Month: April 2006

Note To Friends

I usually don’t talk much about my life and family in the blog, but it’s the best way to reach a bunch of friends that I don’t talk to in other ways very much.  Late Thursday night, my wife’s mother died suddenly, after it seemed she was doing very well struggling against considerable long term illness.  The family headed to Iowa, where she lived, to gather together and see about the funeral.  This is the first I’ve gotten online since Thursday, and I don’t expect to be on much more till maybe next Thursday.  Just wanted to let people know.  Thanks for reading and for any good thoughts or prayers coming our way.

Ohio Election Workers Accused of Fudging ’04 Recount

Workers accused of fudging ’04 recount

Wow.  Remember that recount which was demanded by the Green and Libertarian party candidates?  Which they were granted, and it didn’t change anything?

It was apparently fake.  Instead of randomly selecting counties for hand recounts to check whether complete hand recounts were necessary, they did precounts and excluded any county which would have triggered a complete hand recount.  In essence they guaranteed that no hand recount would happen.  And now three of them have been indicted for it.

Via reddit.

(As I’ve mentioned before, I’m torn on the issue of whether I wish Kerry would have won, because if he had, all the rotten stuff that’s happening now as a result of Bush’s mistakes would be happening on Kerry’s watch, and Bush’s supporters would be all “See?  If we’d kept Bush this would all have been fine!” — but then, I guess we might not have all this illegal NSA wiretapping, a right-wing-stacked SCOTUS, etc, etc.  It’s a tough call.)

Boing Boing: Why is it OK to show a man’s breasts on TV? asks Bennett Haselton

Boing Boing: Why is it OK to show a man’s breasts on TV? asks Bennett Haselton

I link this mainly in order to share the following anecdote.

I was watching some plastic surgery show on, I think, the Discovery Health channel, last week.
The particular operation they were showing was breast implants for a male-to-female transsexual.

During the beginning of the operation they showed his chest, nipples and all, and the doctor commented on how tricky it was to do the by-the-nipple style of incision on his small nipples.  They showed the incision being made and all.  But once the implants were in, they blurred out — not the new breasts, but the nipples.  The same exact nipples which were situated moments ago on a flat chest, were now blurred out because they were now resting on womanly breasts.

It really summed up the absurdity of it all.