Synova

My two oldest children (and my husband) have committed to shaving their heads to raise money for childhood cancer research. Gabby is 13 and Zack is 15. Please visit the Kojosho team page and help them reach their fund raising goals. If you click on the picture of each team member you can see their progress and make a donation for that team member. On shaving day, those with hair over 10 inches, such as Gabby and Taylor, will be donating their hair to Locks of Love. Kojosho is the karate school where we work out. I have a feeling the kids are going to freak once their hair is off so DONATE!

I reserve to myself the right to fix spelling, word choice, and anything else I please without noting the correction for at least the first 5 minutes after I post. After that, I'll make a note of corrections.

By now anyone who wants to see them has been able to find the cartoons on the internet somewhere. Gradually we're starting to realize that our freedom *matters*. But for so long no one wanted to show the cartoons and claimed it was out of respect for Islam. Our media told us that *showing* the cartoons was unneccesary to report about them or to inform people. They were wrong, and here is why. There are two sets of cartoons. There are the ones that were published in the Danish press, and there are the ones added by those who wanted to promote the riots. Without *seeing* the Danish published cartoons people have to take the radical's word for it that the cartoons were offensive. Have you seen the cartoons? Have you seen the added cartoons? (Here's a hint... I wouldn't let my kids see the added ones... they're *bad*.) Instapundit has linked to a couple posts about a NYU event being held to discuss the cartoons. The cartoons *were* going to be displayed at the event. O...

Just call 1-888-786-8188 and I bet you'll get the prize too. I don't know what they are selling but I think you should call because I think they should recieve lots of phone calls so that real people have to pick them up to hear you say (and this is just my suggestion, you can make up something different if you like) "Your time is valuable, that's why I'm going to waste it for no purpose." If I were cleverer I'd think up something that was about the same length as the "You've won a prize!" etc., etc., etc., "Call me at 1-888-786-8188, that toll-free number is 1-888-786-8188, again, 1-888-786-8188. Congratulations!" I wouldn't really recommend it though because the longer you're on the phone the longer the guy with the sexy baritone has to get you listening to *him* and *then* you're a gonner. So if you do this be prepared. These people are professionals. Yes, it's true. I shouldn't have listened to the recording...

So I figured that this is the big topic just now and I should say something about it. The problem is, I don't know much about it. Oh, I have pretty firm beliefs on the larger issues, just not specifics. I think that illegal immegration provides a sustained subculture that provides cover to gangs and criminals and protection to those who benefit from the exploitation of undocumented workers. This is unacceptable. The situation is grossly unfair to those legal immegrants who went through significant hardship to come here legally. I don't think we should discount them. Mexicans are not US citizens. Though if they (and Vicente Fox) insist that they are citizens, I'm okay with making that a reality. Mexico would be a worthy aquisition. Concerning National Security issues... Neither our borders nor our ports can be made secure. Homeland Security is a feel-good farce and the people in charge of it have always known that. We can't protect ourselves with def...

Since roosters are in the news, I thought I'd post a picture of Jeff, my Polish roo. He didn't crow anything so profound as "Allah" but it was rather funny to hear him crow "My shorts are tight!" As he's matured his crow has become a bit more Cock-a-doodle like... no more tight shorts. I'm serious about the tight shorts. I know that no one believes me but you *really* had to hear it. (Thanks for the rooster link to Michelle Malkin, Little Green Footballs and the original link from Mudville's open post to Point Five .) PS. My apologies for the blurry picture.

My daughter is planning to join with other people in our karate school to shave her head for cancer research . If she decides to do this I'll be certain to post pictures and stuff (and hit you all up for donations.) Because there are several people with long hair planning to participate, our local coordinator has made arrangements with Locks of Love to donate hair long enough for them to use. Very cool! Two charities for the price of one! Until I get pictures up, just let me say, my daughter is 13 and has hair to her waist. She's already planning the spiky hair gel thing... no doubt in unnatural colors. She could still panic and back out but we will see. Last time I trimmed her hair she cried for a day. Yes, that was several years ago and she's older now, plus she will have friends doing this with her. I'll post more as I know it. The head shaving will be in May.

Don Suber thinks that " righties" should apologize . Not Ben Domenech, who has (and certainly should) but "righties" should apologize to the Washington Post. I'm a bit confused what this "apology" is supposed to look like. This is, of course, assuming that I qualify as a "rightie." But how did anything that any "rightie", myself (assuming as I said) or anyone else *other than* Ben Domenech harm the Washington Post? Because an apology assumes something to apologize for, and although I realize that "lefties" are always insisting on associative guilt (unless, of course, it involves some other group indentity than whites or conservatives) I refuse to play that game. There's a whole heck of a lot that I'm NOT guilty of and refuse to apologize for. My own sin is weighty enough and I will not borrow and grovel over the sins committed by people who may look like me or have somewhat similar philosophies. What is this ...

Whenever people get motivated to clean up unsightly mess it tends to involve the destruction of freedom. The result is important things, like traffic rules, and other things, like home owner's associations... as though people ought to have a right to keep another person from changing car oil in their driveway or washing their car on their own lawn or growing vegetables instead of grass. And if your neighbor paints her house purple and plants cabbages instead of petunias... that's the price you pay for freedom. As are roadside vendors, unsightly signs and displays, gaudy decorated crosses to mark car accidents and people with bad taste in fashion. And protestors. And laws that make the job of law enforcement difficult. And trains that don't run on time. Freedom is messy. Now ask yourself what Freedom will look like in Iraq. Will it be messy? Or will it be orderly and peaceful? Will everyone agree? Or can we expect people to have heated disagreements about how th...

This morning (March 18, 2006) I attended a program hosted by New Mexico Screenwriters . It was interesting, though I think it was a smaller group than they usually expect. (Someone said that last time was standing room only.) There were a couple of people there that I'd met before so I got introduced around, which is much more fun than introducing myself. ;-) We *did* go around and introduce ourselves and say a few words about the ways that we get blocked when writing (which is what the program was about.) I think that I like writing so much because whenever I open my mouth in public it comes out like I'm speaking Martian or something. I get these confused and painfully polite smiles as they go on to the next person. But when I write I can EDIT. Whoo Hoo!! I think, though, that I'm just a lost cause at meditation and visualization. I try. It just doesn't work so well. I start thinking about something else. It never fails. I can see how the excersizes would be useful and...

The concept of "honor killings" shouldn't be respected. No one... NO ONE... is forced to kill his daughter or sister or cousin or mother. It's impossible. Culture or religion or *anything* doesn't force a man's hand or absolve him of criminal or spiritual guilt for the murder of people he is supposed to protect. Honor is important and valuable, but let me paraphrase one of my favorite fictional characters... reputation is what others know about you, honor is what you know about yourself. *Honor* can not be won by a public display of piety to make up for embarassment or personal failure. A man who kills his daughter because she runs away from home or refuses his authority or rejects his religion and culture has not redeemed his failure by a public display to prove that she was the guilty one. Because honor isn't what happens in public, it's what happened at home that made her leave. Honor lies in truth, not in appearances. A man concerned with honor can...

I foolishly got in a discussion today about, of all things, the 2000 US presidential election. One thought led to another and now I just want to say this... Every single time someone comes with an over the top charge, such as Bush "stealing" the 2000 election or that Bush thinks he's above the law with the NSA wiretaps or any of a dozen recurring refrains, it makes it that much harder to get people to take real problems seriously. The hyperbole and rhetoric is great for energizing the opposition, but it's piss poor for actually getting any work done. Will the problems of the 2000 election be solved by the 2008 election? Were they solved by the 2004 election, or was it better politics to continue to undermine confidence in the democratic process by portraying Republicans as determined to cheat to win? Why wasn't more done to be sure that every legal voter gets to vote and has their vote counted? What little I've heard about attempts to fix voting problems, the ...

This is a recipe from 100 Great Curries by Keith Floyd , and one of my favorites. Green Chicken Curry: I don't follow this recipe exactly. 1 lb boneless chicken breasts, cut into pieces vegetable oil for frying 3 tablespoons Thai green curry paste 14 oz canned coconut milk 3 tablespoons fish sauce 1 fresh red chile, deseeded and finely chopped 1 fresh green chile, deseeded and finely chopped 3 tablespoons brown sugar handful fine green beans handful fresh basil leaves 4 tablespoons coconut cream, to serve I never use 3 tablespoons of green curry paste. 3 teaspoons are more than enough, and my family likes severely hot food. If you use hot chiles this is going to be *very* hot. Before I used them all up, I used one Long Red Cayenne or one Serrano Chili from my garden. (Keep them whole in a zip-lock baggie in the freezer, works great.) First, heat a little bit of oil and the curry paste in a large wok. (If you heat the oil first the curry paste is going to splatter like mad.) Ad...

This isn't surprising . I'm sure that there are some very spooky folks doing their best to determine if the threat itself is the attack or if the bad guys do have something planned. In a sense, though, it's irrelevant. Because Al-Qaida isn't giving us a choice between safety and risk. Suppose they really could do what so many people fear? Suppose they could set off a large nuke and destroy a city? Would we be incapacitated by our grief? What do you think? Bin Laden made a mistake. His mistake brought down two entire countries. If Al-Qaida's threat has substance it only proves that they haven't learned a single thing from Bin Laden's mistake. And in the end it won't matter if America is noble and just or if America is a blundering baby. The end result will be the same, and it will be a result that no-one in the middle east wants. h/t Instapundit

My son, who turns 15 years old today, just looked over my shoulder at my blog. He was impressed. "Wow, Mom. Is that your blog? You wrote all that? Wow, it could go in your book." Yes, dear. I should be writing my book. Or script, as the case may be. The next scene is Lauren, at a "sidewalk" cafe, has a run in with some young ladies who assume that she's a professional surrogate and snub her when they find out she's a breeder, after which she encounters an angry Ellen, who lets her know what happened to Paul and gets to utter the words, "Nice to see you're still in one piece."

This might be Helga or Olga. I can't tell them apart.

So, the Dubai Ports World is bowing out gracefully , Bush won't have to veto a congressional move, attached to a supplimental funding bill for Katrina and Iraq, blocking (recinding?) the sale. And what was the objection to this deal? Bush handled it badly. Yup. The timing was bad. Okay. People are nervous about Arabs. Uh, huh. So... what was the objection to the deal? Do we toss our best interests to the winds because Bush is less than graceful? Do we let timing dictate how we treat our friends? Do we bow to prejudice rather than combat it? Do we expect our representatives in Congress to *lead* or do we expect them to be sock puppets? Yes... sock puppets. We've got the internet, how hard would it be to skip our representatives all together and just run a program to determine what constituents want and animate a little sock puppet to vote that way? It's not like our representatives add value. Obviously. Citizen Smash said it fantastically well: "This sad episode has...

Here's a shameless plug for an author I know. He's on a crit list that I'm on so I've seen some of his unpublished (as yet) stuff too. The future does look bright. Check him out of the library and see what you think!

All wealth is biological. This post by Shannon Love (and the comments that follow) ((h/t instapundit )) tie in to the script I'm working on. She's more focused on the economic and free-riding aspect of expecting other people's children to support the economy in the next generation, but it all ties together. My script is an adaptation of one of my stories, and one of the few where I *knew* the title and theme before I'd even written it. Defending Confinement. "Date of Confinement" is what they used to call the day that a woman went into labor. It's morphed a bit over time and certainly has changed since I started to think of it as a movie. Renegade belt miners have built a hardscrabble society selling ore and are attempting to expand into the middle market with the construction of an ore refinery. The corporation opposing this pushes for child welfare laws to be enforced. The miners, a bunch of brutish, near criminal men, maintain small stations where the...

Well, Duh! And do I understand correctly that SCOTUS was unanimous on this? It's just common sense. " "The Solomon Amendment neither limits what law schools may say nor requires them to say anything." Roberts wrote. " How could anyone think it did? How could law students and professors think that it did? Or was this something they knew they would lose because they *knew* they had no legal free speech basis to fight it? Was this all a way to get press coverage? If so, how much of our tax money went directly to this PR campaign? If the law schools wanted to spend their own money on the noble fight against discrimination against gays they've got a legal way to do it. Refuse Federal Funds. Grow a backbone and some integrity. Update: Wizbang has a bunch of links.

I think it's time that someone takes a stand against the riddiculous notion that a poll of opinion has any relevance to the truth. VOTE NOW - Do you think Scott Peterson is guilty? VOTE NOW - Are we winning in Iraq? VOTE NOW - Do Aliens want to eat your brain and plant their evil seed in your womb? VOTE NOW - Is Bin Laden alive or dead? When everyone believed that the world was flat it was exactly the same shape as it is now. Things are true or not true. People on trial are guilty or not guilty, and incidently, were guilty even *before* they were convicted... "innocent until proven guilty" is a legal form, not a reflection of the truth. We do not create truth by our belief, not even about God. God exists or doesn't exist quite apart from our belief or disbelief. The one way that we do create truth through belief is when we believe things about our culture or ourselves. Our belief is self-fulfilling to an extent. Someone who believes they are a good person is like...

Cliff face in the Sandia Mountains, New Mexico I write science fiction, not westerns. But I had a western phase, sometime around the age of 13, when I discovered books by Louis L'Amour. The first one I ever read was The Key-Lock Man. It had *everything*, horses, a beautiful lady of viking decent, a dangerous hero unswayed by greed or avarice. I've started rereading, buying the recent republished books at the grocery store... It started when I saw The Key-Lock Man on the shelf and wondered how different it would be to read at the age of 41 instead of 13. The biggest difference, even more than age, is that I'm a writer. I notice things related to craft that I'd never have noticed before, each POV shift or if the book is written in 1st or 3rd, word choices, structure. Concerning continuity, Lois Bujold insists that she reserves the right to have a better idea in a later book... Louis L'Amour sometimes had a better idea on the same page. No one is going to mist...

One of the fun things about sharing a car is that turning on the radio is always a surprise. This time the radio was set to the local Christian station. They were taking calls between songs to comment on a pill that made people only need two hours of sleep a night. "Oh, great," I thought, " more Christians saying ignorant things about science." I don't know when the "pill" was discussed or if the callers only had the question to respond to. Unsurprisingly the callers that I heard uniformly gave some version of "God created us to need sleep. He knew what he was doing and we shouldn't mess with it." My immediate reaction to the question was, "I can see the obvious military applications." LOL, maybe it's a good thing I don't ahve a cell phone. In blogging about this I've come upon a problem, though. I can't find any information on this "pill" through google. All I get are hits about needing sleep, none abo...

This is what people have been talking about. Triumphant anti-war folks are claiming that this finally shows that our soldiers in Iraq agree that we should leave. In fact, it turns out, our soldiers in Iraq apparently agree with just about everything that the anti-war people have been trying so hard to get us hawks to admit. Interesting, that. I'd like to know if the poll questions are available anywhere. The summary raises some questions in my mind. Knowing how *exactly* the poll was worded might answer them. For example... did the question about internationally banned weapons include the words napalm or white phosphorus? More than one milblogger is calling BS on that one. Would four of five soldiers answer that they oppose the use of WP in the battlefield for any purpose? I would expect our soldiers to answer that laws should be followed and banned weapons not used. I wouldn't necessarily expect them to ask for clarification "banned by whom?" 55% of those surveyed...