Like my best friend and other half ah_creator, I haven't been really happy with the way LJ has been evolving over the past few years. The most recent round of flack, around Easter, was enough to motivate me to pack up and start moving my blog elsewhere. That move is now almost complete, enough to make the announcement.

From now on, you can find my blog on my own domain, sailbourne.com. This domain was formerly used for my (presently-inactive) cattery, which can now be found at cattery.sailbourne.com. I've also taken the opportunity to consolidate my old personal homepages, especially the stories of our cats, into this same site.

I'll keep this journal open so that I can easily watch and comment on friends' journals, but it won't be updated any longer. Hope to see you in the new location!

From the AP wire:

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush, dispatching Vice President
Dick Cheney to the Middle East, said the goal is to get
Israelis and Palestinians to hold firm to the promises they've
made toward peace.

Bush said Monday in the Oval Office that Cheney would "reassure
people that the United States is committed to a vision of peace
in the Middle East."

That's the funniest thing I've read in days. Thank goodness my tea isn't cool enough to drink yet, else I'd've probably ruined this keyboard.

Sigh. 315.5 days to go.

A few other tidbits I got from the site, which uses USA census data to get its information:

My first name is statistically the 182nd most popular first name in the United States.
About 70% of the people with my first name are female. (I can't help but think this percentage has gone up in recent years.)
My last name is statistically the 199th most popular name in the United States.

If you decide to go try this, let me know!

I was going to go off on a long rant about the painful, draining weekend Joe and I have just had, and how the really weird karma attached to it still seems to be sticking around. And how between all of that, and the nearly nonstop cold rain that is finally starting to get under my skin, I would seriously like to just hibernate.

But I think you all have more important things to do than read about why I'm feeling like a grumpy old bear woken up nearly seven weeks before the beginning of spring.

I can't help but mention this, though. My favorite football team won yesterday. YAY!!!

Which team is that? This one.

"How scientific achievements are employed is not a matter to be decided by a handful of experts. It is for all people to determine. In fact, all people must involve themselves with it."
--Fumiko Yonezawa

This is the sort of news story that just gets me so mad. When I get really mad at a story on the radio, I've been known to start yelling back at it. I can't do that here, but I'm going to try the next best thing.

Back in the heyday of Mystery Science Theater 3000, fans had great fun taking Usenet postings -- mostly spam and bad fanfic -- and setting Joel (or Mike) and the Bots on them. You can find many of these at The MSTing Mine.

What I'm doing here is similar, but not necessarily intended to be funny. The article is written by Deborah Zabarenko, and appeared on the Reuters newswire yesterday. I've pared it down a bit.

     WASHINGTON, Jan 7 (Reuters) - The United States delayed
     a decision on whether global warming threatens polar
     bears, saying on Monday new data and public comment
     required more time. Environmentalists vowed to sue
     for quicker action.

New data? Like, maybe, the polar bears are dying even faster than you thought? Public comment?! How many people do you need telling you "Bite me!" in order to get the message? Here's one more: Bite me!!

     The deadline for deciding whether to list the big white
     bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act is
     Wednesday but Dale Hall, head of the U.S. Fish and
     Wildlife Service, told reporters it would take as much
     as a month more to analyze all the information.

This is the first time you've ever looked at the information? Dude, you've been part of the Fish and Wildlife Service since 1978! You put 300 species onto the Endangered Species List between 1991 and 1997. Come on.

     This is the first time global warming has been a factor
     in proposing threatened status for any U.S. species,
     Hall said, and that has added to the complexity of the
     decision.

It won't be the last. You should have been prepared for this. Oh right, I forgot. Your boss and his cronies don't believe global warming exists.

     The act indicates the one allowable reason for a delay
     in adding a species to the list is "substantial
     scientific uncertainty" but Hall denied in a telephone
     news conference that this was the reason.

Of course. Your boss doesn't believe global warming exists, but you don't dare actually stand up and say that.

     "I'm not saying that there is scientific uncertainty
     under the act and it's unfortunately one of those
     times ... we'll have to miss the deadline in order to
     provide the quality product that needs to be provided,"
     he said.

Quality product?! We're not talking about Gund bears here! It's a pretty sounding excuse for foot-dragging and stonewalling, is what it is.

     While all the other 1,300 or so species on the list
     were clearly threatened by deforestation or vanishing
     wetlands, Hall said the climate connection to the polar
     bear case required help from government scientists to
     understand the various impacts of global warming.

But we can't really trust those government scientists. At least not until someone other than George W. Bush is signing their paychecks.

     The Endangered Species Act defines a threatened
     species as one likely to become endangered in the
     foreseeable future. Hall said the scientific data
     would "help us understand that 'foreseeable future'
     question:  what's going to happen in the next 45
     years, because that's really the question."

Oh, come on. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this one out. Or a biologist.

     "The Bush administration has squandered seven years
     denying the devastating scientific evidence of global
     warming," Kert Davies of Greenpeace USA said in a
     statement. "Stalling has cost us dearly, putting the
     polar bear at risk of extinction and jeopardizing the
     future welfare of billions of people around the world."

     Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council and
     the Center for Biological Diversity said in a joint
     statement they plan to start the legal process on
     Wednesday with a formal notice to sue, as required
     under the Endangered Species Act.

Thank goodness someone's doing something.

P.S. The walrus are dying too.

"Sometimes I try to beat other people's achievements but on many occasions I find it's better to beat my own achievements. That can give me more satisfaction. I don't feel happy if I am comfortable. Something inside me pushes me when I get comfortable. It makes me go farther and I want to keep pushing."
--Ayrton Senna da Silva (1960-1994)

"Criminal reporting doesn't factually convey the anguish of reporters in writing about people. Writing about other people should be a painful job for reporters. The media are supposed to have the function of checking the government to protect justice and freedom. If so, journalists should write about other people with anguish."
--Etsuko Yamada (Japanese schoolteacher found innocent of murder after 25 years of trials and investigations)

Food for thought, especially with the news in baseball:
Mitchell Report Coverage on MLB.com

"Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of any hand. Anyone may gather it and no limit is set."
--Mother Teresa

Here's one that feels inspirational today, after several days of long hard slogging at the day job:

"If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well."
--Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

I actually spotted this one myself, several years ago:

"Absolutely NO Stairway."
--Sign at a guitar display in a Costco store


And yes, after getting thoroughly hooked on it a couple months back at a friend's house, Joe and I last night got our own copy of Guitar Hero -- the latest version, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, to be specific. Wireless ax and all.

I spent a little time playing on it, trying to work out "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" as I had worked out "Shout At the Devil" at our friend's. For me, it is a very slow process -- my learning curve on hand/eye coordination tasks is tough.

But I don't think I've ever had so much fun with a game I suck at so badly.

Originally written in a sports context, I think this is sadly applicable to many fields of endeavor these days.

"It's not necessarily the vehicle that's the problem here. It's the direction in which it is driving us. The death of original thinking is only part of it.... Being original is hard work. So is aiming high. It's so much simpler to grab your crotch, or do a little dance on someone else's ego."
--Gary Peterson

"The Internet, I'm trying to point out, is a kooks' paradise. Anybody with a keyboard and a modem can spread fear, loathing, and just plain asinine ideas among hundreds of thousands of people with the click of a button. Discouraging, but true."
--David Emery

"The world is mostly composed of pleasant people. They are particularly likely to be nice if you are nice to them. This is now some kind of secret wisdom, because the culture of fear preaches the opposite message."
-- Jon Carroll

I'm assuming that most of you who read my journal are outside the Portland area, but just in case, I wanted to share this:

Humane Society Needs You (to adopt a cat)

Short version: the shelter's full, they don't kill cats for lack of space, but they can't take in any more until they adopt some out. The goal is 100 cats by Thanksgiving. You can even adopt one adult cat and adopt a second for no fee.

We have no more room ourselves (five cats in a 1050 square foot apartment is really pushing it), but I wanted to spread the word in some way.

And a bit of fun to go with -- my first attempt at a lolcat. This picture is of a feral kitten rounded up at JFK Airport in New York City. Those cats are not as lucky as the ones at the Oregon Humane Society -- most of them face being euthanized.

A revisit, for this Veterans/Armistice/Remembrance Day:
(yes, I know it was actually yesterday, but there are still plenty of observances going on today, so ...)

"Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives. You are now living in the soil of a friendly country therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."
-- Mustafa Kemal, written on a war memorial on the battlefield of Gallipoli

And this is well worth checking out too:
For Better or For Worse comic for November 11, 2007

"We have cats the way most people have mice."
--James Thurber

I've always loved cats, and when Joe and I moved to a place where we could have a cat, a decade ago when we came to Oregon, we had one. In reality, Mina had adopted us before we had even moved, a few weeks before when we were in Anaheim. Quite unexpectedly, in early December of that year, she presented us with a litter of kittens. I'm not sure I ever looked back.

At the moment, we have five cats in residence. If you're curious, they have a set of webpages here.

"Blessed are the peacemakers, because there are not a lot of them and usually they get blamed for everything."
--Jon Carroll

"People do not deserve good writing, they are so pleased with bad."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Seems like this quote, which illustrates one of the things the union is up against, is about as close as I can get, for the moment, to showing my solidarity with the hardworking folks of the Writers Guild of America. Stand strong!

In the spring of 1980, for an exercise in my eighth grade class, we were asked to name our heroes. In front of my whole class, I named you. I didn't live in San Francisco. I never had. But even at the age of thirteen I knew who you were and what you had done for the city you then served as Mayor.

When you became a Senator I voted for you with pride, and continued to do so until I moved out of California in 1997. Even after I moved, when your campaign fundraisers called me, I contributed. Not much, perhaps, but I did what I could.

But over the past few years, your positions politically have shifted from center to so far right I no longer recognize you as a Democrat. The right wing screaming heads on the radio wouldn't know what to do if they couldn't characterize you as a "San Francisco liberal" -- which they can only do because you still live there, more or less.

When you authored the PERFORM Act in 2006, I quit sending money to your campaign. To gut the principles of fair use to benefit the profits of record companies is terrible.

But yesterday you decided to endorse the appointment of Michael Mukasey, despite the fact that he will not acknowledge the fact that waterboarding is torture -- and this after it was revealed that former Deputy AG Daniel Levin told President Bush it was -- because he had undergone it himself!

With that move, you lost the last of the respect I once held for you. I have nothing left but contempt.

I'm sorry, but your argument that "first and foremost, Michael Mukasey is not Alberto Gonzales," is not good enough.

Not. Good. Enough.

NOT GOOD ENOUGH!

You should be ashamed of yourself, Senator.

So what if the President makes Mukasey the AG in a recess appointment? That argument isn't good enough either. The Senate managed to stand up to the President in the case of John Bolton, and the world didn't come to an end. And that was when the Democrats were in the minority! What's the good of having a majority in Congress if you are just going to roll over for the President anyway? It is no wonder that Congress' approval ratings are less than half the President's, and his are pathetically low.

From hero to contemptible in two short steps.

For shame.