Photo blues.

Oh dear...



You know what that is? It's the first digital photograph I ever took. I'm uploading it to Flickr tonight along with 2,000+ other photographs from 2004 to 2005. These were all pictures I originally uploaded to Mac.com, before I started using Flickr. I just discovered that when Apple started Me.com, all the photographs on Mac.com stopped displaying. I can still download them, but then I need to re-upload them, and they will have different code at that point, which means every blog post that originally displayed those photographs will need to be redone.

I have to go through all the old posts to find the ones that had photographs, open them up for editing, and enter the new code for the old photographs. Part of the process will be figuring out which photos belong in the post, which will not be easy. Maybe you think it doesn't matter what's in the archive 5 or 6 years ago, but it matters to me. A lot.

I'm so annoyed at Apple for doing this. I've paid every year to have a Mac.com account, mainly only to preserve those old photo displays. I have sometimes thought of putting the pictures on Flickr so I can stop making those annual payments. At least now I can stop paying, but I'm disgusted that after making all those payments to Apple, it saw fit to wreck all that work of mine.

***

By the way, thanks for using my links — my Black Friday gift selections — to buy things on Amazon. I'm saying this here in case you're wondering what that book on the table is. It's "Strong Opinions" — and you can buy it at that link.

"That Fat Lip Might Give Obama Some Street Cred."

An NPR headline for a Scott Simon piece:

I wonder if having a larger scar wouldn't actually fortify President Obama's profile, as he contends with Kim Jong Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Vladimir Putin. Imagine a president with a gnarly, vivid scar telling the rulers of China, "Nice country ya' got here. I'd hate to see something happen to it if you didn't stop foolin' around with the value of your currency. Know what I mean?"

Uh... I think the reason he got 12 stitches was because they were very tiny stitches so there won't be a visible scar. But here's NPR trying to rise above its wimpy reputation.

The last football Saturday of the year.

If you've got something to say about it, say it here.

ADDED: And now, it's on to the Rose Bowl. But first... pick up that trash:



(Thanks to Chip Ahoy for animating my photo.)

"I have an old-fashioned rubber bicycle horn that I thought I'd stuff down into my junk before the pat-down."

"Hilarity ensues! Besides, anything that increases my junk profile has to be a good thing, right?"

No video of this actually happening at a real TSA groping at the link. Just some (genitalia-free) artwork.

"A U.S. Border Patrol spokesman says country singer Willie Nelson was charged with marijuana possession after 6 ounces was found aboard his tour bus in Texas..."

"Patrol spokesman Bill Brooks ... says an officer smelled pot when a door was opened and a search turned up marijuana."

Come on. Leave Willie alone.

"Religion doesn't do policy. All my decisions were based on policy and so they should be..."

"... and you may disagree with those decisions but they were made because I genuinely believed them to be right."

Said Tony Blair, as if a religious person can think about what what he believes is right without religion being part of the idea of what is right. That Blair blur happened in a debate with Christopher Hitchens, who asked:

"Is it good for the world to worship a deity that takes sides in wars and human affairs, to appeal to our fear and to our guilt — is it good for the world?...

"To terrify children with the image of hell ... to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world?...

In the end, the audience got to vote on who won the debate, and Hitchens got 68% — 68% of those who would go to a debate — in Toronto — about whether or not religion is a force for the good.

(Via Crack Emcee — "Kick Ass: You Believers Are Little Kim Jong-Ils.")

Remember "Sorry Everybody"?

It was all the rage just about exactly 6 years ago. Americans were apologizing to the world for reelecting George Bush. Remember these people, displaying their sweet faces in an adorable attempt to let the world know that lots of us Americans are so sorry.

"The threat was very real. Our investigation shows that Mohamud was absolutely committed to carrying out an attack on a very grand scale."

The NYT reports on an Oregon teenager's attempt to blow up fake explosives — given him by the FBI — that he thought were real. According to the FBI, he wanted to kill everyone who showed up for a Christmas tree lighting in Portland.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, was arrested at 5:40 p.m. Friday just after he dialed a cell phone that he thought would set off the blast but instead brought federal agents and police swooping down on him.

Yelling "Allahu Akbar!" — Arabic for "God is great!" — Mohamud tried to kick agents and police after he was taken into custody, according to prosecutors....

[T]he sting operation began in June after an undercover agent learned that Mohamud had been in regular e-mail contact with an "unindicted associate" in Pakistan's northwest, a frontier region where al-Qaida and Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents are strong....

ADDED: I already had the tag "Christmas bomber," so I used that again. There's a new spin on the "War on Christmas."

"I can measure your body, in 3D..."

"... and I can make you perfectly fitting garments in the future without any sewing and stitching, making the needle and the thread obsolete."

The Prez gets an elbow to the face while playing basketball.

It takes 12 stitches to close up the wound.

"I am no fan of Ann Althouse, but I had to admit to a shudder of recognition when I read her criticism of liberals last week."

Says Maria Bustillos. She quotes this from me:

What is liberal about this attitude toward other people? You wallow in self-love, and what is it you love yourself for? For wanting to shower benefits on people… that you have nothing but contempt for.

Then she says:

This may not be such a very good description of liberals in general but it is an excellent description of J.K. Rowling. In the “touching” climactic scene in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the house-elf Dobby has been “liberated” by, and now sacrifices himself to save, Harry Potter & co. The house-elves as depicted in the movies are horrifyingly pathetic, small, cringing, grateful; the sad, brave little creature Dobby literally expires with the name of Harry Potter on his lips. It’s like freedom is the gift of the chosen ones to bestow, and those thus benefited can die of gratitude and be “properly buried," which really, there is this long burial scene complete with Harry Potter and shovel. It’s a perfect illustration of the “liberal condescension” that conservatives are always yodeling about, and it made my hair stand on end.

I haven't been following Harry Potter. Can anyone explain that?

At the Dying Light Café...

... there's still time to talk.

"Music is God. In difficult times, you feel it. Especially when you are suffering."

Today is the 107th birthday of Alice Herz-Sommer, the oldest living Holocaust survivor.

"I am richer than other people."

If the individual mandate is unconstitutional, will the entire healthcare law be invalidated?

Judges Henry E. Hudson (in Virginia) and Judge Roger Vinson (in Florida) will rule on their case soon. Both of these judges were appointed by Republican Presidents. (The federal judge in Michigan who, in a case decided last month, found the mandate constitutional, was appointed by Bill Clinton.)

Assuming one of these judges says that Congress's power regulate commerce clause does not include a power to make private citizens buy insurance, what happens to the rest of the law? The law does not contain a severability clause. That is, it does not explicitly say what should happen to the rest of the law if part of it is stricken down.

An earlier version of the legislation, which passed the House last November, included severability language. But that clause did not make it into the Senate version, which ultimately became law. A Democratic aide who helped write the bill characterized the omission as an oversight.

Well, that's one hell of an oversight! I can certainly see why someone who wants the bill to survive would attempt to portray this as an oversight, but I don't think that's believable. The need for a severability clause is well-known and obvious.

Without such language, the Supreme Court, through its prior rulings, essentially requires judges to try to determine whether Congress would have enacted the rest of a law without the unconstitutional provisions.

The Justice Department, which represents the Obama administration, acknowledges that several of the law’s central provisions, like the requirement that insurers cover those with pre-existing conditions, cannot work unless both the healthy and the unhealthy are mandated to have insurance. Otherwise, consumers could simply buy coverage when they needed treatment, causing the insurance market to “implode,” the federal government asserts.

So the individual mandate is plainly not severable from at least some of the rest of the law.

In a hearing last month, Judge Hudson remarked on the difficulty of determining Congress’s intent regarding a law with hundreds of disparate provisions. “This bill has more moving parts than a Swiss watch,” he said.

The administration, in arguing for the constitutionality of the individual mandate, has stressed how crucial it is to the success of the entire reform, but that inherently works as an argument against severability.

Black Friday on the Althouse blog.

Let me give you some Althouse-tested gift ideas:

Althouse's favorite movie.

Meade's favorite movie.

The Meadhouse blender.

The Meadhouse way to make coffee.

The camera Althouse carries around all the time.

Althouse's favorite Nikon lens.

The chocolate Althouse eats every day.

A device Althouse uses for drawing with the computer.

The book Althouse most enjoyed reading this year.

Possibly the only movie we bothered to see in the theater this year.

The trekking poles we use all the time.

My small-but-nice hydrating backpack.

My too-much-information scale.

The Meadhouse trail stove.

The soil knife Meade planted over 1,000 bulbs with.

The newest old stuff from Meadhouse's favorite artist.

I love my iPad.

The iPhone I'm getting when my old iPhone dies.

Some memoirs I read and liked: Patti Smith, Keith Richards, Hitch, Bush, Franzen, Orwell ...

And one I will read: Mark Twain.

How we squish and heat our sandwiches.

4 new trucks Meade wants to put on AllenS's wish list.

A game for a young person.

A game I like to play.

The original version of the game they'll make me play, which I'm ordering right now, because the wood pieces will give me $22 worth of pleasure over the plastic pieces in the game we have in the house.

So let's get the vintage version of this game I loved as a kid.

The hiking shoes Althouse likes a lot.

The clogs Althouse keeps by the door to step into and then kick off as soon as she's in the car.

The Meadhouse salad spinner.

Althouse's noise-canceling headphones.

Althouse splurges on lip balm.

My all-time favorite TV-comedy.

The official Meadhouse chips.

The official Althouse crackers.

Where we sit.

The Althouse desk lamp.

Expensive, but this has helped me so much and made daily life so pleasurable.

It works for me: night and day creams.

What I picked out when I went perfume-shopping with Palladian.

What Palladian picked out for me based on my love of smoke-flavored things.

The fragrance I picked out long ago based initially on the shape of the bottle and which is actually really great if you like roses.

The Meadhouse drinking glasses.

The Althouse sketchbook.

Gift card!

Lotsa gift cards!

The Meadhouse coffee: espresso ground and whole bean.

"Across the country, Four Loko 'vigil' parties have ... been held to say goodbye to the drink."

The FDA — with pressure short of an actual ban — has driven the product off the market. Four Loko combines one cup of coffee's worth of caffeine with 4 beers' worth of alcohol.

The fight against Four Loko has led many consumers – especially young ones – to defend their favorite party pop – and stock up....

"Every time I drank a Four Loko, something terrible happened," one person told the website Gothamist at a tribute march to the drink in New York City. "And each time I grew from it."

Facebook groups, petitions and even YouTube videos have also sprouted up in support of the drink.

"Get the government out of my Loko!" wrote one petitioner.

It's hard to believe the government gets involved in such matters. It's almost a kind of snobbery. It's not a classy product, by design. It's like Smucker's Goober. Some people think you seem like an idiot not being able to get peanut butter out of one jar and jelly out of another... and why are you eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches anyway? Why don't you make a sandwich with thinly sliced turkey and fresh greens? You... goober!

So, without Four Loko, what will you do? Let alcohol have its effect without the offsetting effect of a cup of coffee? Eh. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that you can drink coffee with your alcohol. I'm sure simpler approaches easily occur even to drunks. You could take a big swig out of a can of Red Bull or DoubleShotEspresso and top it up with vodka. Or you can do what I observed Ohio State fans doing here last month:

They drink beer and guzzle 5-Hour Energy in berry and grape flavors. Run yourself down with alcohol and then pep yourself up again with that awful glop?

See? I'm a snob. "Awful glop." But I'm not the government enacting my snobbery into law. I'm just insulting your taste, exercising my free speech. It seems to me that if I can sip French-press coffee with a single-malt Scotch, you should be able to slug Four Loko.

And, in honor of Black Friday, here's a Christmas present idea: a nice case of Jolt Caffeine Energy Gum. Or: Penguin Caffeinated Peppermints.

"I felt like Neo from 'The Matrix.' I began hearing voices and feeling powerful."

"They were asking about the difference between mom and mother. It was a sign."

I don't think that a mentally ill person facing a murder charge should be giving — be allowed to give? — a press interview. Perhaps I shouldn't be interested in reading this.

His mother ... knocked on the door and asked him to go to the kitchen and pour water from a pot in which she was cooking three chickens. "I looked at these chickens lying dead in the pot and a voice told me it was a sacrifice. It was black magic," he said.

Brea left the chickens alone and went back to his room. When his mother asked why he did not do what she had asked, he said she spoke with a different voice.

"She had the voice of the demon. I opened the door with the dagger at my side and the sword," he said....

"To you it might sound silly, but in my culture demons are very real."

At the First Ice Café...

... oh, it's cold...



... but we're not crusted over yet...



... share the last glow of warmth here tonight.

Pretending to be pretending to be alone at Indian Lake.

Thanksgiving, at sunset, 2010.

Irradiating food. Irradiating people.

Irradiation is a great way to improve food safety:

Bacteria, viruses, and everything else are all sterilized by the radiation. Ionizing radiation is used because it's high energy, and is extremely dangerous to living tissue.... [T]he food coming out the other end — be it bread, milk, meat, fruit, or cheese — is absolutely sterile and, if properly sealed, will last longer on your shelf than virtually anything else in the supermarket....

But Americans are too freaked out by it:

The circular green logo along with the words "Treated with irradiation" are so terrifying to much of the American public that the process has been put virtually out of business. Most Americans would prefer to accept a few E. coli deaths....

Even though there is absolutely no radiation in the food that we would buy:

Food irradiation... does not place radioactive material onto the food. The food is placed in the radiation field, and then it's removed. Run a Geiger counter over it, and it shows zero. Food that's been irradiated is not radioactive.

But we're too scared of this radiation to use it to protect ourselves from the very real bacteria in food that can kill us.

If we're overcautious to the point of irrationality about radiation, why then are we at all willing to let the government irradiate our bodies?

In April, four scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote a public letter to the White House warning that the government may have underestimated the dosage of ionizing radiation delivered to a person's skin from a backscatter machine by one or two orders of magnitude. The scientists, who have expertise in biochemistry, biophysics, oncology, and X-ray crystallography, pointed out that the government's estimate was based on radiation exposure for the entire body. During scanning, the majority of radiation will be focused on the surface of the body, meaning a more concentrated dose of radiation is delivered to the skin....

Ed Nickoloff, professor of radiology at Columbia University and chief hospital physicist at Columbia University Medical Center, says the data isn't yet clear either way. "At this point, until I knew more information, I'd tell people to take the pat-down," he says.

Is it that we are not only irrational, but we are also irrational in our choice of what to be irrational about? I don't think so. Food radiation was something that businesses were permitted to do, but they stopped because we avoided buying the product. The government isn't asking us whether we want our bodies irradiated if we want to travel by plane. It's not like going to the grocery store and picking one package of hamburger instead of another. We still get our hamburger. We don't have a choice of flying with radiation or without radiation. The only choice the government gives us is not to fly or to accept a groping.