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Some Surprising Outcomes

None of the big names seemed to have it in them for the Rebel or the Tampa Bay Derby, but the spectacular non-effort of War Pass suggests this questions: did he pull an Afleet Alex (who was clearly never himself during his last-place finish in the Rebel) or is he becoming something of an awkward adolescent?

I remained (indeed, I still remain) very much on Afleet Alex's bandwagon after the Rebel; I recall being quite vocal on the day about how he was a different horse and that this race was a throwout, but in my defense, I was watching the race on the crappy little hospital television while I was in labor, so trying to explain the finer points of my opinion to the nurses was not really an option. In the case of War Pass, I've never been on his bandwagon for the Derby since I suspect he has distance limitations, but he still should have easily trounced this field (my respect for Barclay Tagg notwithstanding, I can't imagine a champion named Big Truck). I was not surprised when the news came back that Afleex Alex was sick during his Rebel effort, and would not be to hear similar news about War Pass in this instance -- a fever earlier in the week has already been mentioned. That great thing about horse racing is that the most predictable outcomes often fall to pieces -- but that's (one reason) why I don't bet favorites!

Here's something that is more surprising: Theobroma is quite a light-colored beer -- really a deep gold. Given that it's brewed with cocoa powder and to a recipe with its origins around 1200 BCE, I was expecting a darker color and heavier feel. It is very, very easy-drinking for something hovering around 10%.

Going to the white house through Tel Aviv

I think you have heard that Sen. McCain is going to visit Tel Aviv soon, oh yes the republican candidate is going to visit Israel just months before the final elections.

He is going to Israel as if it were another state in the United States he needs to win its voters , well technically there is something right in these words , Israel is the 51st state !!

We all know about how influence the Jewish lobby in America despite the fact the Jewish vote percentage in the American elections is not that big as the Jewish population in the United States is only 1.4% from the total American population but again who owns the media ,the biggest weapon in the elections !!??

McCain since last year was the favourite republican candidate from the Israeli point view , after all he is the son of an old friend of Israel , McCain SR was a close friend to Israel who helped the Hebrew state to escape from the USS Liberty curse in 1967 , our dear USS Liberty which was hit by IAF .

Last month Sen.Liberman wrote in Ha'atrz Why lovers of Israel should vote to McCain .

I feel that this urgent visit is a rescue visit , McCain wants to win in this election but he fears the democrats whether Hilary or Obama "especially Obama" .

All the candidates of the American elections are with Israel and they are racing on whom will give more , Hilary's relations with the Israelis are well known and Obama visited Israel from couple of years ,it is as if they go to the White through Tel Aviv !!!

it is bid , I think McCain will go to raise his bid.

Already I think Obama is trying to win again the Jewish votes , especially that it seems some Jews do not like his Islamic roots , also there is some division between the Blacks and Jews "I do not know much about it" and of course we should not forget that Obama's Pastor "who just left the campaign" and Louis Farrakhan, one of his main supporters are not favoured by the Jews and Zionists because of their opinions about Palestine and Judaism

it could cost him a lot of vote and thus it was not a surprise for me to find him calling the Israeli FM to condemn the last attack against the rabbinic school. Obama needs more than Steven Spielberg's support to comfort the Jewish lobby in D.C

The problem is what he or another American candidate can give more to Israel than it is already given !!???

By the way I take this chance to introduce to a very informative site made by Global Voices and Reuters "Voices without a Vote" as its tagline says "Americans Vote. The world speak" , this website gathers blog posts from a round the globe concerning the American elections , what the people of the world saying the most interesting American presidential elections ever , Please visit it.

Technorati Tags: McCain,American Presidential elecions,Presidential elections 2008,Obama,Hilary Clinton,America,Israel,International,Regional,Tel Aviv,White house,Mideast,Middle East

Australia 2008: Hamilton Wins, Disaster For Ferrari

The first race of the season is over and the best script-writers on the planet couldn’t have done a better job. In what can only be described as the first day back at school for most drivers, we saw spins, coming-togethers, random retirements and even swearing on live TV. The 2008 Australian Grand Prix made [...]

Landscape of Conflict

As I watched the scenery from the back of the cattle truck, bouncing into the others in the truck with me as the road became rough, I thought how familiar yet strange the landscape looked. In one moment it reminded me of California, with rolling hills covered with dry, golden grass, and small groves of [...]

BTCC Predictions Competition 2008 : Brands Hatch 1

Forum: Predictions Competitions Posted By: Hazard Post Time: 15 Mar 2008 at 21:47

extension to the family =)

Not only am I soon getting a new surname ( may 24th to be exact) but we also have a new addition to the family… and no I am not pregnant ( even though our daugther wants to have a kidsister or brother at some point). I have taken over a boat. And not just any [...]

clutch problem

Forum: Escort Posted By: doberman_52 Post Time: 03-06-2008 at 04:59 PM

Two Accused In Creba Case Have Charges Reduced To Manslaughter

A far lighter punishment may await two suspects if they’re convicted in one of the most infamous murders in Toronto history.

DualShock 3 Rumbles in April

SCEA announced Tuesday that the tilting, rumbling DualShock 3 controller for PlayStation 3 will be arriving in April in North America.

Will Ferrell slam-dunks his 4th sports comedy

Philadelphia Inquirer - I don’t feel that I have to be nude. Plus, there are some very revealing shots featuring the form-fitting fashions of the Ferrell, who makes a reported $20 million per movie, the chance to flaunt his God-given physique with Heidi Klum in Sports Source: www.philly.com dear prudenceSlate - I [...]

Mazda 6 i runs 15.633 @ 88.520 MPH in the 1/4 mile

A 2006 Mazda 6 i driven by Rob F was added or updated in the DragTimes.com drag racing database running a 15.633 @ 88.520 MPH.

Making Widgets Viral Puzzles Developers

Mary A. C. Fallon at demo.com:

Making Widgets Viral Puzzles Developers

Latest online ad frontier pushes onto social networks

Simple to build and email or embed, Web site widgets and gadgets are confounding developers and popular and obscure businesses alike about what will attract big audiences and big ad dollars.

“Big brands don’t have any advantage over Joe Shmoe. Widgets are experiencing organic growth but we’re not sure what is driving it exactly,” said Pam Webber, vice president of marketing for Widgetbox of San Francisco (DEMO 06), a platform for making, displaying, and distributing widgets, snippets of code created to play video and audio, display photo slide shows, run animations, and display text. Widgets can embed ads or be standalone ads.

While the value of a lot of widgets for users is as diversion, their value to online advertisers is their (hoped for) viral life.

FreeSCI 0.6.3 (updated)

Interpreter for Sierra SCI games.

More about FreeSCI

F1: BMW Sauber and Certina extend partnership

Munich/Le Locle. The BMW Sauber F1 Team is extending its partnership with Certina. The Swiss sports watchmaker has been an Official Partner of the team since it was founded and reaps the benefits of the brand's global visibility, advertising rights and the use of various BMW Sauber F1 Team event platforms. The Certina logo will remain visible on the pit stop lollipop and will now also appear on the helmets and on the cuffs of the overalls worn by drivers Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica. In the words of BMW Motorsport Director Mario Theissen: "Precision timekeeping in every ...

Good news, bad news at expo

Pocono Record - As a provider of computer networking and telephone systems, his consumer base is composed of small and medium-sized Glenn Miller is the manager of Miller’s Paint and Wallpaper in Stroudsburg.Source: www.poconorecord.com Smartphone makers, mobile operators still baffled by iPhoneZDNet Blogs - A local server computer located in proximity to the establishment [...]

Ateliers Ruby Helmets

The little brand blurb that accompanies this new range of luxury motorcycle helmets from Ateliers Ruby (http://www.ateliersruby.com/) is Â"good looksÂ…for everyday heroes and heroinesÂ". Which is just too cute. So is the story behind them. Parisian designer Jerome Coste drew on Steve McQueen iconography, old-school racing cars and quite possibly the six separate head traumas heÂ's survived when he set about developing the Pavillion range of motorcycle accessories for Ruby. He also sold his own motorbike to finance the production of the full carbon fiber shells, the kind used in Formula One racing. The Â"inside garnishÂ" (to quote Coste) is a soft lining of decadent burgundy nappa lambskin, chosen for its comfort and anti-bacterial properties. Henceforth providing a Â"reassuring cocoonÂ". Clearly a design pedant, Coste has given his helmets a unique signature quirk – a small crest that runs along the top, as inspired by the armoury worn by medieval knights. The Pavillion range is available in three colours Shibuya (peppermint, named after the Tokyo Shopping District), Concorde (black) and St Honore (white) and are accompanied by an equally sweet range of twill silk scarves in various retro racing car shades. The helmets are sold at Colette (http://www.colette.fr/) in Paris. Again to quote from the branding blurb: Â"Lady Ruby, your guardian angel wishes you a bon voyageÂ". Bless. By Sarah Wilson

Holden Torana LX runs 8.410 @ 161.920 MPH in the 1/4 mile

A 1974 Holden Torana LX driven by peter papaioannou was added or updated in the DragTimes.com drag racing database running a 8.410 @ 161.920 MPH.

Byron in it for long haul

BYRON: Pioneer finally recognized. Nothing would stop NASCAR pioneer Robert "Red" Byron from racing, not even a debilitating leg injury...

Into the Mexico Unknown

On my way down to the Baja 250 to do some desert racing… the new car is a beast! More reporting to come if possible… stay tuned.

Safe pair of hands

It's official. A Treasury official tells the FT that "this is not the time for a pulse racing budget". This, they did not add, is hardly the chancellor to deliver a pulse racing budget. That though may, curiously, help Alistair...

Paul McCartney’s New PETA Ad: “I Am a Vegetarian”

Order a FREE ‘Vegetarian Starter Kit’ at GoVeg.com. One issue Paul McCartney and his estranged ex Heather Mills aren’t feuding over: animal rights. McCartney, 65, is lending his face to PETA’s new “I Am a Vegetarian” ad campaign. “If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat,” McCartney tells Us. [...]

On Patriotism

by George Kateb

Lead Essay

March 10th, 2008

Patriotism is love of country. What kind of love is that? Some defenders of patriotism who want us to love our country use such terms as fatherland and mother country. Such usage seems to indicate that we should love our country as we love our parents. Do they mean that a country is a person and should be loved as a person is loved? Obviously a country is not a person. There is a metaphor involved. If we notice the metaphor, we see that what we are doing when we liken a country to a parent is performing an act of the imagination. More commonly, the metaphor is not understood as a metaphor. Rather, many people just accept the usage as if it were natural and can and should go without examination. They manage to do two contradictory things simultaneously: they know that of course a country is not a person, yet they act with energy on the belief that it is. The metaphor facilitates an exploitable mental confusion.

Let us repel the metaphors of fatherland and mother country by thinking about love of parents. We might find that it would be fairly monstrous to love a country as one already loves one’s parents (or conversely to model love of parents on the love we are urged to feel for our country). I love my parents â€" if I do â€" because I began my life in infant attachment to them, well before I had a sense of self and a developed mind. They “imprinted” themselves on me; we bonded; only pain ensued from their neglect or abuse, while I was content, if they wrapped me in their enfolding nurturant love. As I grew, I realized that I would be lost without them; I was wholly dependent on them; I loved them. With the onset of maturity, I felt gratitude towards them. I knew that without them there would literally have been no me. Love of parents is an obligation that is more than an obligation and should not be felt as one, except under the most trying circumstances. Love should overwhelm all feelings of reluctant duty. Despite conflicts and frustrations I loved my parents; if the difficulties were too great and I became alienated or even hostile, my feelings would remain at least ambivalent. (Is there ambivalence from the start?) I realized that alienation or hostility was an open wound; only reconciliation could heal it. Perhaps it could never be healed, to my inestimable loss.

Are such feelings properly transferred to a country? Should love of country overwhelm all self-centered reluctance? In particular, is gratitude, a kind of love, the right emotion to feel towards one’s country? Although children are not usually asked to die for their parents, and most parents wouldn’t accept the offer if it were made, some defenders of patriotism imagine the state as a super-parent that may ask its children to die for it. The idea of patriotism is inseparable from killing and dying for your country. A good patriot is a good killer.

I do not literally owe to my country my coming into existence. It’s true that I could not go on if I didn’t live in some society, but my genes are not politically identifiable; a country is not a biological entity. My parents could have moved after I was born; my country could have lost the territory in which I was born; I could have been abducted and raised elsewhere. My parents are one thing, my country another, altogether different. A country would not exist without its people; the reverse is literally false and appears true only by metaphorical distortion.

A famous assertion that the feelings towards parents are the right feelings towards one’s country, but with even greater intensity, is Socrates’ speech in the Crito. In various diluted forms, the sentiment he expresses so radically appears, at least residually, in many defenses of patriotism. Some attention to it, though not solely to it, helps us to see why patriotism is urged by theorists and why many people feel it. As he waits to endure capital punishment when he could escape it with the help of friends, Socrates impersonates the city and its laws, and lectures his friend Crito while also lecturing himself, and says things he never said before. In the speech, he says “your country is to be honored more than your mother, your father, and all your ancestors, that it is more to be revered and more sacred . . . that you must worship it” (51b-c). The city is the mother of all mothers and the father of all fathers. What makes it so? Its laws establish the institution of marriage and provide guidance in the rearing of children. Without the city, it would seem, no one would exist - or at least no human being would grow up as a person with an identity, a role in life, and a purpose for living. The city gives a person more than parents do, and what it gives is parental in nature. The major meaning is that obedience to it under all circumstances is required, above all, as an exaction of gratitude. The ultimate exaction is to die in war or punishment; one must be ready to endure in a grateful spirit whatever the will of the parent-city commands.

Socrates’ speech takes in earnest the metaphor of the city as parent, while insisting on an un-enlightened, un-democratic conception of the powers of parents. He moves in the direction of likening children to slaves and hence citizens to slaves. Citizens are owned because they owe their very lives to the country. The double meaning is that without the country they would not now be alive, and that therefore if the country needs or wants to take their lives it can do so. What it gives, it actually lends; what it lends, it can take back. One’s life is not exactly a debt that one owes and that only one’s death can discharge, but it is only a conditional gift.

Where Pericles in his Funeral Oration can urge devotion to the city even at the expense of one’s life, he is sure to avoid all endorsement of slavishness in his appeal to Athenian patriotism. His oration mixes elements that are, in turn, erotic passion for the city, aesthetic wonder at its beauty, and a mystical loss of self in its sublimity. But one strong element is the invocation of the practical advantages that people enjoy by living in a democratic city that elevates them above a life of humiliating inferiority to their betters and affords them a chance to live decently and make the best of themselves. He breaks the back of the parental metaphor because it is inappropriate for adult citizens in a democracy, even though he urges them to risk death for the sake of the city’s defense of itself as an empire, and rather maniacally asks them to keep on replacing the dead warriors with new children. At the same time, he speaks to an audience that, if Plato is to be believed, had already re-defined the relation between parents and children in a democratic manner, thus liberating children from unquestioning obedience and subjection to the unexplained will of their parents.

I do not think, however, that Pericles’s defense of patriotism, though it is far more enlightened and democratic than Socrates’ servile advocacy of total submission to the parent-city, settles the matter of the validity of patriotism.

I believe that buried pretty far down in some modern defenses of patriotism is a sentiment rather close to what Socrates is expressing in the Crito, if not exactly the same. The best recent defense of patriotism, Maurizio Viroli’s For Love of Country, bases itself on the metaphor of country as fatherland, as fidelity to the legacy of the political fathers, who are supposed to bind succeeding generations by a kind of filial piety. An intensely American philosopher, William James (in “The Moral Equivalent of War”), can think that it is good for young people especially to feel that they are “owned” by their country. I find it surprising that such a clear-headed thinker, democratic through and through, can voice such a view. But the much larger surprise is that we find in him, where we shouldn’t, a defense of the idea that, being owned, we owe the state or the country a debt, a “blood-tax” that must be paid when the state demands it. A blood-tax, however, isn’t an exaction of gratitude. Rather, the patriotic heroism of dying prematurely or risking death is the best definition of being a man. If James doesn’t follow Socrates in saying that the state, as our parent, gives us our lives, he exceeds Socrates by suggesting that in being owned by the state, we owe it a blood-tax, not merely a grateful readiness to die when it commands. For James, only death or its risk proves patriotism.

Socrates’ position in the Crito and the sentiment expressed by William James and other advocates of patriotism share the idea that we do not own ourselves. We come into the world already obliged after a certain age to serve the country and feel patriotic passions for it. I associate this notion with traditions of thinking that have not yet arrived at the idea that political society owes its rightful existence only to the consent of the people, originally and continuously thereafter. Through consent, the people own the state, which is its servant, not its parent or owner. The premise is the principle that each person owns himself or herself. From self-ownership is derived the idea of political consent, freely given or withheld or withdrawn, and it is formulated variously by theorists of the social contract, from the seventeenth century and after. The most relevant theorists are the Levellers, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. The most formidable social contract is the United States Constitution. I hazard the thought that all defenses of patriotism finally rest on the rejection of the idea of individual self-ownership, even though people have patriotic feelings that can and do emerge without the assistance of any theoretical defense.

The common thread in contract theory is that the obligation to obey can derive only from consent, expressed or tacit, and always given by the individual, whether as a personal pledge or a pledge given in association with other like-minded people. Every person is born equally free by the very nature of his or her humanity. The first enemy of the social contract is therefore patriarchy, the assertion that the state, usually a hereditary monarchy, exists by the will and grace of God; the ruler is father of his country; as father, the king rules without consent, just as children did not and could not choose their father (or mother); as patriarch, what is more, the king owns the people of the kingdom and their property. They belong to him and they ought to feel grateful for his protection. The king’s only obligation is to God; otherwise he may dispose of the people and their goods as he sees fit. In battle with this outlook, the theorists of the social contract tried to kill not the king exactly, but the view that the king is father in the image of the God who is the lord and father of mankind, the source of life and death.

A great irony is that, try as it might, the theory of the social contract never wrestled free of the claim that the people owe their existence to the state and hence that the state owns the people. While the contract theorists unmistakably struggle to establish the proposition the state does not own the people, they nevertheless also say - and I think, inconsistently - that it can require citizens to die to preserve it. All the theorists accept this requirement. It is as if by eroding the idea that the king is father and owner of the people and owes his authority to God’s grace, they feel the compensatory need to replace devotion to the king by some other bond that would yield a moral obligation to sacrifice oneself for the state. The claim is that such a bond is created by a person’s consent to live under a state. The basis of the state in rational choice is turned into the basis for morally allowing the state to cause the death or the risk of death of citizens. Our choice to preserve our lives is turned by the contract theorists into a choice to assume an obligation to die for the sake of what supposedly, in the first place, exists in order to preserve us. Necessity gives birth to the state but the state gives birth to another kind of necessity, which is a dangerous and recurrently lethal necessity. The state for all does not preserve all lives, and loses or wastes a good many.

There is cruelty lodged in the heart of the theory of the social contract, even though it seeks to demystify the state and to replace the traditional awe of the parent-state by clear-sighted understanding of the state’s rational purpose. The language of obligation supersedes the language of gratitude and devotion. But the mentality of self-sacrifice perhaps takes on a greater strength when it is made to flow logically from the obligation that choice creates. The social contract tends to become a more ingenious trap than any appeal to the patriotic love of country rooted in filial loyalty, whether in its pure Socratic form or in the various dilutions of it that are always current. Just because parents usually don’t ask their children to die for them, and consider it an unspeakable tragedy when any child dies before its parents, the metaphor of the state as parent must contradict its literal source: parents feel horror at the death of their children. The theory of the social contract must confront and try to overcome a different contradiction: a contract for life is also, and inevitably, a contract for (premature violent) death. The upshot is that the social contract can become a more bloodthirsty theory, despite its apparent dispassion, than the idea of the parent-state (or owner-state), because its contradiction seems more successfully resolvable on the theoretical level. Children are not supposed to die for their parents but equals are supposed to die for one another.

Yet the theorists of contract knew that consent would not supply the passionate energy that is required to discharge the obligation to die, if need be. Hobbes and Rousseau, more than the Levellers and Locke, proposed techniques of indoctrination in political mystique in order to shore up what they knew was, to begin with, a quite shaky scheme by which the choice to live turns into an obligation to die. The mystique of patriotism, shored up by civil religion, mattered most to Rousseau because he was keenly aware of the cruel irony lodged in the heart of the theory of the social contract, as Hobbes was; but, at the same time - and here is another irony - Rousseau was much more eagerly insistent than Hobbes to provide a worked-out rationalization for the obligation to die that did not depend on the mystique of patriotism. Hobbes went this way and that on the problem of conscription and its possibility of death, as if to suggest that the problem really was not soluble at all within the framework of consent and contract - or perhaps within any theory.

Rousseau in The Social Contract (Bk.2, chap. 4) asserts that by dying to preserve the city, its citizens are merely giving back to the state what they received from it. In his theoretical desperation, he thus returns us to the pre-contract idea that the state owns the people: because it has given them life, it may take life away from them, if need be. To this old mystique, Rousseau then adds the enlightened rational calculation that without a state, they would have had to risk their lives in the anarchic condition in an eventually vain attempt to preserve them. Don’t people gain from collective strength? Don’t they reduce their chances of dying by living in a political system that their consent has created? Yes, they do - that is, some do, but some don’t. The dead have been sacrificed for others, and therefore the whole egalitarian logic of the social contract is violated by a majoritarian calculation. It is a best bargain only for those who live, not for those who died before their time. And so Rousseau works to bypass the dilemma by advocating a tight communal life infused with patriotic love of country. His theory is a tremendous effort to make political life more fair and less arbitrary. But in many respects the life he advocates is finally not more rational. It is as irrationally based in devotion and gratitude to the city as other societies are, or even more so. Even worse, his theory may seduce us, by its promise of justice, to grant the blood-tax it levies. I doubt, however, that Rousseau’s version of the blood-tax joined to his sketch of the best bargain can succeed in theoretically reconciling the social contract with the obligation to die for the state.

If neither the metaphor of the parent-state nor the idea of the people’s consent to government can justify killing and dying for the state, patriotism has not run out of resources. Whatever theory says, patriotism will prevail. One main reason is that it is a usually tacit ideology and flourishes without philosophical assistance. The theoretical debate about patriotism directly interests only thinkers who concern themselves with questions of political and moral philosophy, and publicists who are eager to promote some policy or other. The debate about patriotism reaches undeniably to some of the most profound speculative matters, yet patriotism itself proceeds as a brute fact of life. The trouble is that this brute fact contributes to the erosion of the sentiment that government exists by consent and has the status of servant to the people. But haven’t I just said that the manifestation of consent, the social contract, tends to rationalize killing and dying for the state? Yes. But I think that properly revised, it need not; the revision must build on the ambivalent work of Hobbes and the ambiguous work of Locke, as I have elsewhere tried to suggest. In any case, modern liberty can’t do without the premise that government rightfully exists only by means of popular consent to a system of government that routinely works through continuous popular consent. The point is to show that patriotism facilitates the erosion of the idea of rational consent, and does so by means of an improvident and un-reasoned acceptance of a second social contract that usurps and inhabits the body of the original one that created the system of constitutional democracy.

The brute fact of patriotism is made brute by the inveterate inclination in men to associate virility with the exertion involved in killing and risking death. No theory can ever defeat or discredit this inclination, which helps to engender the fantasy that the competition of political units is the highest kind of team sports. Men love teams, love to live in a world where they are called on to back or play for their team against other teams, even though the sport of war is soaked in blood. Socratic notions of gratitude or Jamesian notions of infinite indebtedness are not necessary for this love. In the sport, where aristocrats used to play their games, elites now mobilize groups or masses to slaughter each other. Men can become peace-loving for a while, but not forever. The women who love them encourage their inclination to see team sports as the essence of their masculinity, and to call patriotic this inclination when it is projected into politics. The pity is that men lend their energies to a state that sooner or later embarks on an inherently unjust imperialist career and thus gets constantly engaged in policies that are deliberated in secrecy, and sustained by secrecy and propaganda, and removed from meaningful public deliberation. Patriotism is indispensable for sustaining this career of anti-democracy.

In general, an activist foreign policy works tirelessly to de-legitimate any constitutional democracy. Patriotism is the greatest asset in the internal and ever-present war against the sentiments and institutions of free government. The support of one’s team is not the defense of the Constitution. What gets hollowed out is government by rational consent, while a number of basic freedoms are steadily attenuated. The original contract for constitutional democracy is usurped, and replaced, in significant part, by a second contract for expansion and predation. It is bad enough that the original contract is interpreted to mandate dying for one’s country. Much worse is the displacement of the original contract. The spoils of activism and imperialism intensify political and economic inequality while immunizing leaders from their accountability to citizens, to an ever greater extent. Citizens become followers. Leaders and followers live in different worlds. Citizens allow the patriotic thrill of team sports to obscure the radical alteration that descends on the original contract, while acquiescing in the gains of large and sometimes sinister interests that use patriotism in their appeals for support. The great theorists of the social contract would have been horrified; they didn’t quite have such a drastic mutation in mind - not to mention the anti-imperialist Socrates in his espousal of the parent-state.

Patriotism, more than any other passion in political life, makes virtues do the work of vices while promoting the praise of vices as disguised virtues. It thus sustains enormous moral perversity. If no one were a patriot, the world would be better off than it now is, when almost all are patriots. Theorists shouldn’t join in.

â€"

George Kateb is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics, Emeritus, at Princeton University and author of Patriotism and Other Mistakes.

Reverse Grids: Viable Or Not?

Patrick Head of the Williams team has suggested today that reverse grids might be a good way to spice up the races, putting the fastest driver in qualifying at the back and the slowest at the front. This would mean the duration of the race is made up of the fastest driver trying to negotiate [...]

Land Rover’s 2009 Freelander 2 / LR2 introduced at Geneva!

The 2009 Land Rover Freelander 2 makes its world debut in Geneva at the 78e Salon International de l’Automobile (March 6-16, 2008). The exterior and interior enhancements for 2009 reflect the premium character of the vehicle. High quality new materials and colours combine to create a refined environment within the cabin. More than 76,000 Freelander 2’s [...]

The Night I Understood REDUX

Mike's Note: I'm up at Linwood House for a couple of days trying to get some writing done. I've been going through my files looking for some material, and I just came across this post I wrote a two or three years ago. I can't find it on the blog, but I'm sure I posted it. Regardless, here it is again. A lot has changed since then, but, true to the point of the post, L's journey continues day to day, good ones and bad.

I took the long way to Hastings Street.

I started out in Toronto on Bay Street a long time ago, Now it’s 3 o’clock in the morning 12 years later, and I’m on Hastings in Vancouver. Actually, that’s not entirely true. I started out earlier on Hastings, and now I’m at Vancouver General Hospital, after a brief stop at St. Paul’s Hospital.

Late last night the phone rang at about 10 pm. It was L, and she was in trouble. L is one of our friends from the Downtown Eastside (DTES). She’s had been off heroin for a couple of months, and Sue and Jen had been spending a lot of time with her. We have a  rule, though. After dark, Sue and Jen don’t go down to the Eastside alone, so I went along. L told us she had been assaulted, and Sue wanted to see her and determine if she needed to go to the hospital.

We picked up Jen at our usual meeting place and together we drove down to L’s apartment in the heart of the DTES. I sat in the car outside the building while Sue and Jen went up to see her. The scene on the other side of the windshield from me was a typical one for this time and place. On the corner was a girl who couldn’t have been any older than 16 or 17. She must have been new here, because she still looked scared. She looked at me tentatively to see if I was a potential customer, but I smiled and waved her off. Behind her two men came staggering down the sidewalk, looking like the only thing holding them up was each other. Another man - a boy, really - crossed the road in front of me, holding a needle in his hand. Two mounted police officers on huge horses came along the street, but I seemed to be the only one who noticed.

Soon Sue and Jen were back, with L between them. She needed medical attention, and so our tour of downtown hospitals began.

Now its several hours later and I’m sitting in the emergency room at VGH waiting for the three women to return from down the hall. I’m thinking about what I’ve seen and heard this evening, and my mind is racing. I’ve seen L treated with contempt by overworked hospital staff. I’ve heard L reveal more of what happened to her as the evening dragged on. I’ve considered the long list of L’s issues: She is heroin- and alcohol-addicted. She comes from an alcoholic background and is estranged from her family. She is a victim of childhood sexual abuse (at the hands of a priest). She exhibits some signs of mental illness. She is uneducated. She is unemployable.  As an off-reservation native she has no cultural support, other than the disproportionate numbers of First Nations people on the streets of the Downtown Eastside.

And then it hits me: The best-case and worst-case scenarios for L are virtually identical. For a minute I don’t know what to do with that, but eventually I can breathe again and I digest that thought as another piece of the reality of this place, of this situation.

Well intentioned people sometimes ask me about our “success rates” in working with this “population”. I’ve had to rethink that. If our friend L is alive at the end of the day, well then I guess it’s been a good day. That is success here.

In Matthew 10 Jesus says, “Give a cool cup of water to someone who is thirsty, for instance. The smallest act of giving or receiving makes you a true apprentice. You won't lose out on a thing.” (v. 42, The Message) I’m struck by the fact there is no “so that...” at the end of his sentence. As in, “so that they go on to become productive members of society”, or, “so that they go on to be self reliant”, or, “so that they get off the street and stop bringing down the property values around here.” No, just give them the water. That is our role, our responsibility, and Jesus tells us it is the exercising of this responsibility which makes us his followers.

Jesus also tells us that we will always have the poor with us (Matthew 26:11). Some have used that as an excuse to not do anything about the issue of poverty. But, Jesus was actually quoting from Deuteronomy 15:11, which says “There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be open-handed toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.” Finally, in the telling of the parable of The Sheep and The Goats in Matthew 25, Jesus makes this statement: “Then the King will say, "I'm telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me--you did it to me.'” (v. 42, The Message)

L has spent her whole life being overlooked and ignored. In our culture which chooses to look the other way she simply does not exist. However, if I look away, it seems to me I am choosing to look away from Jesus. It seems very clear to me. When I look into L’s eyes, and the eyes of her friends, I see Jesus.

banana belt number 2

post race grime Originally uploaded by iraryancycles. another sunday morning up at 6 am to get ready to head to the race. to add to the feeling of earlyness, day light savings started that morning at 2 am. ouch. daniel and i were supposed to drive out together to conserve a little energy as apposed to riding [...]

The Tour de Toronto

Stage racing, Canadian style.

Seth Grimes

Intelligent Enterprise - For instance, address-validation services, tax-rate-calculation services, stock-transaction services This is the destination for the new Internet, and the next frontier for existing SaaS players.Source: intelligententerprise.com China 7-day repo rate set at 2.3123 pct vs 2.3810 pctQuamnet - In relation to the stock quote service (the “Quote Service”) information, the stock price, trade [...]

Irish Road Rover (2008)

The 2008 running of the Irish Road Rover 5k was this morning in relatively warm but very windy conditions. The team competition was broken into 3 separate types of teams, club teams, open teams and corporate teams. The usual suspects in the top of the USATF-ME circuit races, Dirigo R.C. and Triad Racing, were conspicuously [...]

Utah Jazz: Suns counting on Gira

More... (http://www.sltrib.com/ci_8501921?source=rss) ______ Posted automatically by Salt Lake Tribune RSS feed. For more Jazz news, see: *Salt Lake TribuneÂÂ's Jazz Section (http://www.sltrib.com/jazz)*

Champ Car files for bankruptcy

Champ Car World Series sold its assets to the Indy Racing League for six million US dollars - and has more than $10 million in debts - it was revealed this week, when the company filed for bankruptcy in the United States. CCWS was founded four years ago, on the back of CART (Championship Auto Racing [...]

Nina Ricci

Tania Elsa, racing for her second outfit Loving the make up Siri, did not get to see who did the make up ( got here too late ) don't know if it was Peter or Rudi ( perhaps it was...

Blogging excellence and my eight random things

Southern Thailand

This has been a crazy busy month what with security snafus, work, work and more work. Nothing new or unusual there. And, as usual, I’m behind.

At the first of the month, Steve Tiano tagged DWB as one of his top ten excellent reads with the Excellent Blogger Award going around. Thanks Steve! Steve’s blog on book design is at the top of my excellent reads too. Well written, well researched, all good.

My top ten excellent reads are pretty easy to spot as all are in my sidebar: Joanna Young Confident Writing, Mark McGuinness Wishful Thinking, Jeff Andrews Sugar Frosted Goodness, Stefan Bucher Daily Monster, Jeff Fisher bLog-oMotives, David Airey David Airey and Logo Design Love, Tina Roth Eisenberg swissmiss, Eric Karjaluoto ideasonideas, Debbie Millman Debbie Millman … there’s a ton more on my mind but I’m limited to ten, so …

Then, before the weekend, Mark McGuinness from Wishful Thinking tagged me with Eight Random Things.

My eight random things took a bit of thinking. Random doesn’t mean something you might not already know, right? Anyway, here goes …

• Marrying young (so I’m told), I’m the mother of one son and a grandmother of two beautiful little girls. My talents as a mother inlaw are still undecided.
• If I had my way, the national dress would be PJ’s. Any national dress.
• I love sharp cheddar cheese, Shiraz and Chardonnay, dark chocolate, durian, berries, artichokes and anything smothered in mayo. I dislike cherries in chocolate, Merlot (or any Merlot blend), Miracle Whip, raw fish, well, pretty any meat that is raw. I love Thailand, Bengals, antique sports cars, watercolours, design, travel, greenery, sailing, and books on history. Dirt without plants bores me, as do books without sense. I hate the unknown. And sometimes the dark.
• My maiden name is Wentworth. An Anglo-Saxon name, it was well established before the Doomsday Book of 1086. I’m now a Morley, a relative newcomer to the British Isles.
• My great uncle is Tom Sifton of Harley fame. After relocating to the US as a teen, I had the honour of listening to his racing stories.
• Before I settled into the design industry, I worked as a Mudlogger (Hydrocarbon well logging technician). Now you need a degree in geology to pull it off, but back then, I memorized the Shell Guide, sleeping with it under my pillow for comfort. These days I get my geology kicks by reading over hubbies shoulder.
• I can massacre three languages with varying degrees - English, French and Thai. I have a smattering of Japanese, but unless you want to hear me sing nursery songs (I lived in Japan as a tyke), I’m pretty useless at that too.
• I lived through the Great Alaskan Earthquake. My aunt did not. It was my first brush with a tsunamis. The second? While packing to move to Thailand.

For eight random things, I’ll cheat and tag Joanna and Mark and Jeff and Stefan and another Jeff and David and Tina Eric and Debbie.

Thanks Mark, thanks Steve!

---

NEED MORE? Then get over to Designers who Blog to discover hundreds of blogs posting about graphic and web design, marketing, illustration, photography, advertising, branding, writing ...

How I do Directory Submissions

Submitting to directories is one of the most straightforward ways to build links to your websites, however such a practice is not without problems, there is a prevalence of small directories and directory operators who mainly exist to swindle you. For instance a directory operator may constantly launch new directories, focusing all the PageRank they [...]

Bank holds rates at 5.25%

Guardian Unlimited - The MPC has missed an important opportunity to underpin business and consumer confidence, and limit the potential damage to the economy,” said David Kern, the BCC’s economic adviser.Source: www.guardian.co.uk Noah’s Ark Contest Adds a Little Color to the ‘Lil Luvables Workshop’Forbes - Workshop(R) is bringing the ‘Lil’ Luvables Stuff-N-Fluff Workshop’ [...]

Those Who Don’t Learn From The Past

There’s battle lines being drawn Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong Young people speaking their minds Getting so much resistance from behind I think it’s time we stop, hey, what’s that sound Everybody look what’s going down - Buffalo Springfield, “For What It’s Worth” What’s the saying? “Those who don’t learn from the past are destined to repeat it.” Sort of like the [...]

Big Waves & Wind Roll Into South Beach @ Sail Karma

Friday Racing Action from Sharon Green / UltimateSailing.com2008 Acura Miami Grand Prix- Race Day 2 - Paul CayardThe breeze was in first thing this morning. We got underway with the first race of the day right at 1035 with 22 knots from 170 and BIG waves. All the Farr 40's were on #4 jibs and downwind was flat out planning. Opus of Germany won the race and we had a decent performance to get 6th while the two leaders from yesterday, Mascalzone Latino and Barking Mad were back a bit.For the second race of the day, the wind had moderated a bit and half the fleet went with a #3 jib which is slightly bigger than a #4. The wind actually was down in the 18 knot range, from 180, and those of us with the #4's struggled a bit up the first windward leg. We had good positioning on our approaches to the windward mark all day, avoiding the big starboard tack line up which was extra painful today with the big waves on starboard tack. We had a good run and changed the jib to the #3 for the second beat. We sailed fast and the correct way, which happened to be to the right and moved into third place by the second windward mark. Again Mascalzone and Barking Mad were back but again Opus was leading and in fact won the second race too!The wind really dropped off for the third race, down to 12 knots and kept moving right...now 190. I got us a terrible start and we were deep...almost last. We were just very late at the committee boat end of the line and even when we tacked to port we had no clear air. So we spent the first beat just trying to get some oxygen and got to the first mark about 24th. Barking Mad had a great start and was out in front right away. We managed to grind our way back to about 14th I think at the finish. I am a bit down on myself about that last race.There were plenty of red protest flags out there today and plenty of people calling the race committee after finishing to say they were protesting. Amazingly, very few protests ever come to fruition. I really enjoy not being involved in all that stuff and so far we have been real clean.I haven't seen the official scores but I think we are still tied for third with Nerone, a few points behind Mascalzone and about 11 behind Opus. Still lots of racing left.For the official results go to http://www.premiere-racing.com/Tomorrows forecast has a front passing over Miami at 0600 with lots of rain and then a sharp wind shift to the NNW and a strong cool breeze for tomorrow. When the wind blows from the NNW here it is offshore and so very shifty. Should be a lot of fun for those who get it right. - Cayard Sailing Website http://www.sailkarma.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss Direct Link

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Sara Hall: Back to the Mountains (Elite Athlete Blog - Entry #4)

Welcome to the official blog of U.S. middle-distance runner Sara Hall. Sara’s list of running accolades include being a former NCAA All- American at Stanford, the 2006 USA 5K road champion, 5th place finisher in the 1500m at the 2007 USA Track & Field Championships and the 2006 champion at the Continental Airlines [...]

The Walpole, Ealing

The Walpole
35 St Mary's Rd
Ealing
W5 5RG
020 8567 7918

by Malcolm Eggs

The Walpole... The Walpole... Every month or two, like a heartbeat under the floorboards, a letter arrives from some erudite Iain Sinclair fan or other, entreating us to visit. We’ve already done most of the London brekistocracy â€" Banners, The Wolseley and E Pellicci â€" and we made it to the New Piccadilly before the grim breakfast reaper turned up with his giant butter knife. But South Ealing was something of a black hole for me. I didn’t know anyone who had anything to do with Ealing. How would I find a willing contributor?

Then, I arranged to have a long-awaited breakfast with my friend Hattie Ellis, who wrote 'Eating England' and 'Planet Chicken'. I suppose I don’t need to spell out the suggested venue â€" if I do, please email me â€" but this was my chance. Getting there involved a train and two tubes. We had food and tea and chatted for a couple of hours and everything was great. Then I returned home and, tragically, in the time between then and now, I became hooked on the mid nineties Playstation game Speed Freaks. Two months were lost racing a cartoon dog through places such as Neon City and Grand Rapids. All that now remains of The Walpole is a memory of an impression, like a kaleidoscope filled with fog.

Digging deep, I remember clinking mugs of tea, stainless steel in the open kitchen and, I think, the colour red on the walls and menus â€" a nice, deep red. I recall friendly staff of the traditional caff sort, a hearty, old-fashioned Full English and yes, it was delicious.

And that’s it. I recommend The Walpole, but hardly expect to be called on as a character witness. Does anyone have a better description?

Pontiac G8 GT runs 13.810 @ 104.150 MPH in the 1/4 mile

A 2008 Pontiac G8 GT driven by NA was added or updated in the DragTimes.com drag racing database running a 13.810 @ 104.150 MPH.

Infiniti G35 S runs 13.538 @ 101.580 MPH in the 1/4 mile

A 2007 Infiniti G35 S driven by Christopher Shull was added or updated in the DragTimes.com drag racing database running a 13.538 @ 101.580 MPH.

Chevrolet Camaro Z-28 runs 12.892 @ 103.550 MPH in the 1/4 mile

A 1997 Chevrolet Camaro Z-28 driven by Tony Noblitt was added or updated in the DragTimes.com drag racing database running a 12.892 @ 103.550 MPH.

James Tillman

Here is a great story about James Tillamn, a local hero who lives in my town. Former Negro League baseball player is living history; Tillman has called Capitol Heights home for 42 years

Across India, they decry unruly MPs

Doctors, academics, police officers, company executives, activists… There is widespread anger amomg people across the length and breadth of India over the unending disruption of parliament by unruly MPs.

Read Across America Day

The Red Bank Primary School joined millions of schools across the country in celebrating the 10th annual Read Across America Day March 3. Volunteers from the community, like Doris Mahoney reading to a kindergarten student, helped mark the birthday of beloved children's book author Theodor Geisel, known affectionately as Dr. Seuss.

AudioSurf Feburary’s #1 Steam Seller

AudioSurf, which we raved about yesterday, is the #1 seller on Steam for Feburary: Indie title Audiosurf had a very good February, indeed. After getting released on Valve’s Steam distribution system, and winning the Independent Games Festival Award for best audio, the procedurally-generated music racing game has just been announced as the top-selling title on Steam [...]

Travis Kvapil Atlanta Preview

TRAVIS KVAPIL, YATES RACING

No. 28 Yates Racing Ford Fusion

ATLANTA MOTOR SPEEDWAY

March 9, 2008

 

Quoting Yates Racing Driver, Travis Kvapil:

Coming off of last weekend’s top-10 finish at Vegas, how confident are you headed into Atlanta this weekend?

 “I feel that we have a really strong team in place and everyone has spent so much time and effort making sure that we do the best we can every week.  We have fast cars and I was able to make some laps at the end of last season during a test session in Atlanta.  Based on the car during that session, as well as the tests and races we’ve been able to run this year, I think we should have a really great car again this weekend.  I’m looking forward to Atlanta because it’s a fun track with multiple grooves that you can drive and it’s a very high-speed track.  I tend to really like the 1.5-mile fast tracks and Atlanta’s one that definitely fits that mold.  I definitely think that we’ll have a car that is strong enough to run in the top-10 again this week, so I’m really looking forward to this weekend.”

 

Quoting Yates Racing Crew Chief, Todd Parrott:

This week the team tested in Phoenix and now heads to Atlanta; what are your thoughts looking ahead to Atlanta?

“We spent two days in Phoenix this week testing and we had a really good test.  We took a brand new car there and we feel that we learned a lot of things that we can bring back to the shop and put into our cars.  All-in-all it went really well.  Looking ahead to this weekend’s race, we’re really looking forward to Atlanta.  Travis was able to log some laps back in November when we went to test the new car there, so we have a bit of an idea of how he’s going to do, and how the car may handle.  I think with everything we’ve had going on the past couple of weeks with the performance of our cars and the performance of our teams, we should have a really great weekend at Atlanta.”

 

 

Kvapil’s Career Record at Atlanta Motor Speedway:

DATE	RACE	ST	FN	STATUS	EARNINGS
10/31/04	Bass Pro Shops MBNA 500	26	32	Running	$66,175
3/20/05	Golden Corral 500	20	42	Crash	$72,460
10/30/05	Bass Pro Shops MBNA 500	40	26	Running	$90,775
10/29/06	Bass Pro Shops MBNA 500	38	32	Running	$79,525

 

                              Starts     Wins       Poles     Top 5     Top 10       Earnings

Career Total:           4            0              0            0              0             $308,935

 

 

NOTES OF INTEREST:

·       Kvapil has an average starting position of 31.0, and an average finish of 33.0 at Atlanta

·       Kvapil has completed 959 of 1300 career laps at Atlanta (73.8 percent)

·       Kvapil’s best finish at Atlanta is 26th which he accomplished in the 2005 Bass Pro Shops MBNA 500

·       Kvapil will drive the No. 09 entry for Roush Fenway Racing in the Craftsman Truck Series this weekend

 

CHASSIS #531

Chassis #531 is the chassis the No. 28 Yates Racing team will be running this weekend for the Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.  This is a brand new chassis for the team this weekend and has not been tested.

CASS NOVA AND THE DANCING GIRLS

CHECK OUT SCRIBBLERS’ NEWS AT BOTTOM OF THIS POST !!!! Me and the girls? One day they’ll be the death of me. One day I just won’t come back, that’s for sure. Take Julia, for instance. Gorgeous â€" in every way. She was a dancer in a local club. I met [...]

Nothing’severgonnastandinmyway(again)

“I’d tell you the name of this next song, but if you don’t figure it out by the end of the song, you’re too stupid to talk to“. That’s how Jeff Tweedy introduced the song that just happens to be the title of this blog. But that’s for later in this blog. First things [...]

HINTS: In Response to Dave Rodman at NASCAR.com

It’s getting stupid. [HINT: In a few years, nobody is going to care which three years were sponsored by whom. Few care now.] I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, Cup, One Step Down, Trucks. [HINT: Listen up. It gets harder.] Cup is the top division in NASCAR. Cup pays lots of money. Who cares whose cup? [...]

Endurance Racer, Jeff “Mr. 24″ Kerkove interview

MtnBikeRiders.com chit chatted with Endurance Racer, Jeff “Mr.24″ Kerkove to get an idea what this whole endurance racing thing is all about. Jeff is also a fellow blogger and his site resides on….www.JeffKerkove.net Check out the interview… Please tell us about yourself, who you are, what you do. Geez, [...]

5 reasons why business is going green

Hello again, Vincent here. Let’s face it, even with nature knocking on our door, some accountant will still ask what this whole thing is going to cost. Science, facts, morality… it’s not enough. I compare it to smoking; even though everyone knows smoking kills, it took pressureâ€"social, governmental, commercialâ€"for people to quit. And the same applies [...]

Forbes - Arcade Games Make A Comeback

This was spotted by the guys over at Barcade. Forbes has recently posted an article about the popularity of people buying old school arcade cabinets for thier home. I’m sure you’ll all agree; we would all have a collection of retro arcade games in our home if we could, right? [Forbes - Arcade Games Make A [...]

My new camera....

snagged another Sony... DSC-H9....and I love it. 15X zoom....and 8mp. Took a few shots with it on the cruise... enjoy the clarity...and size... boat at full distance...can barely see it....and then at full zoom....:eek:

Still Pretending

     The maneuvers that the big banks are making nowadays, along with their enablers at the Federal Reserve and elsewhere in Washington, really amount to little more than the old Polish blanket joke -- in which (excuse my concision) the proverbial Polack wants to make his blanket longer, so he scissors twelve inches off the top and sews it onto the bottom. Only in this case, the banks are shearing x-billions of losses off the top of their blankets and re-attaching x-billions of new debt onto the bottom. This new debt, of course, goes to cover the old losses and only represents further losses-to-be-reported-later, since the banks are basically insolvent. Borrowing more money when you're broke doesn't make you less insolvent.

      The banks can probably keep this gag running a little longer, but not without consequences. My guess is that it spins out of control in March sometime when some more hedge funds blow up and at least one big bank, perhaps Citi, rolls belly up like a harpooned whale. The game is really over, and all the playerz know it. The consequence of continuing to pretend the meta-fiasco of Ponzi endgame is fixable will be an even more shattering depression than the one we're already in for.

     We are a much poorer nation than we thought we were and the reality is just too hard to face. Nobody from the most august banker (Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson) to the lowliest wanker (the WalMart inventory clerk who "bought" a house outside Phoenix with a no-money-down, payment-option, adjustable rate mortgage) can believe that this is happening. The candidates for president are pretty much assuming that vast financial resources will exist to be deployed against a range of problems. Everybody is going to be hugely disappointed.

    When you introduce perversities into an economic system, they invariably end up expressing themselves as distortions. The economy that evolved the past two decades, driven by the perverse securitization of wishes and frauds, will now express itself in a stark cratering of American living standards. Incomes and jobs will vanish, massive quantities of stuff will collect dust on the WalMart shelves, the fragile infrastructures of daily life will go to shit, and there will be political hell to pay. Every attempt to avoid a straight-up workout of our massive losses, will represent another layer of perversity and more consequent destructive distortions.

     I feel sorry for the next president. Even as he takes his oath of office, the nation will be flying apart like a seized-up engine. Since the fiasco in finance is happening in lock-step with Peak Oil (and very likely because of it at a fundamental level) we can expect one of the distortions to take the form of oil shortages. These shortages will come not just from demand bottlenecks in a stressed-out world oil allocation system, but because exporting nations will start demanding payment in Euros or something besides the depreciating currency that reflects our disintegration, and we'll have a problem coming up with payments that amount to at least fifty percent more than we're used to shelling out.

     Once the US gets into serious difficulties with our oil supplies. every other sector of the economy wobbles, including especially the food-growing sector, which cannot function without copious amounts of diesel fuel and hydrocarbon-based soil "inputs." Americans will go hungry, and not just the "underclasses."

     Along in this process somewhere, there is huge potential for armed conflict with other nations. If the unraveling gets traction while George W. Bush remains in charge, the US may answer bellicosity from oil-exporting nations, or energy-hungry rivals, with truculence of our own. Things can get out of control very fast in such a situation. Nations that were happily selling us salad shooters six months earlier may be targeting our naval vessels with a different sort of shooter, say a Sunburn missile. In any case, we will be acting with a bankrupt, exhausted, and over-extended military, and the best case outcome would leave us merely isolated and marooned geopolitically on our own continent, with dwindling energy and mineral resources and an angry, demoralized population.

      This time around we have more to fear than fear itself. The banking executives, government officials, and candidates for president are not doing the nation a service by concealing and ignoring our losses. Finance, as the driver of an economy, is finished, but the deployment of capital is still an indispensable arm of a real economy. Sooner or later we'll get back to money that stands for something and banks that function as credible repositories of wealth. But we haven't even started down the path to that place, and the longer we pretend that we don't have to go there, the worse the journey will be.

Mario Kart Wii coming

An entertaining Wii game? No way! More piccies in this gallery. Ingame Mii integration, 12 player online gaming, steering wheel, stunts for extra boost, racing karts AND bikes, good shtuff. And it’s coming to Europe this April. Cool. And about bloody time.

It’s all about the shoes…

Twenty years ago my closet was filled with athletic shoes. Basketball shoes, running shoes, football cleats, golf shoes, track spikes, volleyball shoes, even a pair of motocross boots. Some of the shoes were more used than others. The shiny black motocross boots, for example, were like new. They were a holdover from my “gonna-be-a-racer” phase. It was [...]

Rasmussen is in great shape, says Bush

But not that Rasmussen. No, the bicycling prime minister of Denmark, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. He’s just been showing President Bush that Danes are great on their bikes. The two world leaders took a couple of spins around Camp David’s MTB trails. The obligatory official press conference even kicked off with bikes: PRESIDENT BUSH: Welcome. Thanks for coming. A [...]

So Long New Line Cinema

See ya later, New Line Cinema, the house that Freddy Krueger built, and The Lord of the Rings, Austin Powers, Blade, Rush Hour, and more, made strong. We hardly knew ye. That's right, New Line Cinema is essentially over; the "maverick" studio that was founded by indie guys Robert (Bob) Shaye and Michael Lynne in 1967, sold to Time Warner,...

2007 4.0L V6 Mustang Question on Superchargering

Ok, so i've had my 4.0L V6 Mustang for a little over 6 months now, and im ready to start buildin up the power. i know the quickest and easyest way to do this is to supercharge it; unfortunatly, its also the most expensive... and im not quite sure if it is seriously worth it. the only supercharger app for a 07 V6 is made by vortech, which is a non twin screw app. ok, with that said, i have a couple questions: why is there no twin screw app for an 07 V6? second, im only 18 so im DEFINATLY on a budget, so would superchargering my pony really be the smartest choice? for a more affordable project, i've considered swaping my stock exaust for magnaflow dual exaust system, mainly because i want that mustang "rumble", as well as an air intake. at the moment im undecided on what kit to buy there, but im pretty much set on the magnaflow exaust. im not to concerned about the exterior as its already super sexy (its a MUSTANG, duh!!) and im going for that "sleeper" look. so, with all that said, sould someone please give me some advice about this; im open to pretty much anything. if you have any suggestions or advice, please post or email me at grimmreaper1221@hotmail.com. thanks!

Tim Jeffrey: Rocket Rod Davis @ Sail World Australia

Meet Rod Davis, the man with most unenviable job in Olympic sailing at the moment. Direct Link

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Eliminate Laundry from the To-Do List: Laundry Limo Picks up and Delivers

DALLAS, Texas -- The hamper is full, the kids are screaming and the phone is ringing. Who has time for laundry? Laundry Limo, LLC, serving the Dallas/Fort Worth area, has the answer and the time. With one phone call, or click of the mouse, laundry is picked up, processed and safely delivered back home.

1965 mustang coupe

I am new to the Mustang world but I just purchased a 1965 Mustang coupe with I6 and automatic transmission. I plan on rebuilding it for my father's retirement. His first car was a 1965 T5 Mustang that was built in Germany. His Mustang had a 289 with a high proformance 4 barrel carburetor and a 4 speed transmission. I would like to build my Mustang to those specs. If anyone has any information to help me get started, that would be great.

Doping Expert Werner Franke Wants T-Mobile Investigation Stepped Up

Franke wants T-Mobile investigation stepped up BERLIN, Feb 24, 2008 (AFP) - Doping expert Werner Franke wants federal investigators to step up the probe into the doping suspicions hanging over defunct German cycling team T-Mobile. Franke, a professor of microbiology, wants some answers on the conduct of the T-Mobile cyclists who, he claims, are [...]

Ready, lights, ACTION!

Well, another round of tap dancing and singing “pick me, pick me” is over and done. I dashed out of the office and drove down 101 to Silicon Valley and did a relatively quick job interview (90 minutes) this afternoon. No matter what anyone tells you, interviewing is never, fun, it’s not relaxing, [...]

Comparing Prices Online

I am one of those people that shop around before finally purchasing an item. Recently I found out how important price comparing is when shopping online. In an Magazine article a women said after she had bought something online her friend wanted one too so she told her friend where she got it online. [...]

Forsythe Team Won’t Make the Jump to IRL

A high profile casualty of the IRL/Champ Car merger has been announced, as Forsythe Championship Racing said yesterday that it would not compete in the upcoming 2008 IRL season. Forsythe was the home of 2003 Champ Car World Series winner Paul Tracy. Tracy had signed a long-term contract with the team, and was expecting to go racing this season.

Forsythe’s vice president of operations, Neil Micklewright, said “After 13 years of competition in CART and the Champ Car World Series, the team has been unable to secure the necessary sponsorship to be able to compete in the Indy Racing League IndyCar Series in 2008.”

Forsythe has struggled to gain sponsorship attention, since it lost its long-time backer, Player’s, after anti-tobacco legislation forced the company to pull out in 2004.

The team has plans to make the Champ Car finale in Long Beach its final event.

+ Autosport:: Forsythe team to close down

If you’ve got an idea for Question of the Day, a funny photo for Caption It, or just want to share a news tip, let us know at windingroadtips@gmail.com

And into the lead... @ $$$ The Daily Sail $$$

Bundock and Ashby turn on the gas and take pole with one day to go at Tornado Worlds Direct Link

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Sunny Side UP please!

  It's that time of year when even my EGGS better be sunny!
  Ask ANY Michigander and they will tell you that they are pretty much SICK of winter and need sun!
  Thankfully the past couple of days (in between a big snowfall) we had some Sweet, glorious SUNshiney rays.
  We spent a good part of Sunday outside, and even though it was around 35 degrees,  the sun was out, and so were we.  it was like crawling out of a cave into the light,
we definitely needed that.
We walked around Kensington Park, if you live local and haven't been there,  you should check it out,  It's HUGE!
They have an outdoor skating rink on the lake that is groomed and has music piped out on it so you can skate to some nice tunes.  very old school,  i like it!
   The trails are groomed, so it's nice for walking the dog, or just going for a walk your self.
  In fact the day was SO beautiful I couldn't bear to be away from the sun,  so I made Ian pack up the kids and take me for a country drive so I could watch the sun set.
  (i know that's not very enviromentally conscious to be driving around.....but it was very mentally needed!)
  I love that not even 5 minutes from our house you can see large fields and barns......







sunny shadows were cast on silos and 
the sky was so amazingly blue....

it just made your eyeballs feel good just looking at it!

it left us with a last little glow of cotton candy pink before it finally went down.
  So the past couple of days I've tried to re-create that sunny feeling and surround myself with sweet springy fabrics,  because I just NEED it.
I even bought myself a little patch of grass at the local market because I also NEED a little bit of green!

unfortunately even though I was surrounded by fabric-loveliness, I only managed to make 4 pillows!
I am definitely stumped creatively at the moment
(even though for the past 2 nights in a row I have woken up at 4 A.M. with my thoughts racing over projects! UGH!)
So here are my 4 little pillows.....
it's a start

the pretty Heather Bailey, and Amy Butler fabrics are just so yummy.

just working with them makes you feel all springy inside!

these pillows would look so nice on MY bed,  but I am faithfully bringing them down to the shop today.
lumpy and all!
(my pillows aren't perfect that's for sure, they're handmade, so i guess that's part of the package, RIGHT?)
:)

but collectively, I think they look O.K. together, So
please forgive them of their sins won't you?

i DID pay a lot of attention to detail in other areas!
now honestly, I can't remember life without the B.S.R. foot!  (the bernina stitch regulator)  it allows you to sew free-form.  I am totally in LOVE with this product.
Mind you,  I still need lots of practice,  but I've gotten my toes wet,  and I LOVE it!
  Well,  on that note,  I should end this post,  gotta get the kids dressed...and head to work.
  I will be bringing the Birds back to the shop today for all of you locals who missed them.
Pierre and Tulip will be finally back to the shop to chirp and sing for your pleasure in their new deluxe cage.
I can tell even THEY missed being there and having people talk to them.
  They definitely give the shop a springy feeling.
Enjoy your day all!
xoxoxo
c.