The News Journal ¦ Our Short Bus Riders’ Views: (err… I mean, the Letters to the Editor)

Shortage of flu vaccine doesn’t inspire confidence

The shortage of flu vaccine this year and last is troubling. I’ve asked my general practitioner and a specialist for a flu shot and both informed me they have depleted their supplies.

I’ve heard President Bush speak on the dangers of avian flu. If we can’t supply enough vaccine for the annual flu season, how could we possibly cope with a pandemic?

Larry W. Taylor, Wilmington

So, just because you’ve waited this long after the shots were available, you’re whining saying its a Bush/Rove plot? All the vaccines were sent to Red states, leaving the blue state people to perish after turning into chickens?
Of course, on the same page is a glimmer of hope for the credit card state:

Biden’s chance of becoming next president is remote

It is almost unbelievable that Sen. Joseph Biden has such illusions of grandeur that he thinks he has the remotest chance of being the next president of the United States. It is almost laughable that the newspaper would give it front-page coverage. His sycophants may feed his big ego, but the movers and shakers of the Democratic party are not as dumb. He will not even get the nomination.

Clyde Roberts, Port Penn

Here’s my Biden is a dillhole story. I was having lunch on the Wilmington Riverfront at the Market, when Biden came in. He got a salad, and sat over in a corner table near a window.
He didn’t come in alone. He brought a photographer, who took pictures of him getting the salad, and then walking around the table taking whole rolls of film. He looked like he was photographing a heroin addict model, the way he was moving around the table. I was just waiting for him to start saying “C’mon baby, make love to the camera…”

I came home today, and scent of baking bread filled the house. It smelled good… but somehow seemed a little different. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was until I had a slice. It was the jalapenos… that was what was different. The wife picked this recipe out of “Bread Machine Magic” by Linda Rehberg & Lois Conway. It’s came out very fluffy… and tasty too. It wasn’t hot… but you could feel the residue of the capsaicin dancing in your mouth and across your lips. It was pretty damn good… check it.

Jalapeno Cheese Bread, 1-pound loaf

1/2 cup Sour Cream
1/8 cup Water
1 Egg
2 Cups All-Purpose Flour
1 tsp Salt
1 1/2 tsp Sugar
1/4 tsp Baking Soda
3/4 Cup (3 oz) Grated Sharp Cheddar Cheese
2 tsp Fresh Jalapeno Pepper, seeded and chopped (approximately 3 peppers)
1 1/2 tsp Dry Yeast

Place all ingredients in bread pan.
Select the “Light Crust” setting, and press [Start].
After the baking cycle ends, remove the bread from the pan and place it on a cake rack.
Allow 1 hour to cool before slicing.

Irons in the Fire has a great way of looking at things.

That quote? “There are three reasons to own a gun. To protect yourself and your family, to hunt dangerous and delicious animals, and to keep the King of England out of your face.” - Krusty the Clown

The one I just heard? “Don’t think of it as a rifle; think of it as a part of your body that shoots bullets.” The kid on King of the Hill

Remember, it’s National Ammo Day / Week!

GOP and the City posts a funny story, but one that illustrates why the mainstream press is all but useless. The stories lack so much detail and context.
NY Daily News

A disturbed Brooklyn man who believed his mother loved the family dog more than him hurled the pooch out a fifth-floor window to its death yesterday…
“He had a mental problem and he’s smoking the reefer,” his mom said. “It was eating his brain cells.”

vs.
Washington Post

In September, a Yorkshire terrier named Poochie died after being thrown out a sixth-floor window during a domestic dispute in Brooklyn.

While the NY Daily News is certainly more… colorful, the Washington Post article makes it sound completely different, with a husband and wife fighting over something. Nope, it’s really along the lines of… “Ray, Ray! Put out that reefer, Ray!”*

*True story, of way back when I worked as a line cook at the truck stop. Ray used to toke up in the back while the rest of us tried to work. Not sure what happened to Ray, but I do know that the guy known as Captain Freon is now an air traffic controller.

Linked to Mudville…

An interesting tidbit from the BBC.
A recent poll shows that most Britons want England to stay a “Christian” society. What makes it interesting is the following results:

Almost 75% of respondents said the UK should retain Christian values - including 69% of Jews, and nearly 50% of Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus.

About six months ago, one of those teenagers came around to win points for something if we subscribed to the newspaper. It was 20$ for either 6 months or a year, and it is the Denver Post a couple days, and the Rocky Mountain News a couple days. Total about 5 days a week which is a bit weird.
The last time I subscribed to the paper, I ended up throwing it right from the driveway into the garbage can 6 days out of 7. I should have listened to my gut and just gave the kid a 20$ to leave.
So now, out of the last 6 months, we have taken the paper out of the plastic bag maybe 5 times.
One day last week on the way to the car, I grabbed one of the papers and put it on the passenger seat. Didn’t look at it though.
This morning while making the run of the blogs, I came across this general purpose post over at Argghhh! that had a link to a story in the Rocky Mountain News. The story is about the hardest job in the military. The Casualty Assistance Calls Officer. The worst job there is, the most stressful I can image, and the one person no one wants to ever see on their doorstep.
I think this 12 page article is the most important thing you will read today, if not for a long time.
Thank you to reporter Jim Sheeler for an excellent human interest story.
I was almost late for work because I could not stop reading.
On the drive in, I looked at the cover of the paper I had in the car. It included the special section containing this entire story.

Please take a little while to read the article. I might just keep subscribing to that paper now, and even look at it once in a while.

Best cop shows of the 70’s. Good job Matt…
I can still whistle the SWAT theme!

What sign of the apocolypse is this one?

WASHINGTON — For months, Sen. Joe Biden has been traveling the country, trying to figure out whether he can raise enough support — and enough money — to make a serious run for the White House.

So far, he says he hasn’t found a good reason not to run.

“The response I’m getting is extremely encouraging,” Biden said in an interview with The News Journal. “That doesn’t mean I can do it, but nothing I’ve seen so far tells me I can’t.”

Please no….

OK, here’s my weirdest searches of the week list! People have found this site using google, dogpile, yahoo, etc, with the burning need to know about:

And still the winner, with 264 search hits: Juggies!!!

Here’s just to let you know how much spam there is. I run a small Exchange 2003 server with SP2 for email. About 10 users or so.
This is how much spam has come in within the past two weeks.

I made this chart with IMFStats.
The SCL stands for Spam Confidence Level. I have it so that SCL of 4 and below is good mail. Everything above a 4 is tagged as spam. Everything above a 6 never even makes it into the mailbox, it is rejected automatically before the server has completed taking in the message.
That’s pretty sad how much crap gets is out there.

And you know what? Spam is nothing more than marketing, nothing more than a commercial to get you to buy stuff. Once again, I blame Darrin Stevens.

You scored as Support Gunner. Your a support gunner. You carry a big gun, and people generally call on you when in trouble. Your a strong person physically and emotionaly. You can take being on the front lines of any problem clearing paths for your buddies. You generally lead the way with your strong personality, hitting the problem with all the tact and grace of a freight train.

Which soldier type are you?
created with QuizFarm.com

This is the best summary of whats happening on the ground in Iraq I’ve seen yet. Why can’t the press report anything at all this kind of quality? Because they’re completely useless, that’s why.

Jordan spent 7 months at “Camp Blue Diamond” in Ramadi. Aka: Fort Apache. He saw and did a lot and the following is what he told me about weapons, equipment, tactics and other miscellaneous info which may be of interest to you. Nothing is by any means classified. No politics here, just a Marine with a bird’s eye view’s opinions:

Most fascinating is that the terrorists are using Google Earth for targeting information. So much for Google’s do no evil mantra…

Army men. Legos built into aircraft and space ships. Trying to organize a local militia of 10 year olds to fight the kids from the other development. Mostly with slingshots and bottle rockets. Asking Grandpa about his time in WWII. He was in the CBI (China Burma India) theatre of operations. Even my Grandma was in the army for a few months, until they pissed her off about something.
Thats how I grew up.
At 17 I graduated high school, since I had a late in the year birthday. Much of the senior year was spent with both the Army and Navy recruiters fighting over me. Finally, my dad convinced me to talk to a friend of his in the Air National Guard. He’d let me do that, since he was in the Air Force in VietNam, a crew chief on a KC-135 refueler. At 17 I didn’t have too much choice in the matter. Talked to the recruiter there, liked what I saw. I had two options: Combat Arms, since I am an excellent marksman, and Avionics tech on C-130’s. Up until the last minute I was still deciding between the two, and finally went with Avionics simply because the tech school was a year instead of just two months.
I had a knack for avionics, and I aced the schooling as honor graduate. In the airman’s club every night they played “Proud to be an American” by Lee Greenwood. I figure now they play that and “Letters from Home” by John Michael Montgomery. Which is tough to listen to without getting all emotional and stuff. But it does capture the real feeling of the soldier.
I came back and learned the real stuff under SSgt. Kevin Rydzewski, who is a personal hero of mine. I figure that will embarass him a bit. He taught me so much those years.
That was 1988 to 89. Along comes Kuwait, and we’re activated and sent to the United Arab Emirates for a few months (August 16, 1990 through October.) This was about a week or two into it, we just had enough time after being activated to pack and go. As a young hotshot in the unit, I was of course going. Lots of airlift going on, lots of work. We had our planes at 99% FMC (fully mission capable) which must have been a record.
January comes along with the air war starting. We were re-activated. The entire unit was supposed to go, but just two days before leaving, the shop boss calls all the part timers in. He starts to say that all the full time techs are going, but only one… By that time my hand was raised as the volunteer to go. My mom asked to see if I volunteered. I evaded the question, but I think she knew.
Only a few of us few with the aircraft, the rest took commercial airlines. Kevin and I were chosen to go with the planes, since we were the best. A day in the Azores, a couple days in Italy, refuel stop in Egypt, and then we were there, in Al Kharj. For the next 5 months.
Everyone remembers the war went exceptionally quick. Things were incredibly boring after that. When a chance came to join an ALCE (Air Lift Control Element)
team, I jumped on it. Spent a few weeks both inside Iraq and on the receiving end in Saudi Arabia for the Shia refugee flights out of southern Iraq. I even had my very own personal call sign! I got to be an air traffic controller during that time, because I knew how to work the crypto gear on the radios. My “tower” was a soccer net with camo netting thrown over it for some shade.
We had a major with us for a few days to get us settled in. We were technically on an army base with the 2nd armored division. First day we went to get chow, and they wouldn’t serve us because we didn’t have our kevlar, webbing, and firearms with us. Huh? We’re zoomies, they don’t trust us with guns usually! The major took care of that, but we never did eat there. Just went into town every day and ate local. The army assigned us a female security cop with a hummvee to be our guide and driver. By the end of our stay we had her pretty well corrupted, working in just a t-shirt, her jacket and other gear just thrown in the vehicle. It does seem that the army frowns on that, requiring full uniforms and gear at all time. Hope she didn’t get in too much trouble!
For volunteering, when I returned, I was chosen to on R&R… the Cunard Princess was my destination. Docked in Bahrain, it was a rather nasty 16 hour bus ride across the desert. Three days of drinking tequila with a bunch of Marines. Somehow the crusty old crew chief from my unit that also went with me and I managed to spend time with two Marine nurses those couple days. I think there were two thousand guys on that boat that were pretty damn jealous of us scarfing up on two of the four women. Ehh, what can you do? Three days later, we’re heading back on the bus. Luckily at our first stop one of our C-130’s had just landed, so we hitched a ride with them back to our base after many stops. It is so much nicer to fly around than to sit on a bus.
Our flights and aircraft were so good that they started letting regular AF units go home before us. That caused a lot of grumbling, but finally we got home. Heroes welcome and all that.
I applied for a full time technician position with the Comm Flight for a computer tech slot. Finally SSgt Joe Bartel gave me a shot at the position. Worked out great and I spent about a year there before funding ran dry. But that gave me the edge to get me working in the computer field afterwards.
I didn’t re-enlist. I didn’t like the idea of Clinton running the military, and also I was looking at moving somewhere else, and didn’t want to be tied down.
Now I’m a member of the VFW. Having been there and met Iraqis personally, I fully support the current Iraq intervention.
On this Veteran’s day, I stop to think about all the troops through all the wars. The hardships and deaths, all in the name of protecting this country from those that would do us harm.

I’m sure this was a study paid for by a government grant.

IT IS the kind of story you hear from a friend of a friend  how, after a long night in a rural hostelry and at a loss for entertainment in the countryside, they head out into a nearby field.

There, according to the second-hand accounts, they sneak up on an unsuspecting cow and turn the poor animal hoof over udder.

Yeah, but I always used a Jeep CJ5 to do it. Duh…

You ask me Why I Love Her?
Well, give me time and I’ll explain.
Have you seen a Kansas sunset
Or an Arizona rain?
Have you drifted on a bayou
Down Louisiana way?
Have you watched a cold fog drifting
Over San Francisco Bay?
Have you heard a bobwhite calling
In the Carolina pines,

Or heard the bellow of a diesel
At the Appalachia mines?
Does the call of Niagara thrill you
When you hear her waters roar?
Do you look with awe and wonder
At her Massachusetts shore,
Where men who braved a hard new world
First stepped on Plymouth’s rock?
And do you think of them when you stroll
Along a New York City dock?
Have you seen a snowflake drifting
In the Rockies, way up high?

Have you seen the sun come blazing down
From a bright Nevada sky?
Do you hail to the Columbia
As she rushes to the sea,
Or bow your head at Gettysburg
At our struggle to be free?
Have you seen the mighty Tetons?
Have you watched an eagle soar?
Have you seen the Mississippi
Roll along Missouri’s shore?

Have you felt a chill at Michigan
When on a winter’s day
Her waters rage along the shore
In thunderous display?
Does the word “Aloha” make you warm?
Do you stare in disbelief
When you see the surf
Come roaring in at Waimea Reef?
From Alaska’s cold to the Everglades,

From the Rio Grande to Maine,
My heart cries out, my pulse runs fast
At the might of her domain.
You ask me Why I Love Her?
I’ve a million reasons why:
My Beautiful America,
Beneath God’s wide, wide sky.

~ John Mitchum ~
Read by John Wayne

What happens when war isn’t finished? You get stuff like this:

PANMUNJOM, Korea (Reuters) - The truce village that straddles North and South Korea has become the site of a tourism tussle as U.S.-commanded forces and North Korea accused each other Wednesday of locking out visitors to a historic room.

Each said the other had locked out tourists from the other side who wanted to visit the hut that houses the conference room used to hammer out the truce that ended the 1950-1953 Korean War.

I’m sorry, but this is kinda ridiculous. I can see the opposing generals now barking orders to their subordinates to lock out the other people, kinda like in a bad divorce settlement.

DROWNING IN QUICKSAND IS IMPOSSIBLE, according to a new study, relegating this popular plot device in adventure stories to the category of pure folklore. Consisting of a mixture of sand, salt water, and clay, quicksand captured the attention of University of Amsterdam physicist Daniel Bonn when he went on a family trip to Iran, the birthplace of his wife. Collecting a sample of quicksand near a body of water in Iran, and bringing it to his laboratory for study, Bonn and his colleagues showed that shaking aluminum beads, designed to have the same density as human beings, would partially, but never fully, submerge them. Since quicksand is twice as dense as water, the beads (and humans) only sink about halfway. Shaking or otherwise disturbing the quicksand liquefies it, increasing the downward flow of the beads by a factor of a million. This is how humans can get stuck in it. Since quicksand is often located near bodies of water, Bonn speculates that high tidal floods passing over individuals stuck in quicksand may have caused casualties incorrectly ascribed to sinking fully in it. Bonn says his conclusions apply to all kinds of quicksand. Nonetheless, the force required to lift a foot out of quicksand can be equal to that required to raise a car. His solution: wiggling the stuck foot will cause water to trickle down, allowing the hapless adventurer to get out of it. (Khaldoun et al., Nature, September 29, 2005)

OK… I live in Newark, DE. Someone nearby shipped a package to me via UPS. (Don’t ask why… they could have saved themselves a few bucks by driving it over… but whatever.) Anyway… this package seems to have taken a bit of a scenic route to get to my house. Can anybody explain to me why my packages always seem to feel the need to see the big city before coming home to thier final destination?

Here’s an example…

Nov 04, 2005 — 09:51:15 AM — US — Carrier notified to pick up package
Nov 04, 2005 — 04:33:34 PM — NEWARK DE US — Shipment picked up from seller’s facility
Nov 04, 2005 — 09:52:01 PM — NEWARK DE US — Arrival Scan
Nov 07, 2005 — 08:25:00 AM — NEWARK DE US — Departure Scan
Nov 07, 2005 — 01:06:00 PM — BALTIMORE MD US — Arrival Scan
Nov 07, 2005 — 08:10:00 PM — BALTIMORE MD US — Departure Scan
Nov 07, 2005 — 09:34:00 PM — NEWARK DE US — Arrival Scan
Nov 08, 2005 — 05:51:00 AM — NEWARK DE US — Out for delivery
Nov 08, 2005 — 02:35:00 PM — NEWARK DE US — Delivered

I’m just curious…

Another internet toy. This time, find out how popular your site is by going to the link popularity tool.

Link Popularity Report

Link Popularity Total 59,888

Apparently 20,000 is "average" so thats pretty slick…

Thanks to Mostly Cajun

You a vet too?
Free steak dinner!
Nov 14th, 2005…

Thanks to Blackfive…