Today is Memorial Day.

This is the day we are to remember those who fought for our country. This is the day we remember those who fought for our freedom and for justice. This is the day we remember those who gave their lives to so that we might now have:

freedom of speech….
freedom of religion….
freedom of association….
freedom of the press….
the right to keep and bear arms….
the right to keep the military out of our homes….
the right to be secure from illegal search and seizure….
the right to a trial by jury….

Main Entry: freedom
Pronunciation: ‘frE-d&m
Function: noun
1 : the quality or state of being free: as
a: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action
b: liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : INDEPENDENCE
c: the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous (freedom from care)

The absence of coercion. Liberation from slavery or restraint. The state of being released from something onerous.

Memorial Day
The history of Memorial Day
US Census site for memorial day
Remember
The Constitution and other historical US documents

The latest flower pr0n.

Although my other day lilies are still budding, my lemon lilies are blooming. If only they bloomed more than once over the summer.

ADDENDUM the First: Check out Tom’s latest Flower Pr0n. The peony is especially pretty.

The Science of Consistency: On fictional universes and the fans who rationalize them.

The fictional universes depicted in movies like the Star Wars or Star Trek series tend to get very complex (for beginners: the former features Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, the latter Captain Kirk, the Enterprise, and a loyal crew made up of people like engineer Scotty; if you get them mixed up, you are worthless). That complexity means that—inevitably—the occasional “continuity error” occurs. In normal movie parlance, a continuity error means one of those embarrassing moments when, say, the bandage on an actor moves from the right hand to the left hand between scenes due to a mistake by the makeup department. For science fiction fans, though, continuity refers to the overall logical and historical coherence of our beloved fictional universes.

Enjoy…

Just got back from ‘Revenge of the Sith’.

I really tried to go in without any expectations, that way I wouldn’t be disappointed.

So now I don’t know what I am.

I guess I really wanted to recapture the feeling I had when I was 8 and Star Wars first came out. The feeling that I had just seen the Best Thing Ever.

Not that this movie was all bad. I really liked the Wookies. I liked seeing Chewbacca, and Yoda was, of course, cool. But I kept being bothered by things. Like, why was it windy when the Emperor’s tower windows were broken, but perfectly calm on Padme’s balcony? Why did gravity stop working on the General Grevious’s big ship–before it seemed to go back into the atmosphere? How the hell did those big ships ever leave a planet’s gravity? Why was Yoda the only one who recognized what was happening?

Bah.

I think I need to wait a month or so and then watch ‘Star Wars’. Maybe then I’ll recover some of the excitment I had when I first saw ‘Star Wars’.

Two Star Wars fans are in a critical condition in hospital after apparently trying to make light sabres by filling fluorescent light tubes with petrol.

A man, aged 20, and a girl of 17 are believed to have been filming a mock duel when they poured fuel into two glass tubes and lit it.

The pair were rushed to hospital after one of the devices exploded in woodland at Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire.

(via Making Light)

We made the top ten! Of something good!

Of course as I commented to Gina earlier, it’s hardly a surprise, since bad drivers don’t last long on windy mountain roads.

And I wasn’t at all surprised to find that New Jersery drivers are some of the wrost. Around here if a car does something incredibly rude, chances are the car has Jersey plates. (For the curious, during the school year Morgantown has a rather large population of NJ transplants, who have come here for the cheap tuition.)

Del was in town for a memorial service for his mother and all the other hospice patients who died in the past year.

Although Kathy wasn’t about to make it this visit, Del stopped by with the kids for a short visit.

I just have one thing to say: Cute! Cute! Cute!

The electric company frightens me.

I have a confession to make.

I love catalogs.

Not just the Land’s End catalogs with sensible clothing, not just the Gardener’s Supply catalogs with all kinds of neat garden implements to make things easier, but all kinds of catalogs.

I’m especially fond of supply catalogs. I used to receive a variety at my last job, where in addition to everything else, I was also in change of ordering supplies. I loved getting the supply catalogs, because if you look through them–and I mean really look–they incredible ridiculous. One of my favorite ads was for those stairs on wheels that you see at Lowe’s and Home Depot. The ad had a man carrying a very large box up the stairs–except that they shot the ad in front of a white background. Every time I looked at the ad I’d wonder, “Where the hell is he going with that?”

And then there were the people modeling different items. Often they looked like company employees who’d been pulled away from their desks for the photo shoots, so although they frequently had ridiculous expressions on their faces, but I loved the fact that they looked like real people. Not that professional ads are any better. For instance, have you ever seen a man standing around with one hand, half in his pocket, the other saucily planted on his hip? Or some of the postures the models are in; it makes your back hurt if you think about it for too long.

I used to point these things out to people. Often I’d go down the hall–giggling–to share these wonderful finds with Bob, who also seemed to appreciate the absurd ads.

Which is why when we all met for lunch yesterday, Bob had a catalog for me.

I was delighted by the wonders that were to be found within: an organ tunic (or better yet, an unhealthy organ tunic), your brain on beer, a fetus in a champagne flute. Fantastic! Bob really liked the Ciggy costume, and was considering it for a halloween costume, until he realized it was $700. Even the names are great, like Budget Bart Skeleton Model.

Some of the things are somewhat creepy–I found the expressions on the CPR dummys disturbing (although I liked the three baby CPR models peeking out of a carrying bag). And I don’t want anything to do with an Advanced Patient Care Enema Simulator.

But really, the whole thing is fascinating, and makes me long for the days when I received catalogs like this myself.

I heard Bush on the news this morning, using terms like murder and destruction of life, when talking about stem cell research. Does he even understand what those terms mean?

It got me to thinking about the many inconsistencies in his policies of “life”. As I’ve said before, I don’t understand how anyone can keep a straight face while calling this president “pro-life” as his policies across the spectrum are some of the most anti-life I’ve seen since.

But even if we narrow the focus just to pregnancy and embroys and fetal life, there is still incredible hypocrisy. Why is it okay to create these embryos, and then leave them frozen until they lose viability, but not to use these embryos for research that may save countless lives?

If destroying embroys is wrong, then why is creating more embryos than can be implanted okay?

If the life in these embroys is so precious, then why are they allowed to sit in freezers?

It seems to me that the problem is not the destruction of embryos for stem cell research, but the creation of embryos that will be abandoned. If it’s wrong to take an embryo and use it to develop a treatment to save lives, then it is also wrong to take an embryo and leave it in cold storage until it is no longer viable.

If embryonic life is so valuable, then should we not place a moratorium upon creating it through artificial means because of the extra embryos created and then abandoned?

I find it unlikely, however, that Bush will come out in favor of such a policy. Fertility treatment is big business–and available only to the rich.

In the latest episode of flower pr0n: Wet and wildIrises!

Happy Armed Forces Day. Though I’m not sure that Happy is quite the right term.

1607 soldiers have died in Iraq. 12,348 have been wounded in Iraq (according to the DOD). 180 soldiers have died in Afghanistan.

Baltimore Sun Digital memorial. View names by name, state, and in chronological order.

Digital Memorial for those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Iraq Coalition casualties.

There is a distinct possibility that if I even publish this post, I may regret it and take it down.

Which you can take as your warning that this post is going to contain a bit more personal information than normal.
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I don’t really care about sports, but this amused me.