Anyone having problems loading this site? It looks fine on Firefox, Safari, and whatever version of IE came installed on my computer, but one reader reported that the columns were all screwy and the text was jammed into about 2 lines per column. I’m probably going to have to overhaul my WordPress theme at some point.

Maxim’s “The 300 Movies You Must See Before You Die.” (H/t Left in Aboite). I like lists, I like movies, what’s not to like. And, it lists movies people have actually seen.

Mary Beth Schneider, writing for the Indianapolis Star, has an article on Barack Obama’s conversation with reporters in Indianapolis. I take exception to the opening of her article that attempts to frame Obama’s campaign in terms of the artificial narrative being ginned up by the cable news media personalities and other “journalists” too lazy report on issues of substance. These disparaging remarks aren’t meant to characterize Schneider directly because she’s done a lot of fine reporting over the years. But to open with a Matthews-esque suggestion that Obama has a problem with elitism (whatever that means) absent any evidence that Hoosiers view him as putting on more airs than Clinton or McCain and absent evidence that Pennsylvania voters actually changed their opinion of Obama in response to the media tempest over “bitterness” is irresponsible. The fact is, Pennsylvania voters started with an overwhelming preference for Senator Clinton. Obama cut that to single digits and there isn’t any evidence that voters moved away from Obama because they thought he was “elitist.”

Responding to this nonsense:

“I was raised in a setting with my grandparents who grew up in small-town Kansas, where the dinner table would have been very familiar to anybody here in Indiana — a lot of pot roasts and potatoes and Jell-O molds,” he said.

Obama said he “doesn’t want to go out of my way to sort of prove my street cred as a down-to-earth guy.”

He laughed about his image being anything “elitist.”

“I basically buy five of the same suit, and then I patch them up and I wear them repeatedly. I have four pairs of shoes,” he said. “Recently, I’ve taken to getting a haircut more frequently than I used to because my mother-in-law makes fun of me.”

But, he said, “I will be fighting as hard as I can to make sure that people understand why I got in this race in the first place, how I got where I am today, and then when they understand that, I think they’ll recognize themselves.”

In the journalists’ defense, it’s a lot easier to report on this stuff than on tax policy or foreign policy or economic policy or policy on civil liberties or on any of the dozens of things that are going wrong with this country. Probably sells more papers too.

Recently I’ve gotten a few cut & paste screeds against Obama. Anti-Obama talk is fair game around here, but I’ve made a decision not to let people regurgitate all over my blog. If it’s short, I probably won’t bother with it. If it’s original writing with some reasonably sized quotes, that’s cool too. Purely original rants (not including personal attacks against non-public figures)* are still completely fair game. Same goes for anti-McCain talk or anti-Clinton talk or pretty much any other subject. Littering my blog with semi-coherent blocks of text won’t add a lot to the discussion. All of this is, of course, subject to my power drunk and potentially arbitrary discretion. But, I like to let folks know where I’m coming from, and if I govern with too heavy a fist, it’s not like I’m the only blog in town. The community here will probably drift elsewhere.

(*Minor trash talk between Branden and Buzzcut will probably still be tolerated because it amuses me and they don’t seem to mind.)

A dust storm caused a wreck south of Lafayette today. It made me think of a Grapes of Wrath era Dust Bowl.

Police believe the fine, sand-like dirt from a farming plot along the highway turned into a flash dust storm when a strong wind blew through.

The dust reduced visibility to zero and was likely the cause if the crash, Frantz said.

Officers investigating the crash were repeatedly blinded as thick gusts passed through the site.

“It was a like a bomb went off,” said Hank Laycock, a semi-truck driver who witnessed the crash. “The dust was very high, like a wall, when it came across the highway.”

Laycock was driving behind the six vehicles when he saw a brown-out, like a snow storm, begin to move toward the roadway.
. . .
Bob Peabody, a farmer who lives nearby, said the field where the storm originated from was plowed last fall. Since then the top soil has become like sand due to natural elements. Peabody doesn’t own the field in question.

Ten people were injured.

I notice that my blog theme isn’t loading properly – No masthead, the side bars are all at the bottom and it’s pretty much just text in the middle. Sometimes these things resolve themselves. Hopefully I’ll get time to look for the problem before too long. Just wanted to let you guys know, it’s me, not you.

Via In the Agora:

“Do you think America wants hope right now? Because fear seems to be winning.”

— Stephen Colbert, April 24, 2008

Other quotes about fear. The big one:

This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

—FDR, 1933

For my fellow geeks out there, we have the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

(Which, of course, brings to mind the Litany of Beer: Beer is the mind-killer. Beer is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my beer. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see it’s path. When the beer has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.)

There is the instant-classic (if momentarily inconvenient) statement by Bill Clinton:

Now one of Clinton’s Laws of Politics is this: If one candidate’s trying to scare you and the other one’s trying to get you to think; if one candidate’s appealing to your fears and the other one’s appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope. That’s the best.

There is Bertrand Russell:

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.

Dorothy Thompson:

Fear grows in darkness; if you think there’s a bogeyman around, turn on the light.

James Bymes:

Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death

Marcus Aurelius:

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Don’t waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour’s duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.

Thomas Jefferson:

I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern. My hopes indeed sometimes fail, but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy.

Helen Keller:

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.

Eric Hoffer:

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

Unknown:

It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon:

Our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, but only empties today of its strength.

Edward R. Murrow:

We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason.

(And, who could forget Blue Oyster Cult: Don’t fear the reaper; baby, I’m your man; La, la la, la la, La, la la, la la.)

I’m not really a hippy-granola type who believes every challenge is simply a new opportunity and every stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet. I know there is hell to pay for misplaced hope. But there is also hell to pay for fearing needlessly. Reject fear and those who peddle it.

I appreciate the effort, but the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette seems to have gone above and beyond – going to the Kinsey Institute to evaluate a throw away article in Men’s Health giving Fort Wayne a high ranking in terms of the sexual satisfaction of its residents. Men’s Health took a look at condom sales, births, and sex toy sales to come up with a list of most sexually satisfied cities:

Most
1. Indianapolis
2. Columbus, Ohio
3. Fort Wayne
4. Cincinnati
5. Salt Lake City

I’m a subscriber to Men’s Health. No one is going to confuse it with a scientific journal. Nevertheless, the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette went to the Kinsey Institute which concluded that its findings were suspect. Shocking.

My e-mail client of choice is Mozilla Thunderbird. By and large, it’s a good piece of software. Turns out, however:

Thunderbird has a nasty habit of once in a great while forgetting about the existence of a profile if it uses the default name. When this occurs you suddenly start up in the new account wizard and it looks like you lost everything. You haven’t. Its just lost track of your profile, which is probably intact.

So, I spent the better part of this morning recovering my e-mail settings and restoring access to my saved messages and whatnot. Who needs to do paying work, anyway?

Strange Maps has an interesting map of where news breaks in the lower 48 states. Even allowing for population densities, certain areas of the country — notably D.C. and New York City — account for a disproportionate number of the stories. D.C. makes sense due to the number of stories about the federal government. New York City makes less sense when compared to, say, Chicago. By population, Chicago should be about 1/2 of the “news size” of New York, but, in reality, it’s only about 1/5 the size.