Both of Us .org

Recently, revelations and investigations into several key republican figures have given me, as wells as most Liberals, reason to believe people are finally waking up to the criminal nature of our current leaders. Issues ranging from the Plame investigation, Frist's shady investment dealing, Delay's fundraising crimes, the crony Miers Supreme Court nomination, the hurricane Katrina disaster and the quagmire in Iraq were coming to a head.

Instead it seems it was all a dream. Back to business as usual, today Bush has nominated a Scalia clone to the supreme court, Samuel A. Alito. Scooter Libby resigned over the weekend and it was no big deal. The conservative pundits are applauding Bush and reminding us how glorious our leader is. NY Times op-ed columnist David Brooks tells us that allegations of a "huge cover-up" concerning the Plame issue are nothing but "swamp gas" and also he declares "One thing is clear: there is no cancer of this presidency".

The the Republican spin machine is in hyperdrive lately and our main stream media is gobbling it up as if there were no tomorrow. Sadly I believe once again America will coast past this damning news and soon it will be lost in the memory hole. I am doubtful any meaningful inspection of the flaws of our system will be addressed. Are we prepared for a major disaster or terror event? Has our government manipulated intelligence as it rushed to war? Are major figures in our government lawbreakers? Will anyone be held accountable?

No, no, no, move along...nothing to see here. Pay no attention to the men behind the curtain. Look, another price roll back at Wal-Mart! God Bless America.

Last night I attended a candle-light vigil for remembrance and memorial of those who have died in the Iraq war. I estimate about 100 Philadelphians gathered in Washington Square. The mood was quiet, respectful and somber. How could it be any different as we were thinking about the 2000+ dead men and women. Dead because they choose to serve their nation as it fights a war in a far away land.

For a portion of the vigil, names of the dead were read from a list. The names of people from all over the USA, mostly young people taken in the prime of life. It took about 20 minutes to read a few hundred names. For a moment I admit I was tired of standing, listening to name after name wondering if they would go through all 2000 of the dead. Then I thought to myself how selfish am I? I was thinking about the tasks I could be doing or getting home to watch some episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with JB. I snapped those thoughts from my head, a vigil in remembrance of the death of thousands of Americans is worth a portion of my evening.

The war still seems an abstract concept to many of us in America. The death of over 2000 Americans should be poignant, yet most of us casually talk about Iraq. In two more years will we be looking at hitting another milestone, 5000 dead? And what of 10 years from now? I have a hard time envisioning anything changing with the Iraq situation as being handled by this current administration. Slowly we bleed, and no one seems willing to nurse our wound.

Check out the story of Bush threatening the Onion.

Protecting the Presidential Seal

Sweating The Small Stuff

Onion Bites Back

More from Google

What will you be?

We are back in the Midwest this weekend, and I find the people here soothingly familiar. I have visited several close friends in Madison, and JSP has been in Oshkosh visiting family.

Tomorrow two friends of ours will be married in Green Bay. I look forward to being a part of that. It would sure be nice to have the right to marry.

The Midwest feels good. I miss it out here sometimes.

One of the social rituals that JSP and I have indulged in since moving to Philly has been going to Quizo at the New Wave Cafe in South Philly. Quizo is a sort of all around quiz game where the announcer asks 5 rounds of questions about pop culture and other topics where you and your team do your best to answer the most questions correctly. It is a groovy atmospere, good beer and one of these weeks we are going win. We are the perennial second and third place team.

I recommend the New Wave Cafe, it is unpretentious, good food and an interesting mix of people from various walks of Philadelphia life.

Tonight was an experiment with tempeh. We both enjoy the taste of tempeh, but sometimes it is difficult to blend it into a meal. I had a pasta salad in mind and noticed the tempeh in the refrigerator and the thought of mixing the two came to mind. In what was a whirlwind of cooking I went forth into the unknown.

I began cooking the thinly sliced tempeh in a mixture of dark sesame oil and chili oil. I made sure to brown both sides well. At the same time I began boiling the spiral pasta, and cut vegetables (roma tomatoes, red pepper, spinach and mushrooms). After the tempeh was cooked, I cut it into smaller segments and decided to further cook it in some left over coconut milk, until the milk condensed into a creamy consistency.

When the pasta was nearly finished, I tossed in the washed spinach to give it a brief cooking in the boiling water. After less than a minute, I drained the pasta and spinach and washed them in cold water. As the pasta was cooling, I started to saute the mushrooms in a bit of oil with some Greek seasoning, to the point where the mushrooms started to sweat.

I added the chopped red pepper and tomatoes to the pasta and mixed. I then added the tempeh/coconut sauce and finally the sauted mushrooms. To this combination I added a teaspoon of powdered ginger and a teaspoon of Chinese 5 season mix.

I added one last ingredient, crumbled fresh goat cheese. I mixed in the goat cheese until it coated the pasta uniformly. A dash of pepper and salt was optional when we finally sat down to eat.

The final dish was served on a bed of red leaf lettuce. Both of us gave our thumbs up on my experimental tempeh pasta salad.

Early this afternoon we decided to do a bit of biking to see the river (because we got a huge amount of rain on Saturday and there was flooding) and also to stop by the grocery store. One would think that on a Sunday about noon, there would not be alot of traffic to contend with. Helaas we were mistaken. It seems there is little room or tolerance for anything but automobiles in our city. We got honked at and the bird flipped our way simply because we were trying to hold a small portion of pavement.

As gas prices have been increasing lately I had noted more bicyclist on the streets and was encouraged to think that maybe people might actually be capable of commuting without their cars. Biking in the city is hazardous however and the more bikes on the streets usually leads to more harassment by automobile drivers. In the last few weeks I have been honked at and yelled obscenities at because I failed to bow to the mighty automobile and yield my right of way.

It is strange that bikes on the road illicit so much anger from drivers. Especially in light of the fact that driving in Center City or South Philly is usually slow because of stop signs every block. Most of the time when I bike home from my work, I am able to travel faster than a car driving the same route.

I think now would be a great time for Critical Mass to organize and promote one of their biking events. The weather is still comfortable for biking, gas prices continue to stay above 3$ a gallon in the city and more people are looking to commute cheaply. When we first moved to Philly and visited the Critical Mass website for the city, they were counting 10-50 bikers at each event. Sadly, I just read the Critical Mass website for Philadelphia and I see they are still doing poorly drawing people to the event.

The last ride in August had an altercation where a car hit one of the bikers and subsequently there was some bad words spoken and the car continued to run over several other bikers. Many of the comments posted on the site told of the incident and also included the strong tone of fear in many of the bikers. The police also seem to have no tolerance for these bike events and often times harass the bikers on their route. The cars totally rule here in Philly, I guess I should be fortunate that I am still relatively undamaged and continue to bike commute to my job.

I sure miss the tranquil bike rides back and forth between my job in Groningen.

The British Library has put Lewis Carol's original manuscript of Alice (in Wonderland) as well as several other manuscripts including work by Leonardo de Vinci online. You can find it here. It takes a minute to learn the interface for turning the manuscript pages, but it is well worth it.

Google and Sun are announcing something big today.

The speculation from Slashdot and elsewhere is that they will be releasing a Java based office suit that will be accessible from any web browser and computer with the Java runtime installed on it.

This could potentially be a big attack on Microsoft's Office suite, but it is hard to know at this point. For more points of reference information check here or here.

This could be huge.

(October 6 edit)

It was not huge, it was hype. However if Google and Sun can get along, in the future they might have something big to show us. It will take more than a stone in a sling to take down this Goliath.