used-car lots and to keep individual owners from using the street to sell their cars. Safety is also a factor, as the law prevents cars from slowing down in a travel lane to look at cars for sale, potentially causing traffic congestion or rear-enders. If you are trying to sell your car this way, simply remove the sign while parked on the street.

Uh-uh. And For Sale signs on houses are also banned, because people could slow down in the traffic lane to look at homes for sale, potentially causing ... oh, you mean they're not? Well, if I didn't have Mr. Roadshow around to explain the state's ways to man, I might think that the title of this article -- "Safety, other reasons make it illegal to put for-sale sign in parked vehicle" -- could really be stated as "Safety, dislike of low-income lowlifes make it illegal to put for-sale sign in parked vehicle".

Posted 10:04 PM by Floyd

Instapundit noted that Atlanta Olympics and abortion clinic suspect Eric Rudolph has been caught, and said "I hope they throw the book at him." This sounds charmingly dated, and will soon be a complete anachronism. What federal law enforcement officer exists who would not charge Rudolph with every conceivable crime, from explosive possession and murder down to burglary and trespassing (for rifling through the trash of the restaurant where he was caught)?

There is nothing wrong with charging Rudolph for all of the crimes he was alleged to have committed. I do have a purist's wish to see him arraigned and tried on the charges that really matter -- driving nails into tourists and abortion clinic workers -- and then set freed or strapped in the frying chair. But I won't object to the massive number of charges he will no doubt face in his first trial.

I certainly will object when Rudolph is retried for his crimes under the bullshit double jeopardy of "federal offenses" and "civil rights violations". I assume this will be done, because Terry Nichols, who was convicted in Oklahoma state court of assisting in the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, is facing federal charges for the same crimes.

Nichols was sentenced to life in prison by Oklahoma; the feds want to kill him. I do think Nichols should die, but he's not going anywhere and I don't see why my tax money should be spent to override Oklahomans' ideas on punishment. To some extent this is just make-work for federal prosecutors.

The American judiciary says that it is legitimate to prosecute someone for murder in a state court and then again in a federal court, because the crimes have different labels ("homicide" and "violation of civil rights"). This is like telling your wife that you didn't lie to her about having a mistress -- the girl you are sleeping with is your "concubine".

Posted 1:16 PM by Floyd

And so ends May of 2003; my opinion is, good riddance. May was a miserable month. The first ten days were cold and rainy instead of sunny and warm as is typical in the Bay Area. I was sick for the middle half of the month, and also had trouble sleeping for some reason. Then came the last days of May, as Blue Oyster Cult sang, and I got a parting present: Yesterday after working in the garden I was washing up, and found that some kind of thorn had embedded itself in my left bicep. Then I looked closer and found that it was the insect blood-sucking kind of thorn.

I freaked out, but only to about 40% of capacity. I knew that I was supposed to entice it to withdraw because if I ripped it out the head might stay in the wound. So I got an incense stick, lit it, and held it near the tick's butt. The tick wiggled, but did not withdraw and apologize as I had hoped. Finally I got weirded out enough to just yank the thing out.

Then I went to Google to see how many hours I had left before I expired from Lyme's disease. And I found out that I was not supposed to try to irritate the tick with fire, but to get some tweezers and pull it out by its head or neck.

Anyway May is gone, it is the first of June, a lovely sunny day. My wife and I are off for the beach. I'll be back tonight for more blogging, assuming my arm hasn't fallen off.