Veterans' Day 2007

Sunday, Nov. 11, 2007 - 12:10 a.m.

In honor of Remembrance Day, and Veteran's Day, thank you to everybody who served in our military.

To Emily, who is still out in the sand.

To Art, who loved this country enough to serve and become a citizen.

To my Dad, who was very proud of the fact that while he was in the USMC, and stationed in Southern California for the entirety of his service, the enemy never got further north than Escondido. Heh.

To Uncle Joe, who, if he'd been honest with the draft board, wouldn't have been allowed to serve during World War II but went and did it anyway, just like many thousands of other closeted-for-life homosexuals.

To Bob Chance, whose stories about *his* service made me think I was sitting near my father again.

Thank you all. Forever and ever.

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We decided to take Saturday off from low-carb, and after waffles for breakfast, chocolate for lunch, and turkey with mashed potatoes and stuffing for dinner, we succeeded in being carbsmacked to an extreme degree.

But we lost eight pounds in a week, so it's imperative that we climb back on the hobbyhorse and seriously consider whether we want to take the next Saturday off from low-carb. It remains to be seen how we'll feel later this morning when we wake up again.

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Received an excellent response from Toren Smith about the oil slick left by the ship:

Just wanted to point out that SF Bay contains approx. 3.5 trillion gallons of water. Which means the oil is...uh...my Windows calculator doesn't have enough decimal places to calculate the percentage of oil contamination. It's really, really small, anyway.

IMHO, the best thing we could do is back off and let nature take care of it. History shows that works remarkably well, whereas hysterical cleanup efforts generally end poorly (see the results from Exxon Valdez where areas left alone recovered in a couple of years and areas cleaned were still recovering after nearly a decade). Speaking of the Valdez, I find it heartening that our last major oil spill occurred nearly 20 years ago. Considering the staggering amount of oil moved by tanker, this is actually pretty damned impressive.

Don't get me wrong, here--an oil spill even of this small size is a Bad Thing. But hyperventilation is to no one's benefit. Spending tens of millions on a pointless cleanup effort is a waste of funds that could be better used for other environmental purposes. To be blunt, there are a LOT of seagulls out there. I fail to see why we should spent $15,000 a bird to save a few dozen soaked with oil. Harsh? Maybe. But realistic.

Never forget Mother Nature doesn't care where she puts oil reefs. There's one off Santa Barbara which leaks more oil in a year than the Torrey Canyon. "But it's all natural!" Yeah, but it's still oil.

Just sayin' is all.

--Toren

For some strange reason, some news agencies out there actually reported this as a spill of heating oil that was massive enough to possibly affect prices this winter. Nope. A complete crock, that.

Thanks, Toren!

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One more thing...

There's a good "Photoshop This..." thread over on FARK, so go enjoy it.

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Okay, done. Have a good Sunday.

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