It's as Bad as Vietnam

Slate argues that the current rate of injury and death in Iraq matches with a similar point in Vietnam. Calling casualties "light" is an insult to our troops.

Regarding Washington State Governor's Race

Read this blog entry. Seems to me that Republicans should be investigating possible fraud in Adams and Walla Walla counties before worrying about King County.

Training Walk Report #10

Another day off, thus another day to walk. My walking partner was supposed to come at 11 am, but fortunately she was delayed until 1 pm. Fortunately, because during that delay it stopped pouring down rain and the big yellow glowing cloud came out and started drying things up. I forgot to wear my pedometer, but we did the other half of the Town-Gown loop, which came in at just under 2 miles when Eric and I did it last month. I took a picture of the boulder near the Post Office this time:

The plaque reads: In 1902 a notorious killer named Harry Tracy shot his way out of an Oregon prison and high-tailed it into Washinton. A posse caught up with him near the present-day location of the Wayne Golf Course. In the ensuing gun battle Tracy killed deputy Charles Raymond and wounded deputies Karl Anderson and Jack Williams before jumping off a cliff and escaping into the under brush below. Tracy's trail of terror ended two months later in Eastern Washington when, surrounded in a wheat field with no way out, he took his own life.

My walking partner enjoys local history and had a good time reading all the boulders. We also walked through the campus of Cascadia/UW Bothell and visited the bookstore. The campus was very pleasant to walk through, even if it was dripping wet from the earlier downpours.

If you'd like to donate to the cause, please click on the logo to go to my donation page. I'm currently up to $110 of donations, with a goal of $4200.

Training Walk Report #9

Well, I should have gone out yesterday, as it was even sunny, but I waited until today when I had a walking partner to go out with me. I did the first half of the Town-Gown loop with her, although I wasn't sure at any given time how far I'd make it. I knew I'd go down to the library, but any farther? Well, my pedometer says 5004 steps, so I ended up at nearly 2 and a half miles. Along the way, instead of taking a picture of a boulder, I got a picture of some mushrooms on the lawn of the community center.

As usual, I urge you to donate a little money to Breast Cancer research, and it'll be even cooler if you can do so by clicking on the logo and helping me to reach my fundraising goal.

Seattle Sports update

For once, I'm glad Johnny B. was wrong, as the Seahawks actually won today. But it was definitely an ugly win, and a close game throughout.

Despite losing to the Boston Celtics last night (their first home loss of the season), the Sonics are still doing well. They're currently 17-4 and 3 1/2 games ahead of Minnesota in the division. Only Phoenix has a better record in the league right now.

In hockey, both the Seattle Thunderbirds and Everett Silvertips are still doing well, and are essentially tied atop the division standings. Everett is 17-8-5-2 with 41 points, while Seattle is right behind them at 20-8-0-0 and 40 points.

And let's not forget some of the college teams! The Seattle University men's soccer team won the NCAA Division II national championship. And the University of Washington women's volleyball team won the regional tournament, and will be competing in the Final Four next weekend. They've had an outstanding year, and the icing on the cake would be an NCAA title...

NFL Predictions

Johnny B is at it again.

Whoa...

Via Garrett, there comes this amazing little piece on why trying to ban anything you disagree with sends entirely the wrong message:

He’s no better than those people who pretend they’re hardcore Christians when they’re really preaching Satan Triumphant. I mean the ones who think that after years and years of weekly church services, with hymn-singing and Bible-reading, the least little exposure to some kind of encoded Satanic reference—seeing pictures of rainbows or Ganesha, or taking in the afternoon matinee of the latest Harry Potter movie, or hearing a rock song with muddled lyrics they can’t make out anyway—is tantamount to throwing open the door to Satan.

What they’re saying is that Satan is much more powerful than God, and that nobody who was even glancingly acquainted with Satanism would ever want to stick with Christianity. They might as well don the robes and start sacrificing goats, because they believe in the mighty power of Satan as much as any declared Satanist out there.

Go and read the whole article. It's quite amazing how this section jumps out at you, though.

Sonics

Not only are they winning, but they are winning excitingly, in the final seconds of each game. They are NOT dominating, but they are constantly winning. It's just amazing to watch. I wonder if they will sustain it to the end of the season, or if it's a temporary thing? Still, it makes really good TV.

Stupid Ads

There's an ad for a big screen TV that I've been seeing a lot since I've been watching sports. It has a ref in a football game looking at the instant replay, then finally calling his wife at home to find out what she thinks as she's watching the TV. At the conclusion of the ad, the ref says that the player was out of bounds... then he says "first down!" Now, it's probably just me, but I seriously cannot think of any situation in football when you would call a first down after saying a player was out of bounds. There must be one.

You'd think that whoever wrote the ad would do a bit more research to make the call after "out of bounds" a little more logical and normal. Or maybe they want people to say, "Huh?"

Recuperation Walk Reports

Well, I've been fairly sick, and I'm recovering nicely now. Nicely enough that I've taken a couple of shorter walks which I'm referring to as "recuperation walks".

The first was on Sunday afternoon, just at dusk. I worked at the shop for a few hours then walked over to the pug house of horrors from there. It was about a mile and a half, if I read the odometer in my car (a few days before the walk) correctly. In any case, it wasn't a tough walk at all, and I arrived at the pug house invigorated if tired. It was a little too dark for me to get any good pictures, though I considered attempting to take some shots of Christmas displays. Maybe next time.

After resting yesterday (except for work) I walked down to the library with Eric today. There was a book I really want to read a story from, so the motivation was there. Again, it was a short walk compared to what I need to be doing, but it wasn't hard and the rain was actually quite refreshing to walk in.

I did stop for a moment to snap a picture of this sign on a grocery store on the way. I couldn't help but grin at the nice little editorial on the sign:

And I thought I was paranoid.

In other news, I got another donation! Thank you Robin and Arlene! The contribution is much appreciated. It also put me up over $100, which makes the goal seem possible suddenly. If you want to contribute, click on the Logo:

To finish up my report, let me tell you that the socks are working really well. In fact, I'm going to go so far as to say that if you have a job in which you have to stand a lot, you ought to get yourself a pair and try them out. I got them from The Sock Company, who as you may recall from previous blog entries were extremely good at getting back to me when I had a problem with my order. The brand is WrightSock, and they seem to work as advertised, although I'll be putting them to a much bigger test over the next few months.

Ribbons of Support

Instead of a yellow ribbon, originally used to indicate people who are incarcerated against their will, how about a blue ribbon for our troops? Via FilkerTom.

NFL Predictions

Yup, it's Johnny B at it again. Despite the Seahawks loss, he did pretty well last week. Go check out this week's thoughts.