The headlines on CNN this morning are exactly the same ones that were there all day yesterday. This is very comforting, as it means that nothing horrible happened yesterday. No news is, indeed, good news.

I got my new wax seal from DesignStation, and it’s pretty cool, in the form of the logo from RCBowen.com. I tried to take some pictures of it, but the did not turn out very well. It’s hard to take a decent picture of something that small. So if you really want to see it, then I suppose you’ll have to persuade me to write a letter to you.

the wok shop: selling woks for 30 years

I’ve wanted a big-ass wok for a while, and all the ones I have looked at have been absurdly expensive. The foodies on #apache directed me to this site.

I suppose I could have asked on the FoodWine mailing list, but, as hard as I try, I just can’t keep up with the volume on that list, so I feel weird asking questions, as I never really contribute any more.

CGFA- Fra Angelico

Having read a number of references to Fra Angelico in a number of books (ok, mostly Ann Rice books, but it seems like he was mentioned elsewhere, too) I finally decided he must be a real painter. I’ve read references that basically said that he was one of the finest painters ever, and that his paintings are deeply moving, particularly his Annunciation, of which I have seen a number of different versions.

Evidentally, much of his work was in monastaries, in the cells of the monks, and so was not actually seen by more than a handful of people for centuries. I have not been able to find out if that is literary license, but it does seem clear that he did in fact paint a lot of frescoes in monastaries, so it could very well be true.

I found something yesterday that would make the ideal gift (for me, that is), combining two of my passions. I was out at Chrisman Mills Winery, and they had a number of new items there. One of them was a wine bottle case, designed in the form of a stack of very large books. A Tale of Two Cities was on the spine of one of the books, and Oliver Twist on the other. Unlatching the top of the books reveals a container for two bottles of wine.

Having received my first check from my agent, I took a small percentage of it and went wine shopping.

Rosemont Grenache/Shiraz – a constant favorite

Wolf Blass Yellow Label Cabernet Sauvignon

Ca’ del Solo Big House White

Parducci Petite Sirah – never had it, but their selection of Petite was kinda lame, so I went with a well-known name, with which I’ve always had good results in other varietals

And a Mourvedre from some producer I don’t remember. I suppose I could go look, but I’m just too lazy.

CNN.com – U.S. plan: Threat level for every flyer – Feb. 28, 2003

Summary: The US government adn airlines are going to do background checks on everyone with the audacity to buy airline tickets, and categorize them as to their risk level.

And what’s amazing is not so much that they expect people to put up with this, but the fact that the sheep (baa baa baa) will welcome this invasion of their privacy with open arms in the name of “National Security.” Yes, the same National Security that confiscated a bungee cord from my father’s luggage cart because he could use it to “restrain” someone.

I keep hear people saying, well, when they do X, people will rise up and protest, and something will be done. I hear this about absurd patents, I hear this about the DMCA, and a variety of other things, and now I hear it about these absurd, and unconstitutional, travel restrictions. But we (the collective we of all the travellers who have to get places, and realize that we have to put up with this nonsense to get there) will put up with it, just like we put up with them stealing our Swiss Cards because we could use them to hijack the plane (presumably if the pilot was really small), just like we put up with unbathed strangers pawing through our underwear, just like we put up with the assumption that we are terrorists (guilty until proven innocent, right?), just like we put up with sweaty strangers groping us in public without our consent, and just like we put up with a thousand other absurd things that have been laid on us, in the name of security and blind patriotism, since our nation was attacked precisely because of the freedoms we enjoy. Our response should have been greater freedoms, not eliminating those that we still have.

I’m getting seriously steamed about the treatment that I get when I travel. Travel is one of the fundamental aspects of being American, since moving to America in the first place (ie, in the 1500’s through the 1700’s), through the move to the West Coast (in the first half of the 1800’s, I believe), through the road trip you took in college. travelling is part of what it is to be an American. And, yet, when I arrive at the airport, and I need to get to my destination, I realize that one does not insult the crocodile before one crosses the river, as I read on a plaque at the border crossing between Rwanda and Zaire, during my 1988 visit to those countries. And so I feel helpless to protest, realizing also that the people carrying out these acts are not themselves the source of the problem, merely the tools via which it is inflicted on us – although many of them are taking undue advantage of their position to exploit the situation for personal benefit.

What, exactly, is it that we can do to fight these profoundly unamerican moves on the part of our government, and restore the liberties that make us Americans?

After 150 years, Wheaton College has decided to change their rules and permit dancing. This may strike you as non-news, particularly if you did not go to Wheaton, or to Asbury.

Well, call me old fashioned, but I’m … well … old fashioned. Tradition is a valuable thing, even when you don’t understand it. Are the reasons for forbidding dancing less relevant now than they were for the last century? If anything, they have increased, not dimished, and if those reasons were considered valid for all that time, why do they think now that they know better than the previous 30 or 40 administrations?

I watch my alma mater, Asbury College, remove many of the rules that have been in place since 1890, many of these changes being made since my graduation in 1992, and I wonder if it is really progress. Is it actually desirable for them to “catch up” with the times, when the times are clearly so very unsavory.

And was it sensible of NPR to do a story on this, in which they basically poked fun at Wheaton for having standards, rather than lamenting the fact that they had given them up?

I’m sure that the students are pleased with this change, as I am equally sure that the Asbury students are pleased that they can now watch R rated movies on campus. But it seems to me that in the absense of understanding of traditions, a move to abolish them is ill-advised, at best, and damaging in many cases.

Sure, if you went to a state University, or pretty much any educational institution that doesn’t *claim* to stand for anything, these are really not relevant issues for you, and you probably don’t see why it even matters. But organizations that claim to stand for something should actually stand for something, and be unashamed, and unwavering about it. If folks outside that tradition don’t understand why these things matter, well, that’s because they are outside that tradition, and their opinion is largely unimportant in that regard.

So, do I think that dancing should be permitted as Asbury College? Well, I refuse to answer that question, on the grounds that 113 years of Asbury College administrators have seen fit to say that it should not, and I would not presume to imply that my opinion should carry more weight than theirs. And I’m quite disappointed at Wheaton, and at Asbury, for overturning traditions in order to appease the very people who are unwilling to take the time to understand those traditions. And I’m disappointed with NPR for lacking the journalistic integrity to investigate those traditions, and rather to be content with poking fun at them.

These folks are going to Iraq, where they will (they think) prevent the war by being human shields. I suspect that our men and women in uniform, who are risking their lives for the safety of the American people, will be only too glad to help them along with their wish for martyrdom. Whether or not I am completely persuaded of the necessity and/or validity of our complaints against Iraq, I am completely persuaded that these folks are enemies of the United States, and should be treated as enemy combatants in the event of a war, and as treasonous traitors in the event that they return to the US once things have been resolved, whatever that resolution may be.

I’m pawing through old IRC logs, to see if I can find useful recipes for the book I’m working on. I say some really strange things on IRC.

Here’s some samples:

(Someone asking for help with Linux on a Sparc. Don’t ask me why.)
<DrBacchus> ok. I don’t use Sun stuff. I hardly even ever see the sun. I’d make a bitchin vampire. I would not have to change my schedule …

Regarding someone who wanted to write an IRC bot in PHP:
<DrBacchus> A php bot? That’s just wrong. That is evil. Sick and wrong. You’ll go to hell for that. Writing a client/server application in php is, I believe, mentioned by Dante in one of the levels of the Inferno.

And then, later …
<Drizzt321> hey Gunnsi, what would you say to the person that created a php irc bot?
<DrBacchus> Hint: They are going to hell for it. It’s like writing a web server in Word macros

There’s more, but those particularly caught my eye.

It also occurs to me that it would be very nice if MT had something built-in so that I could paste in IRC things, and have it format them correctly.