This is from last week, but describes today perfectly:

splenetic \splih-NET-ik\ adjective
: marked by bad temper, malevolence, or spite

The Golden Key (1996) Melanie Rawn, Jennifer Roberson, Kate Elliot

At 889 pages, The Golden Key is a very long book. Admittedly, I have not had a lot of time for reading, but even so, more than a week for me to read a book is really slow. Part of the reason is that the first third of the book was slow going. There are a good number of foreign words sprinkled through the story, and I didn’t find the glossary until I was nearly finished. As much as I hate flipping back a forth, checking the glossary from the start would have this book far easier to read. Well, that and a better knowledge of Latin/Spanish.

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There are two good articles in the Charleston Gazette today about Mine Safety. One, by Ken Ward and the other an AP article.

Senator Byrd has arranged Senate hearings that look like they will be focusing on Mine Safety, as well as the MSHA budget (not to mention whether there was a top down push to reduce vigilance.)

I also think that it’s important to note that both of these mines were non-union mines. Those who have read about the mine wars know what an important part the UMWA has played in coal mining. Hopefully they will be stepping forward again, to push for communication and safety equipment that MHSA has had seemingly little interest in since the Bush administration took office.

Two more mining familes have lost their loved ones.

To paraphrase Governor Manchin, now is the time for morning. Later, after we put mourning aside, that is the time for righteous anger, and for questioning why such things are happening.

As I am not completely oblivious to the world around me because of my own whining…

There’s a mine fire in Logan County, and two miners are still unaccounted for.

The only good news is that it appears the mine rescue teams got there quickly.

Michael’s office is closing March 1st.

Anyone who knows of any jobs in the Morgantown area for someone who is four classes away from his CS degree, has a CCNA, and is currently working as a technical support person, lemme know.

ADDENDUM the First:
By the way, he already has a Bachelor’s degree. However, it is in Forestry.

The bad news that was here will reappear tomorrow.

Unfortunately it didn’t go away permamently.

I am in search a copy of the Plumber skit from the Electric Company.

It was my all time favorite bit from the Electric Company, and I was reminded of it by a recent news bit on a gray parrot tattled on a girlfriend’s infidelity.

I especially loved the last bit of the CNN story:

(The ex-girlfriend) added to The Guardian newspaper: “I am surprised to hear he got rid of that bird.

“He spent more time talking to it than he did to me.”

But I still want to see that bit from the Electric Company again.

“Who is it?”
“It’s the plumber, he’s come to fix the sink.”

When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
— Martin Luther King
Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence

As much as I appreciate cough drops, I really hate the way they make my back teeth feel fuzzy.

29,522 via Word’s Word Count
32,250 via Double Space Courior font pages times 250

And that is your completely worthless information for the day.

I have to admit that I voted for Joe Manchin only because I saw him as the lesser of two evils, and I really didn’t want to take any chance that a Warner (and part owner of Morgantown’s own McCoy 666) would be elected. (Like I had anything to worry about. Apparently his business practices spoke for themselves, and the election was a rout.)

I have to say, however, that for the past several weeks Joe Manchin has really impressed me.

In response to the Sago Mine disaster, I thought that he was compassionate, understanding, and also willing to take responsibility, even if the fault was not his.

Add to that, last night’s State of the State address.

After remembering the miners who died, and discussing his plans to help their families, one of the top items he addressed was health care. Specifically, he spoke of the need to provide health care to the working poor, and proposed a combination of preventative care clinics and private insurance to help cover those who are do not currently have health insurance.

If he keeps this up, I may end up actually liking him.

Text of the Governor’s speech
Charleston Daily Mail
Charleston Gazette

(I’ve always loved the term “State of the State” it’s so wonderfully redundant without actually being so.)

I’m pretty sure there was a Star Trek episode about this.

Hunter’s Oath (1995) Michelle West

I had a strange time reading this story. I liked the characters, I enjoyed the story, I loved the writing, I wanted to know what happened. But I wanted to finish it so I could read something else. I just wasn’t in the mood for this story.

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