snow

saturday, noon--dexter is enthralled

everglades

couldn't have been a better time for the everglades--no bugs at all--saw royal palm, which was the first part to be preserved, by the florida woman's clubs in the 1920s--
it was late, watched the birds getting settled into their roosts for the night--piles of alligators, but it was in the 60s so they weren't moving much

sunday

triskaidekaphobia

Triskaidekaphobia also may be related to Norse mythology, which tells how the god Odin invited eleven of his closest friends to a dinner party at his home in Valhalla, only to have his party crashed by Loki, the god of evil and turmoil, thus giving a total of 13 people. The legend further relates how Balder, one of the most beloved gods, tried to throw Loki out of the party, resulting in a scuffle and ultimately Balder's death with a mistletoe-tipped arrow.

obamamania

Barack Obama’s surge to frontrunner status in the Democratic presidential sweepstakes has touched a nerve with young voters in the Chicago area: They’re
registering to vote in record numbers.

rock and roll

all aboard

it will mean an extra three or four hundred dollars on my property taxes, but in the long run, the peachtree streetcar would make peachtree a whole lot of fun (unless you're honking down the road in some big-ass suv)---plus it would do a lot toward ensuring that my place maintained or even increased its value more than a lot---i'm all for it----

obamarama

don't tell me there's no difference between the parties:

After more than a year of campaigning in the most wide-open primaries in decades, it’s finally time for voters to pick a president. On the Democratic side, the three hopefuls with a viable shot at the nomination have all signed on to almost every item on the so-called “gay agenda.” That includes workplace rights and hate crime protection for gay and transgender Americans, repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and opposition to a constitutional amendment banning gays from marrying.

partisan bickering

h/t digby:

obamarama

listen to him, if you haven't already---

abu dhabi on the moskva

the world's largest building with over 10,000,000 square feet----crystal island it's called----a little more dramatic than crystal city across the potomac from d.c., although crystal city was sort of the first of the big mess that has grown up in arlington and alexandria and forever changed many of our capital's best vistas----same in moscow: there will be a great view of the city, but the building itself will dominate the skyline, for better or for worse---st. basil's will seem kind of dinky and quaint by comparison----

criminals

There are too many moments these days when we cannot recognize our country. Sunday was one of them, as we read the account in The Times of how men in some of the most trusted posts in the nation plotted to cover up the torture of prisoners by Central Intelligence Agency interrogators by destroying videotapes of their sickening behavior. It was impossible to see the founding principles of the greatest democracy in the contempt these men and their bosses showed for the Constitution, the rule of law and human decency .

imagine

As a result, he said, serious religious commitment in Britain is viewed as “a kind of hobby, like keeping parakeets or breeding corgis — definitely something that should not have a place at the table of public conversation.”

new year's eve

last night at robert's

clearing

the rain was great:

obama, yesterday in iowa

the 50 most loathsome people in america

9. You
Charges: You believe in freedom of speech, until someone says something that offends you. You suddenly give a damn about border integrity, because the automated voice system at your pharmacy asked you to press 9 for Spanish. You cling to every scrap of bullshit you can find to support your ludicrous belief system, and reject all empirical evidence to the contrary. You know the difference between patriotism and nationalism -- it's nationalism when foreigners do it. You hate anyone who seems smarter than you. You care more about zygotes than actual people. You love to blame people for their misfortunes, even if it means screwing yourself over. You still think Republicans favor limited government. Your knowledge of politics and government are dwarfed by your concern for Britney Spears' children. You think buying Chinese goods stimulates our economy. You think you're going to get universal health care. You tolerate the phrase "enhanced interrogation techniques." You think the government is actually trying to improve education. You think watching CNN makes you smarter. You think two parties is enough. You can't spell. You think $9 trillion in debt is manageable. You believe in an afterlife for the sole reason that you don't want to die. You think lowering taxes raises revenue. You think the economy's doing well. You're an idiot.

Exhibit A: You couldn't get enough Anna Nicole Smith coverage.
Sentence: A gradual decline into abject poverty as you continue to vote against your own self-interest. Death by an easily treated disorder that your health insurance doesn't cover. You deserve it, chump.

holidays

today is boxing day in the british commonwealth

---it's name relates to boxes of food or other gifts or the contents of the church's poor box, depending on who you ask----it's also the feast of st. stephen, when good king wencelas was doing his thing---and, of course, it's a big day for american shoppers----even if we are not out giving gifts to our servants, at least we aren't stoning people---

holy ghost people

http://www.archive.org/details/HolyGhostPeople

merry christmas

viewpoint

metropolis christmas

industrial architecture

this is great: a bus terminal in a suburb of paris---

mall rats

Michael Townsend gives new meaning to the term Mall Rat when he and seven
other artists moved into a 750 square foot space above a storage room in the Providence Place Mall in Providence, Rhode Island. They carried in two tons of construction material, a sectional sofa, a love seat, a coffee table, a breakfast table with four chairs, lamps, a throw rug, a hutch and paintings on the walls. Not having water or a bathroom, they snuck into the mall to use its facilities and the food court, although they did have a waffle iron and some video games. They kept this up for four years.

schadenfreude

huckabee: the republican's mcgovern and the end of our long national nightmare---

This, to me, is the critical distinction between a Christianist and a mere Christian. One wants to infuse politics with religion; the other wants to respect both, separately, and to keep religion private. I should add I do not want to banish the word "God" from the public square. But I do want that invocation to be as thin and as empty and as formal as the Founders intended. The current Republican party has reinvented itself as a force on opposite grounds. The party of Huckabee and Romney, the party of Hewitt and Dobson, the party of Ponnuru and Neuhaus is emphatically not a secular party.

And that is why part of me, I confess, wants Huckabee to win. So he can lose. So the GOP can lose - as spectacularly and humiliatingly as possible. If we are to rid conservatism of this theocratic cancer, we need to start over. Maybe it has to get worse before it can get better. But it is certainly too late for fellow-traveling Christianists like Lowry and Krauthammer to start whining now. This is their party. And they asked for every last bit of it.

obama

The Republicans will have a very hard time attacking Obama on racial grounds without seeming to be overtly racist. So they will smear him as treasonous and use the religion card, however fallaciously. This meme is out there - disgracefully abetted by those now in power. The only way past it is through it. And the only mistake is fearing it. Don't under-estimate it, but don't fear it. And defeat it. Clinton simply cannot do that. But Obama has a chance.

no comment

a recruitment ad for the ukranian army---

they forgot the dunces

The talent pool for these roles is indeed paper thin," says Rob Gonuff, Director of Insta-Temps, Inc. Mr. Gonuff's company specializes in providing unbalanced, incompetent and borderline-retarded staff on an hourly or contract basis, and has been a key staffing resource for Mr. Bush since he was Governor of Texas. "[Giuliani's] right that America is producing more and better crazy people than ever before. But crazy how? To what degree? You can't just take any schizoid psychotic off the street and make them a Director of the NSA. All they'll do is horde newspaper and soil the furniture. What you need is a megalomaniac with a persecution complex and a set of highly specific destructive impulses. Ideally one with a doctorate in Public Administration from Harvard.

cathi's domicile

fair park, dallas

oklahoma

oklahoma actually has some nice scenery, especially if you like big sky

collapsing markets

seven construction cranes in midtown between 12th and 14th----two of those are related to a hotel/retail building----the rest are condos----

grandpa and the baby

andrew had his first birthday thursday----he can't quite walk yet, but he can play a harmonica----that's his best trick to date----

the kitten

main street

as of this weekend, the two upstairs apartments are occupied-----angela and robert are making the insides purty----

the universe

Last August, astronomers working on the analysis of data being acquired by NASA’s WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) satellite announced that they found a huge void in the universe. A void is a region of space that has much less material (stars, nebulae, dust and other material) than the average. Since our universe is relatively heterogeneous, empty spaces are not rare, but in this case the enormous magnitude of the hole is way outside the expected range. The hole found in the constellation of Eridanus is about a billion light years across, which is roughly 10,000 times as large as our galaxy or 400 times the distance to Andromeda, the closest “large” galaxy.

The dimension of the hole is so big that at first glance, it results impossible to explain under the current cosmological theories, although scientists put forward some explanations based on certain theoretical models that might predict the existence of “giant knots” in space known as topological defects.

However, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill physics Professor Laura Mersini-Houghton made a staggering claim. She says, “Standard cosmology cannot explain such a giant cosmic hole” and goes further with the ground-breaking hypothesis that the huge void is “… the unmistakable imprint of another universe beyond the edge of our own“.

So if that's true, this can't very well be the universe anymore, can it?

runners

another run on peachtree this morning---the track club's marathon and half marathon are today, but i didn't think that began until 11:30----anyway, a lot of people out running in a chilly (63) rain---mostly quiet, except for some cow bells now and then, and the horde of marines running in lockstep and chanting as they went---

bugs

"To explore how groups of cockroaches make collective decisions, scientists have created a robotic cockroach that the real insects accept as one of their own. The robot doesn't look anything like a cockroach to human eyes. "It looks like an electronic matchbox," said Jose Halloy, a researcher at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. But that doesn't matter, he says, "because in fact it has to look like a cockroach from a cockroach perspective." Basically, it has to smell like a cockroach. The scientists coat the boxy robots with a chemical, a cockroach smell, so the real roaches won't run away. "The cockroaches are not at all stressed by the robots because they are perceived as cockroaches," Halloy said. "So the cockroach is just accepting that kind of strange buddy."

He lives!

When some of the world's leading religious scholars gather in San Diego this weekend, pasta will be on the intellectual menu. They'll be talking about a satirical pseudo-deity called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose growing pop culture fame gets laughs but also raises serious questions about the essence of religion . . . . "We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it," Henderson wrote. As for scientific vidence to the contrary, "what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage."

fayette county

viewpoint

the exterior is nearing completion and they are installing landscaping on the terraces, which are on the 10th floor or so and apparently on both sides of the tower---the trees on our terrace are dying from lack of water---meanwhile aqua is offering to pay two years of association fees for each new purchase----

fayette county

yesterday

obama '08

main street

the g-great granddaughter of s. r. young the first stumbled across my post on her grandfather's death in august, two days before we closed on the purchase----she said he built the fish pond when he was a teenager, or before 1935---and she told me that her brother drowned the day after we closed---she was googling his name when she came across my post---
a lot of loose ends to finish up, but they refinished the floors upstairs this week---the two apartments up there are looking very good----

another benefit of tax cuts for the rich

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- More than 25 percent of the homeless population in the United States are military veterans, although they represent 11 percent of the civilian adult population, according to a new report.

old whitehall street

old peachtree street

this morning

the cube

i relocated and now reside in a lovely cubicle next to one of the windows over alabama street---










and the view from my window:

the proposed enlargement of donald's domicile

the lees

i stumbled across an old post from somebody with the east point historical society who has been helping maintain the old lee family cemetery on washington road in east point---my g-g-grandpa john lee moved to what is now the west side of east point in the 1840s---one of my favorite pictures from that side of the family is this one, taken about 1925, showing ipson and tommie lee, my g-grandparents, in front of their house on washington rd., which was torn down about 1970---in the background is john lee's old antebellum house, which was torn down before world war II---the photo was taken not long before they sold the place and moved into town---ipson hated leaving the farm and killed himself a few years later---

fall

longview road, fayette county----

glutted markets

so aqua is finished, but they still haven't sold all the units---only a few people have moved in----kinda sad that, since w. peachtree is one-way northbound, the only people who really see the building's facade are the perverts waiting to get out of the parking lot at the dirty book store-----meanwhile 1010 is moving right along and viewpoint has been topped out---

i spotted the hawk that was hanging out in the pine tree next door, on top of the church steeple---