October 2006

There were 44 posts published in October 2006 (this is page 3 of 5).

Global Warming

I’m finally getting around to reading Al Gore’s book, An Inconvenient Truth [warning: music]. I had been unsure about man’s effects on global warming, thinking that the earth warms and cools all the time. Then Gore sprung one of his “aha!” graphs on me: a graph showing the direct correlation of global temperatures and carbon dioxide content derived from Antartic ice cores. Every time there was an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, the temperature spiked as well, this from a core drilling that spans hundreds of thousands of years.

The other “aha” moment was the mentioning that as the atmosphere gets warmer, it can hold more moisture, which means the moisture in the ground will be drawn into the air. This makes for dry, cracked ground and more unarable land, not what a world with a growing population needs.

Say what you want about the guy everyone jokes about having invented the Internets, but Gore’s science is sound. That’s what makes it so scary. It’s not just hype. If we keep burning CO2 the way we are, we are on a collision course with disaster.

Something’s got to change.

North Korea

Thank goodness the U.N. Security Council voted to impose sanctions on North Korea. Otherwise, we might have to bomb them back to the Stone Age.

Whuzzat? Oh yeah, that’s right. They never left the Stone Age. Sanctions against them, especially ineffective sanctions aren’t going to bother them one whit. North Korea has a large network of secret front companies. This, coupled with its continuing supply of essential items from China, makes it rather unlikely any sanctions will be effective. But at least we can say we are “doing something.”

Condelezza Rice, the lovely and talented Secretary of State, continues to dazzle with her mental prowess, announcing that “North Korea … is now completely isolated.” Gee, Dr. Rice. Did you happen to notice that for the past fifty years North Korea has been completely isolated? I’ll give Condi’s intellect the benefit of the doubt here, and just assume she’s lying again. Or spinning, if that’s what you call it. There’s a better chance of Pyongyang becoming a spring break destination than these sanctions making Kim Jong-Il cry uncle.

Now, if the U.N. imposed sanctions on bad haircuts, then ol’ Kim would feel the pinch.

Changes In Latitude, Changes In Attitude

I’m going to be changing my latitide quite dramatically in the next few days as I fly from Raleigh to Tampa to Buffalo and back to Raleigh. We did a lot of yard work this weekend and there is still more to be done. I hate walking out the door with things unfinished, but that describes my life, doesn’t it?

The last hours before a trip like this always fill me with dread. Then I get out there and things go fine. I guess I’m still not used to leaving the family and taking off.

Enough babbling. Time to pack and see if I can squeeze a haircut in before my flight.

Is Bush Gay?

I read today where Bush became the Fashion Critic-In-Chief at a Rose Garden press conference. Just because you pay attention to fashion doesn’t mean you play for the proverbial other team (and as the saying goes, not that there’s anything wrong with that). Added with other things, though, it makes one wonder.

What if the reason Republican leaders dismissed Mark Foley’s shocking behavior was because far bigger fish have bigger secrets? What if … Bush is gay? Its been the topic of humor sites for a while now. What if there’s really something to this?

Take Jeff Gannon for instance. This guy had unprecedented access to the White House at all hours. It was obvious by his innane, softball questioning that the gay-prostitute-turned-journalist didn’t get his press credentials by being a good reporter. So why was he there? Who gave free access to the White House to a male hooker with no journalistic experience? There always seemed to be a bigger story here that never got covered.

Jack Abramoff, the scandal-ridden former lobbyist, was said to have organized parties for politicians which included both male and female prostitutes. Ex-congressman and current federal PMITA prison inmate Randy “Duke” Cunningham was the most visible fall guy in the Abramoff scandal. Who else was there?

What if this comes a little too naturally for Bush?

Bush was a male cheerleeder at his all-male prep school. His college roommate was another male cheerleader, Victor Ashe, who became mayor of Knoxville and currently serves as Ambassador to Poland. Ashe is rumored to be gay. Ashe has allegedly visited the White House and Bush’s ranch in Crawford many times. Bush reportedly made many unscheduled visits to Ashe in Knoxville before Ashe was named ambassador. Just good friends, or something more? Author Kitty Kelly, while being no bastion of truth, has written about this seemingly special relationship in her biography of the Bush family.

His mother, Barbara Bush, was said to have told a fellow partygoer that her son is “not like the rest of us.” What if she was referring to more than just his noted lack of intellectual curiosity?

What if that story of Laura Bush taking up in the Mayflower Hotel are true?

I’ve got no problem with it if Bush is gay. I do have a problem with him hypocritically pushing an anti-gay agenda if he himself is gay. There is no smoking gun (heh) evidence that he is gay, but on the other hand I don’t see much that rules it out. It does make you wonder.

Justice For Military Justice?

From the day I first wore the uniform, I’ve always considered “military justice” to be an oxymoron. Military courts are more often than not kangaroo courts. If that wasn’t bad enough, military defense lawyers have to play both sides. How can the military’s defense lawyers be free to defend anyone if their careers could be jeopardized in the process?

Once such case shows the contradiction. Navy LCDR Charles Swift was recently passed up for promotion, a move that shows someone wants him out the door. Swift’s transgression? Nothing more than getting Bush’s unconstitutional military tribunal plan tossed out by the Supreme Court. Swift’s supervisor praised Swift for doing an excellent job, while calling his being passed over for promotion “quite a coincidence” in coming two weeks after the Supreme Court ruling.

Swift will surely have a successful career in civilian courts, the Navy will lose another fine lawyer, and the idea that a military defense lawyer can serve two masters will once again be turned on its head. Thank goodness for men like Swift, who never forget that the oath they took was to uphold the Constitution of the United States, not to uphold an overreaching, power-hungry president.

Bird Feeder Provides Unanticipated Meals For Hawks

I’m working from home today after yesterday’s tricky flight back. As I was reading my email, I saw a startling flutter of feathers out of the corner of my eye. A young female cardinal had come to visit our birdfeeder. In a flash, though, it disappeared into the claws of a swooping hawk! In an instant both were gone, leaving my jaw gaping at the speed of the attack.

Earlier this summer our feeder was swarming with finches and cardinals. Lately, though, they’ve been scarce. Has the hawk scared them off? I wonder how long it’s been lurking, waiting to scoop up an unsuspecting snack. I also wonder if I could somehow convince it to go after the pesky squirrels.

Today is trash day so I went out the back door to fetch the garbage can. As I walked back inside, I noticed my cat peeking out of the still-open door. She would have made for a tasty feast for the hawk had she been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I have to decide now if its still so cool to have hawks in the neighborhood.

Mission Impossible Proves Possible

I did the impossible yesterday: I got home last night when the flight schedules said it couldn’t be done. My schedule in Oklahoma City had me working into the afternoon on Tuesday, well after the last, 10 AM Southwest connection to Raleigh was supposed to have left. As the meeting progressed, though, I could see that I wouldn’t be needed the whole day. Rather than take no for an answer, I sifted through Southwest’s schedules, thinking there must be some way to get home that night.

I’ve done this thing before, so I had a little experience with it. First I looked for Southwest’s nonstop flights from OKC: these cities usually offered the most frequency of flights. From those cities I may find a connection that leads me to Raleigh.

And so I did! A 3:30 flight would take me to Kansas City, from which I could catch a flight to Chicago and then on to Raleigh, arriving at 11:20 PM. Thirty minutes of checking schedules had found me a way home.

I called the Southwest agents and offered my route. The first agent then hit a wall. For some reason the reservation system didn’t like that routing. He mentioned something about an invalid fare choice or something. Being the clever agent he was, though, he found he could book them as separate flights. I would trade my original flight back to Raleigh for a flight into Kansas City, from which I would start a new, one-way booking to Raleigh through Chicago. The new cost would be $180 more since it was a separate flight, so I had to decide if it was worth it. Once I tallied up the cost of my hotel room and car, however, I realized it was a wash. Might as well spend the night in my own bed. I called them back and booked it.

Once I’d made my arrangements, I realized that if I checked my bags, I’d have to re-check them in Kansas City. This would seriously cut into the time I had to change planes. Though the gap was slated to be at least an hour, I didn’t want to take that chance. I couldn’t even check in for the new flight until I got to Kansas City, so I was facing many unknowns.

I went to my meeting and wrapped up my part a bit earlier than I expected. For a change it was nice getting to the airport with plenty of time to spare. Unfortunately for me, my spare time was a bit more than I anticipated, as the flight was by then running 45 minutes late. With that in mind, I opted not to check my bags, thinking my hour layover in KC was now cut to 15 minutes. It was then that I ran into my latest episode of TSA follies.

As I waited at the OKC gate, the 45 minute delay stretched into an hour delay. My incoming plane hadn’t even left the ground by the time of my original departure. I could either stew about things or go with the flow.

I made the best of it by striking up a conversation with an Army Lt. Colonel who was eventually bound for Iraq. I had trouble picturing this guy as an O-5 as he was far more friendly and gregarious than my idea of officers. I bet his troops love the guy. Once our flight boarded, he took another seat and I watched as he talked the ear off the lady next to him, both of them occasionally doubling over with laughter.

I left Oklahoma City around 4:50: an hour and twenty minutes late. Even so, we made it to Kansas City in time for my next flight. I was glad I didn’t check my bags, as I don’t think I’d have gotten them through.

The Kansas City airport is unlike any airport I’ve seen. It was apparently built in a time where airport security wasn’t a big deal, and then security was retroactively addressed with glass partitions. I walked off my plane and walked out of the secure area without even realizing it. It was literally ten paces from the end of the jetway to the unsecure area. Security is provided for each group of gates by its own set of screeners. It is horribly inefficient. And I still didn’t have my boarding pass.

Thus I was facing another security check, and was sweating since my flight was due to take off in ten minutes. There were a good number of Chicago-bound passengers in line with me, though, so that gave me hope. I was heartened to learn that the pilots just in front of me in line were the pilots for my plane. We obviously weren’t going anywhere without them, so I breathed a sigh of relief.

We took off a little late but made up time in the air. I had time in Chicago to grab a bite to eat and make it to the gate. The flight to Raleigh was 1/3 full and so boarding finished early. I had the row of seats to myself and chilled out to music for the hour’s flight back. We got in at 11:00, twenty minutes early. I was asleep by midnight.

It was another of my Rube Goldberg travel days, but it worked out just fine. I decided later that the reason Southwest doesn’t show flights through Kansas City is due to that airport’s funky, unpredictable security situation. In spite of all that, though, my actual travel time was about as low as any of the other flights I could’ve taken. I don’t think I could’ve gotten home any faster any other way.

If life is about the journey and not the destination, I must be doing something right.

Transportation Bureaucracy Agency

I’m at the OKC airport and decided to skip checking my bag this time, as I’ll be pressed for time to catch my next plane in the Kansas City airport. Thus I decided to try out TSA’s new liquids-and-gels-in-a-baggie rule. The nice TSA agent at the front of the checkpoint directed me to the nearby news store where I could get a quart bag. Armed with the bag, I loaded it up with the liquids and gels in my travel kit.

Now, I went out a week ago and bought the appropriately-sized bottles and sizes. By the way, the allowed sizes used to be 4 ounces though this size was changed to officially 3 ounces with little fanfare. Figuring I was legit, I confidently marched up to the screening line.

As I approached a screening point with a couple of passengers in it, another TSA agent kindly directed me to a line down the hall. Working under the assumption that this line would somehow be shorter than the one in front of me with two people in it, I blindly followed his directions.

Big mistake. In my new line a new X-ray screener was being trained, and she insisted on spending a full minute on every bag that crossed her path. The line soon ballooned to 30 passengers. I’m not used to getting to know the fellow passengers in the screening line, so I took advantage to chat while we all waited for the rookie to figure out what she was doing.

After ten minutes, it was finally my turn to go. In went my baggie into the bin with my shoes. Laptop, laptop bag, and roller bag followed. I breezed through the X-ray machine without breaking my stride and waited to collect my bags.

That’s when things turned ridiculous. A TSA agent approached the end of the belt, waving my baggie in the air.

“Whose bag is this?” he asked rather loudly.

“Uh, its mine. Is there a problem?”

I expected to see something really dangerous that I’d forgotten to remove, like my nail clippers. Nail clippers are to airplanes as icebergs are to the Titanic, you know. I was surprised instead to see him dangling my nearly empty tube of toothpaste: one with perhaps one or two molecules of toothpaste left in it.

“You can’t take this with you,” he announced in a voice designed for other passengers to hear.

I tried to suppress a smile. “But it’s practically empty! What’s wrong with it?”

“Its too big,” he told me. “You’re limited to 3 ounces.”

While the tube was indeed a full-size tube, it was so empty it probably wouldn’t even tip the scales. I decided to probe the depths of this insanity.

“I’m pretty sure it has less than 3 ounces of toothpaste in it. Couldn’t you weigh it?”

“No sir,” was the all-too-serious reply. “We go by what’s printed on the tube.”

Aha. So if a container actually has the size printed on the side, it gets scrutinized. But all those anonymous plastic travel containers
with no size printed on them at all can pass right through scot-free.

“All right. Go ahead,” I relented, knowing I would’ve tossed the tube in a week anyway. Knowing he had kept the skies safe from clean teeth, the agent smugly dropped the tube into the trash.

The irony is that if I’d left the tube in my roller bag, it almost certainly would’ve passed through without detection. TSA winds up punishing the people who try to follow the rules.