Centerfield

One of my favorite science fiction authors, Octavia Butler, died this week at age 58.

*Sigh*....

Sorry to hear that, Jean. While I'm a big Sci Fi fan, I don't believe I've read any of her work, though I had certainly heard her name.

On a happier note, my LSU Tigers had an historical first in big-time college athletics this week. Both the men's and the women's basketball teams won the SEC championship. It's the first time both the men's and women's championship teams were from the same school. Geaux Tigers!

I've had to cut my sodium and protein intake to just about zero this year. Most canned foods, TV dinners, pizza and restaurants are off the menu. What a drag it is getting old.

On the other hand, it's been a real education. When you have to make everything from scratch, you realize how much time, effort and volume is involved. I never realized I ate so much, or how much effort it takes to prepare food.

Although I really miss salt, especially in chicken soup.

Remember the article about leisure time in the US vs. Europe? People who work more can afford prepared foods instead of slaving away like babusckas in the kitchen all day.

Octavia Butler will be sorely missed.

Sympathies, Bob. Yet another reason I'm glad I learned to cook during my wayward youth. I've been dieting over the last year myself but luckily salt is still OK. I can't say how happy I am that there's a sugar substitute out there that doesn't taste like chemical-plant effluvient. (Splenda is your friend.)

I just got clued into being able to watch the Shockers at home via webcast. BUt unless there's a good reason to sit home, I'll just go to the game anyway.

Octavia Butler will be sorely missed.

Sympathies, Bob. Yet another reason I'm glad I learned to cook during my wayward youth. I've been dieting over the last year myself but luckily salt is still OK. I can't say how happy I am that there's a sugar substitute out there that doesn't taste like chemical-plant effluvient. (Splenda is your friend.)

I just got clued into being able to watch the Shockers at home via webcast. But unless there's a really good reason to sit at home, I'll just go to the game anyway. I have my season passs, and there's a three-game series this weekend.

The two best things that I did during my youth were (1) take a typing class, and (2) work for several years as a cook. I use everyday the skills I learned as a result.

Ditto for me on the typing thing. I just had a conversation about that over lunch the other day. Another engineer I'm working with was telling me how he's got a software program for little kids to learn how to type. He's in his fifties and gets weird looks while he's using it on his laptop riding the train to work. There are games where he has to type letters before a duck eats them (or something equally as silly). I took typing my freshman year in high school thanks to a wise guidance counselor. Thank you, Mrs. Black. Oh, and Mrs. Deitrich, the typing teacher. Thanks to her, too.

Who would have thought that typing class would come in so useful, especially since computers were more science fiction than reality back in the early 70's

I do kind of enjoy cooking, and fresh prepared food does taste better.

I'm giving serious thought to starting to pressure can locally produced vegetables this year. And maybe buying a chest freezer. It's kind of weird taking up my grandparents hobbies.

8th Grade typing class. The single most useful class I ever took. It was part of a series of 4 practical courses, each of which lasted for 9 weeks. I can't even begin to remember what the other 3 were.

We have a big chest freezer for our garden over-production and bulk meat buying and fish and game, Bob. Cuts the grocery bills quite a bit, and we can eat our own veggies all winter. We don't can though. The only things it seems worthwhile for are fruit and tomatoes, and tomatoes can be frozen just fine by blanching, stewing, and bagging. We don't have any decent fruit trees, and our berries freeze OK.

I learned to type the hard way, doing endless research projects. We started teaching the kids to type as soon as they could tell their letters apart.

We have a chest freezer in the basement. It's full of frozen bags of breast milk. CHEST freezer - BREAST milk. That just occurred to me.

Oh! That ones going to be milked for a while.
Let me guess, you saving them for this year's Country Fair. You're hoping for BREAST in show!

My daughter might win something for being the county's largest baby.

And now for something completely different from Business Week online:

The New Middle East Oil Bonanza
Beyond the Dubai Ports deal: Where all those billions are going.

Excerpts as follow:

The Dubai Ports deal, though, is just one relatively small episode in the second great Mideast oil boom. The boom is characterized by hugely ambitious projects that are transforming the shores of the Persian Gulf into a Xanadu with some of the most fantastic and expensive structures on earth. The rush of petrodollars is creating enormous private and public wealth and reshaping Gulf business and society.

Where is that money going, how is it affecting the global economy, and what impact will the boom have on U.S. relations with the region? Those are crucial questions. The last oil boom, from 1973 to 1985, had dire consequences. The oil price spike created a lethal mix of inflation and slow growth worldwide. Arab states, unprepared for their newfound wealth, socked too much money away in U.S. Treasuries and a few international banks. The banks in turn lent the money to Latin American governments. In the end, these countries couldn't pay it back -- and instead triggered a debt crisis that shook the global financial system.

According to PFC Energy, an energy consultant in Washington, the Mideast oil states hold a cumulative $1 trillion in foreign assets -- stocks, bonds, government debt, real estate, and other investments. In fact, the money isn't easy to trace because unlike the oil boom of the 1970s, today's petrodollars aren't being parked in a few big American and European banks. Instead they are sprinkled around the world through an intricate network of private banks, funds, and offshore financial centers. "There's a distinct lack of hard information on where this money's going," says Mohsin S. Khan, director of the International Monetary Fund's Middle East and Central Asian department.

What's more, the Arab states are now major buyers of goods from Japan, China, and the rest of Asia, where they sell the bulk of their oil. So these petrodollars get recycled as Japanese yen or Chinese yuan -- which the Japanese and Chinese governments convert into U.S. Treasuries. Indirectly, then, oil money is bankrolling U.S. deficit spending. Paul Donovan, a global economist for UBS Investment Bank (UBS ) in London, estimates that petrodollars, mostly channeled through Asia and Europe, are funding up to 45% of the U.S. current account deficit.

Read it all. It's very interesting for a number of reasons.

Interesting to me for this reason: is it a problem for the lenders or for the borrowers? Seems to me that many economically ignorant americans who worry a lot assume its a problem for the borrowers, but dismiss the notion that the lenders could have a problem as well.

Sustaining our deficit spending is currently in the best interests of the lenders. They need us just as we need them. As the rest of the world modernizes and gets richer, that may become less true. But for us, deficit spending is not really a problem unless we spend MORE beyond our means with each successive year. if you are simply spending more than you currently have based on reasonable future expectations, that's an indefinitely sustainable practice so long as the money is available to borrow and your future revenue expectations are borne out.

I guess it's a matter of how reasonable your future expectations are.

I actually found it interesting that they're diversifying much more now than before in part because of the Western-educated economic advisers now in the Middle East. And I find the cultural influence the affluence will possibly have on the youth interesting.

Plus I just like thinking about money.

I just want to tell everyone that enjoy posting here and have been coming for a while now. I've grown weary of the partisan hysteria at DailyKos and RedState and find myself posting there less and less. It's so nice to see issues discussed outside of an unspoken partisan paradigm.

Thanks again for the discussions. I hope the usership grows...not to mention the movement.

Link.

Noting there are just 978 days to go, Chuck Todd picks the top five front runners in the 2008 presidential race for each party. "These rankings are based on a number of factors, including: organization, money, buzz and polling. The candidates in our two top spots may not surprise you, but they are the candidates who are doing well in all four categories."

Republicans:

1. Sen. John McCain
2. Sen. George Allen
3. Gov. Mitt Romney
4. Gov. Mike Huckabee
5. Newt Gingrich

1. Sen. Hillary Clinton
2. Mark Warner
3. John Edwards
4. Sen. Evan Bayh
5. Gov. Bill Richardson

John, you've certainly been a valued presence yourself of late. Keep it coming.

Yeah, John, keep coming. Those primal screams can be exhausting, no?

Took typing in the 7th grade. I remember all of the guys complaining and insisting that "we'll never use this again." Who would have thought?

The thought back then was that any man in mangagement wouldn't need to know how to type--you had secretaries who did all of that work for you. I remember my Dad's secretary doing just that for him... The world has certainly changed, and call me the opposite of "old fashioned", but I think a lot of it has been for the better.

Funny, true story, happened down here.

A recent law school graduate, female, is interviewing with the senior partner at a stuffy old-school law firm. She had been recruited by a younger partner and is meeting the old-timer for the first time.

Over the course of the interview, it becomes increasingly clear that the old man believes he is interviewing her for a secretarial position. Eventually, he asks her: "Do you type?"

The young woman looks straight into his eyes and says: "Yes, sir, I do type. And sometimes I sleep with men....

"But I don't do either one for money."

And now for something sports-related, but completely different. WIth video.

This is just downright silly. Right-wing PC.

Tully, you're just a left-wing hack!

Yeah, that homo-book fear is quite far-fetched. I'd love to see people outright explain the justification of their fear about "homosexual suggestion" in books and other forms of media. It's simply juvenile and has no place in factual mature discussions.

Buh-buh-but...if the kids see two male penguins raising a hatchling together, then boys will start wanting dolls, girls will be wanting trucks, and then, the next thing we know--cats and dogs will be living together!

What? They do that anyway? Oh...never mind.

Somehow, I get the feeling the "Brokeback" penguin show was left on the cutting room floor from March of The Penguins, that fine family film. "Now, Junior, stay where Mommy can see you or a polar bear will eat you!"

Thanks for the commiserations on Octavia Butler, Pat and Tully. She was a pioneer in science fiction, where women are rare and African Americans rarer still.

By the way, I loved Pat's joke about the typist. ROTFL!

Cats and dogs living together? MASS HYSTERIA!

Where were these gay-obsessed morons in 1987? Oh yeah, I forgot, they were this guy trying to tag Howard Stern. That at least makes a little bit of sense, even though I thought it was stupid.

But these yoyos with their penguin-book worries make me wonder what Alan Abel is up to nowadays.

The funny thing is, Roy actually dumped Silo later to take up with a hot chick (or, since she's a female penguin, I guess the proper term is "cold chick.") and now the book's detractors are arguing that this means gays can be "cured.", Maybe they're possessed by the ghost of Abby Hoffman in one of his political pranks to make right wingers look dumb. ;-)

No, no, please! I know it's a bad joke, but please don't make me watch Full House! Have mercy, pleeeee-ase!

Speaking of weird families, how come the folks who are so upset over "Brokeback" and gay penguins still revere this show? Think about it; a widower, his three grown sons and their male Chinese servant, all living together on a very big ranch. If you ever wonder why there aren't any women, all you have to do is watch a few episodes; for the other half of the species, getting romantically involved with a Cartwright guy means buying a one way ticket to an early grave. Even Ben's wives buy it after one episode (Hoss's mom, who must have passed incredible strength and stamina on to her son, lasted a grand total of two.)

When I watched the reruns with my dad, I thought "Hey, where are all the girls?" Nowadays, I'd look down my glasses and speak in my Lady Bracknell voice; "Losing one wife may be considered a misfortune, Ben Cartwright; losing three in a row smacks of carelessness." I bet there was a big Bluebeard room at the Ponderosa; but hey, as long as they're not acting "gay" or anything, it's a wholesome family show. ;-)

I always thought Jesse and Joey were desperately trying to "pass".....

Hey, would YOU want to live on the Ponderosa? Where the biggest entertainment was trying to get Hop Sing to pitch some jalapenos into the chop suey? Or gathering the Rocky Mountain Oysters in branding season? No wonder all the women died. They wanted to!*

Seriously, though, being a woman on BONANZA really was like being a red-shirt on a STAR TREK "away team."

[*--"She had left Jamaica to keep from dying of the yellowjack and being eaten by the land crabs, though sometimes she wondered if that had been so very clever after all." --Patrick O'Brian]

How dare you two sully the name of one of the classics of American TV!

Anyway, if any of them were gay, it was Adam. I remember at least one episode where Hoss got all tongue-tied over some beautiful woman, and surely Little Joe at least talked a good game in the saloon from time to time.

But Adam? First, he was always dressed nicer than the rest of them. And he seemed to avoid the ranch as much as he good; his hands were rarely dirty.

I figured it was Hop Sing.

Seriously, though, being a woman on BONANZA really was like being a red-shirt on a STAR TREK "away team."

You guys are a hoot!
Pat, you know you're talking about Dr. Tracker (sp) John (it's been a lot of years)

Pernell Roberts played Trapper John, MD many years later, that's right. Although it was supposedly the same Trapper John character as on MASH, I don't recall any real ties or references to the Korean War in it (of course, it was set many years later).

P.S. Rachel, I'm so glad I'm not the only one around old enough to remember that show!

Eh? What's that? Speak up! (Lemme get my ear trumpet.)

As a character actor doing one-shot roles, I remember Pernell Roberts in just about everything on television in the 60's and 70's. It was tough back then to make a living as a character actor without a continuing role, but he managed it by filling in with a LOT of stage work in musicals. BTW, he was married three times and had one child, a son, who died in a motorcycle crash in 1989. Not surprisingly, that's about the time he pretty much retired.