A Parenting Tip

To get children out of bed early on a dark cold Autumn morning, put their clothes in the dryer for five minutes. Then whip off their covers and give them their nice warm clothes. Don't let them use their clothes as a blanket.

The only thing that works better than this is announcing that the cats have left something dead on the floor downstairs. Preferrably something headless.

The Poor Man on Polite Political Discourse

Yesterday, Christopher Hitchens wrote possibly the most absurd column ever in his career. I read it in Slate yesterday, and figuratively threw a coffee mug at my computer and called it a bad name. Just look at these gems from this deteriorating mind:

...unless he conclusively repudiates the obvious defeatists in his own party (and maybe even his own family), we shall be able to say that John Kerry's campaign is a distraction from the fight against al-Qaida.

My God, I would have thought that the disasterous invasion of Iraq was a distraction from the fight with al-Qaida, but he thinks that it's the democratic process that's the distraction. Uh-huh.

What will it take to convince these people that this is not a year, or a time, to be dicking around?

This is when I figuratively threw my coffee mug. Kevin Drum has the best response to this assertion:

And get this: he's talking about the left! That's chutzpah!

I was tempted to start ranting immediately on this personal therapy device I call a blog, but thought that I should wait until I could mull it over for a while. Good thing I did, because my screed couldn't hold a candle to these thoughts on the issue from the talented Poor Man:

1. Please stop being such fucking pussies. The idea that an opinion should be banished from debate because it hurts your feelings is preposterous, because it's impossible to have an honest debate when only happy talk is allowed. If you don't like an opinion, I encourage you not to like it; it you don't agree with an opinion, I encourage you to disagree with it; and, in any case, you have my blessing to ignore any opinions you wish. You even have permission to waste everyone's time bitching about how no one should say it because it makes you feel icky, even though nobody fucking cares. It’s just that you open yourself up to being called some pretty negative things, such as "fucking pussy."

[...]

2. If you can't stop being such fucking pussies, at least stop pretending to be high-minded in an attempt to cover up what fucking pussies you are. [... ] What is much more shameful is going into some absurd Kabuki theatrical routine about how having a bad opinion of something you like is utterly contemptible and beyond the bounds of human decency. Much worse than being a total pussy is being such a total pussy you can't even admit to yourself what a total pussy you are, and so subjecting everyone to some retarded pantomime about the end of civility and have you no shame, sir? and on and on and on. If you want a rule of thumb for determining if you are completely and transparently full of shit, see if your denunciation of commentary as utterly contemptible and infinitely shameful is accompanied by you saying pretty much the same thing.

That's some damn fine stuff.

Blogger Salutes Former Ba'athist Hitman and Terrorist

The entertaining Dean Esmay says "Prime Minister Alawi Makes Me Proud".

Well, to be charitable, I don't think Dean knows a lot about Allawi. For example, he can't spell his name correctly. So here's a bit of information about this new head of state, just to fill in the blanks.

Allawi was a confidante of Hussein in the 1960. He was a member of the Ba'ath party since its early days. While in London in the seventies, he was a paid Ba'ath agent, identifying enemies of the party, and having them murdered.

He split with the party on 1975 for some reason, and survived an attempted murder probably ordered by Saddam in 1978. He then formed the Iraqi National Accord in the eighties, which went on to commit a number of terrorist attacks against civilians in Iraq in the '90s, including the bombing of a movie theatre, and the bombing of a schoolbus that killed children.

He's generally considered the source of the bogus "chemical weapons ready for use in 45 minutes" claim that got Tony Blair in so much trouble.

The guy is a thug who has killed and paid his way into the highest political spot in Iraq. But hey, if he can make a blogger or two proud, I'm sure that we can avoid staring at the blood on his hands too much.

Wikipedia source on Allawi here.

Kilts

When the Metafilter community starts commenting positively on the wearing of kilts, you know it's time to get one.

Get your kilt here and here and here and here and here and here and here.

And as a kilt owner, I have two things to say about them: they're extremely comfortable, and women seem to love guys in kilts. Before getting my own, I tried on the kilt of an uncle visiting from Scotland. My beloved spouse got a carnivorous look in her eyes and said in a throaty voice "Damn. You got to get one of those." "Honey, they cost like a thousand bucks." "Don't care, I'll give you the money. Now get one, dammit."

Fortunately, mine only cost a couple of hundred. Worth every penny.

The Official God FAQ

Wonderful. Check it out.

Kayaking

Can a Canadian socialist and an American Republican go on a three-day kayaking trip without driving each other crazy?

Of course they can. What an awesome trip. We were expecting rain all three days, so we were decked out with wetsuits, paddling jackets, GoreTex paddling hats, etc, but all three days of paddling were in sunshine. Rained like hell during both nights, with a brutal thunderstorm on the first night. One strike hit so close that I practically drilled through my Thermarest trying to get lower.

We covered thirty or forty miles or so altogether. I developed tendonitis on my watch-wearing wrist on the second day (it developed crepitus, which is cool, but hurts a bit), and I had to tape it up for further paddling, but that didn't diminish the fun.

We saw turkey vultures on the island. I had no idea we had them in BC. That plus eagles, harbor seals, California seals, river otters, raccoons, mice, jellyfish, and crabs. A couple of the crabs had unfortunate fatal accidents and we had to steam them in beer and seawater then eat them with butter.

Anyway, photos soon as I install that new USB port on my machine to download photos from my new camera.

Well, I'm outta here...

Off to pick up my rental kayak, and pack my drysacks. It's raining, and I don't give a care, I'm off to the Gulf Islands until Sunday. Toodles.

New Manholes Picked

Vancouver, my home town, had a contest for designs of new manhole covers. Here are the final choices, and the two winners.

But I think we should use them all. Raise taxes by a couple of bucks, I don't mind.

Potkettleblack

Oh brother. Andrew Sullivan today:

In a post today, Jonah Goldberg says:

For a great many of us -- journalists, bloggers, citizens etc -- this story has absolutely nothing to do with Bush. This is my own personal sense of it, but I don't think very many people who are wading into the Rather story care about what Bush did thirty years ago. I'm sure quite a few of them even dislike Bush a great deal or they aren't supporting him. Andrew Sullivan (who's got a good outraged post today) despises Bush. Howard Kurtz is no partisan. The good folks at ABC News are never at the VRWC bingo night Etc, etc.

I think he's right in his basic point. But I do want to quibble: I do not despise Bush; and I think it's highly unhelpful to conflate criticism of this president with hatred.

And then there are these. Until recently, when Sullivan awoke as if from a bad dream and realized what many have been saying for a while, that Bush was an incompetent guy, is there once when he didn't equate criticism of Bush with "Bush-Hatred?"

Oh Mighty Blogosphere

The Blogdome celebrates itself:

Glenn Reynolds:

The Internet, on the other hand, is a low-trust environment. Ironically, that probably makes it more trustworthy.

That's because, while arguments from authority are hard on the Internet, substantiating arguments is easy, thanks to the miracle of hyperlinks. And, where things aren't linkable, you can post actual images. You can spell out your thinking, and you can back it up with lots of facts, which people then (thanks to Google, et al.) find it easy to check. And the links mean that you can do that without cluttering up your narrative too much, usually, something that's impossible on TV and nearly so in a newspaper.

Michael Totten:

The end of old media as we know it will arrive when the majority of editors come to respect the blogosphere for what it is instead of sniffing at those of us who contribute to it like we’re a bunch of gap-toothed peasants raising pitchforks at the palace.

Sullivan:

Memo to Rather: you can't break that story, because someone else in pajamas already did. Check the frequency, Kenneth. You are so far from being out front on this, you are leagues behind in the dust. Have you heard of the Internet? You can find it on that weird machine in your office they call a computer. All this proves is the fathomless cocooning of Rather and Heyward. They still think this is the 1980s. They have no idea what media world they are living in. Like Howell Raines, they are so out of it, they don't even know they're finished.

Woohoo! WooHHOO!! We rule! We, oh wait, TBogg chimes in:

At this point the bloggers bumrush the blogosphere with their unrestrained opinions, untrained eyes, incomplete education, and whatever psycho-sexual baggage that they thankfully keep hidden away, and "weigh in" on the topic at hand. When they are good at it, it makes them into an editorialist. When they are horrid, they land a gig at The Corner.

Blogging is just a cyberspace letter to the editor, instant venting, and little else. It's not "new media" (which sounds like hubris reflux from the dot.com days Fast Company, anyone?). Just like Penthouse Forum was a collection of phony stroke stories designed to give teenagers hope and older white men false memories, blogs are like newspapers made up entirely of op-eds for the likeminded. Critical thinking is rarely the price of admission, and, speaking of admission, how many blogs would you pay to read?

This isn't to say that all blogs are worthless. Some are thoughtful, some are well written, and some are entertaining. Others have become useful vehicles for raising campaign funds for various causes. But if you were to take the whole blogosphere and separate the wheat (the good blogs) from the chaff (the bad blogs) you'd barely have enough to make a Triscuit.

And I think that sums it up. Tradition media has ethics, accountability, policies and procedures. Yes, it occasionally goes bad, in a very public way. But if bloggers had to live up to the same level of accountability that is being demanded of Rather, CBS, and the rest of the journalist pack, then we'd probably have to, oh, I don't know, publicly execute Glenn Reynolds after a couple of days or something. The number of things bloggers get wrong is astronomical (I figure that Instapundit is responsible for about half. Seriously, read through his archives sometime. Sheesh)

A photographer friend of mine took a bunch of photos while visiting Florence. While looking through his hundreds of contact sheets, I remarked that I was amazed at the beauty of many of them. He said "Hey, if you give a chimp a camera and it takes a thousand photos, there's bound to be a couple of good shots." And I think the same thing applies to several hundred thousand dorks publishing their stupid opinions on the net.

Trudeau's Eulogy

Via Metafilter, a touching eulogy.

Several years ago, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Canada's legendery Prime Minister, passed away. This man was the ultimate politician, a very cool guy, no matter what one's political affiliation. And four years ago, watching his son Justin give his eulogy, I was moved to tears.

I was about six years old when I went on my first official trip. I was going with my father and my grandpa Sinclair up to the North Pole.

It was a very glamorous destination. But the best thing about it is that I was going to be spending lots of time with my dad because in Ottawa he just worked so hard.

One day, we were in Alert, Canada's northernmost point, a scientific military installation that seemed to consist entirely of low shed-like buildings and warehouses.

Let's be honest. I was six. There were no brothers around to play with and I was getting a little bored because dad still somehow had a lot of work to do.

I remember a frozen, windswept Arctic afternoon when I was bundled up into a Jeep and hustled out on a special top-secret mission. I figured I was finally going to be let in on the reason of this high-security Arctic base.

I was exactly right.

We drove slowly through and past the buildings, all of them very grey and windy. We rounded a corner and came upon a red one. We stopped. I got out of the Jeep and started to crunch across towards the front door. I was told, no, to the window.

So I clambered over the snowbank, was boosted up to the window, rubbed my sleeve against the frosty glass to see inside and as my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw a figure, hunched over one of many worktables that seemed very cluttered. He was wearing a red suit with that furry white trim.

And that's when I understood just how powerful and wonderful my father was.

{UPDATE} Well, I was just glancing at Pierre Trudeau quotations on Wikiquote, and I came across this one that I'd never seen before:

"In Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Canada has at last produced a political leader worthy of assassination." - Irving Taylor

This one is good too, from Trudeau commenting on being called "that asshole" by Nixon:

"I've been called worse things by better people."

Oh yeah, almost forgot

I started exposing my stupid opinions to the internet via this blog one year ago today. And yet I still do not rule the world. Weird.

Well, let's hope we can put this behind us now

...and get on to more important topics. From the Dallas News:

Marian Carr Knox, who worked from 1957 to 1979 at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston, said that she prided herself on meticulous typing and that the memos first disclosed by CBS News last week were not her work.

"These are not real," she told The Dallas Morning News after examining copies of the disputed memos for the first time. "They're not what I typed, and I would have typed them for him."

Mrs. Knox, 86, who spoke with precise recollection about dates, people and events, said, "I remember very vividly when Bush was there and all the yak-yak that was going on about it."

She added that she does not support Mr. Bush as president, deeming him "unfit for office" and "selected, not elected."

... Mrs. Knox said signs of forgery abound in the four memos.

She said the typeface on the documents did not match either of the two typewriters that she used during her time with the Guard. She identified those machines as a mechanical Olympia typewriter and the IBM Selectric that replaced it in the early 1970s.

She spoke fondly of the Olympia, which she said had a key with the "th" superscript character that has been the focus of much debate in the CBS memos.

As has been decided by a crack investigating team of over 200,000 bloggers (199,865 with no experience with typewriters, typography, prepress experience, or an understanding of computer font technology), the only typewriter capable of producing the memos was the very expensive IBM Selectric Composer, which is quite different from the base model they Mrs. Knox says they had in their office (and even the Compose's output was different from the bogus memo).

Sadly, there are some who have so much invested in this that they'll refuse to get over it.

{UPDATE} Oh. My. God. I was trying to be polite in my earlier mention of Hunter's post on The Daily Kos, but this new post has steam coming out my ears.

For those following the story closely, the right-wing blogs (and Howard Kurtz) have a new patron saint of typography, a Joseph M. Newcomer, Ph.D. You can see his argument here, if the traffic hasn't brought it down again. This is the most publicized yet of the attempts to prove the documents are modern Word documents. It is, unfortunately, also among the poorest. Originally, this diary installment was going to dwell mainly on the flaws in Newcomer's logic, which are quite stunning, for a Ph.D.

For someone (Hunter) who has already displayed a stunning lack of experience and knowledge in this subject area to blatantly insult someone with a flawless reputation in an extremely complex subject is simple pure arrogance. To do so without providing any backing reasoning is asinine. And to label anyone disagreeing with you as a "right-wing blog" is blind partisanship.

Sir, you are an ass. A few hours of googling "typewriters" does not an expert make, and you are publicly embarrassing both yourself and those, like myself, with a similar political affiliation. Please desist, for all our sakes.

Matthew Yglesias Is Wrong

Matthew Yglesias is a smart guy, as I say on the links to the right, but he's wrong, wrong, wrong in this post:

After CBS ran the story, the conservative side of the 'sphere came up with dozens of purported debunkings of their authenticity, almost all of which turned out to be more purported than debunking. Then after a few days of back-and-forth, traditional reporters at The Washington Post came out with a more careful, more accurate, more actually-debunking story. The folks at PowerLine and LGF are, at best, Gettier cases, they didn't do any of the actual debunking.

Yeah, there was quite a bit of misinformation from both sides (although the most, in my opinion, was from Atrios and The Daily Kos). But despite my revulsion at having to say so, LGF's Charles Johson, whom I will not link to, provided the definitive proof by matching the page to Microsoft Word output. To anyone who understands the technical implications of that, that was the stake in the heart of authenticity of these memos.

And the tradional media still isn't getting it. There is some excellent analyis on the blogs, as well as a lot of detective work regarding various outputs of old typewriters, and some bulletproof information about Windows Font technology.

Here's an IBM Selectric collector who has typed some of the text and scanned the results.

Here's a comparison of IBM Selectric Composer output and the memos.

Here's a real typography expert's take on the memos.

Despite this kind of information all over the place, I'm still seeing mainstream media fumble and flub this technical issues. I've read today a piece saying that one of the major reasons to say these are forgeries is because of the superscript, or that the issue is proportional fonts, instead of focussing on the fact that the font spacing in the memos use Microsoft TrueType font escapement spacing that wasn't available until the early 1990s, and that would be impossible for even typesetters to reproduce at the time the memos were supposed to be written.

I suppose that's a bit technical, and probably high up on the geekometer scale, but focussing on easier-to-understand stuff is what has lead Matthew to think that a lot of misinformation was floating about the blogosphere.

Rose-Colored Glasses

Some bloggers are all so perky about Iraq that they're beginning to resemble lunatics. I mean, look at this contrast. From a post today from Dean Esmay entitled "Good News Keeps On Getting Better":

And so another two weeks has gone by in Iraq, and as usual the news media continues to sensationalize (if not outright gloat) over every bad thing that happens in Iraq, while ignoring or severely underplaying the amazingly positive developments that happen in that country every single day.

And then take a look at this post from Christopher Allbritton's blog (he's in Iraq covering it for Time Magazine, among others) entitled "It's Worse Than You Think...":

I don’t know if I can really put into words just how bad it is here some days. Yesterday was horrible — just horrible. While most reports show Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra as “no-go” areas, practically the entire Western part of the country is controlled by insurgents, with pockets of U.S. power formed by the garrisons outside the towns. Insurgents move freely throughout the country and the violence continues to grow.

I wish I could point to a solution, but I don’t see one. People continue to email me, telling me to report the “truth” of all the good things that are going on in Iraq. I’m not seeing a one. A buddy of mine is stationed here and they’re fixing up a park on a major street. Gen. Chiarelli was very proud of this accomplishment, and he stressed this to me when I interviewed him for the TIME story. But Baghdadis couldn’t care less. They don’t want city beautification projects; they want electricity, clean water and, most of all, an end to the violence.

...Thousands of Iraqis are desperate to get a new passport and flee the country. These are often the most educated Iraqis — the have the money to get new passports and travel — so the brain-drain will accelerate.

The poor and the disenfranchised are finding their leaders in the populist and fundamentalist Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr or in the radical Islam of the jihadis, who are casting a long shadow on this formerly secular country. Iraq has its own home-grown Wahhabists now, something it didn’t have 18 months ago.

In the context of all this, reporting on a half-assed refurbished school or two seems a bit childish and naive, the equivalent of telling a happy story to comfort a scared child. Anyone who asks me to tell the “real” story of Iraq — implying all the bad things are just media hype — should refer to this post. I just told you the real story: What was once a hell wrought by Saddam is now one of America’s making.

Now, hey, I expect a bit of a spin when far-off events have a bearing on stuff you've been saying and predicting for the past year, and to dealt with the disappointment of this nasty wet smack in the face delivered by reality must seriously bite. But come on already, the country is falling to fucking bits here, and a little song and dance about how the media are a bunch of partisan liars, and things are really happy and cheery in the far-off land of Iraq just looks, well, seriously delusional.

I guess some people are going to still be saying the news is better and better when the last flare-shedding evacuation helicopters zoom across the border.

More on the Memos

Argh, so many instantly-self-educated bloggers who are suddenly font and typewriter experts. While I myself am not an expert, I used an IBM Selectric to publish a small magazine for a couple of years in the mid-seventies. I also worked on layout for several newspapers that used typesetting from a Linotype. I also designed book covers, using Letraset. While at art school, I concentrated a great deal on typography. When I first began using computers, I created specialized typefaces for native language characters. I spent several years doing desktop publishing when it first arrived on the scene, and I worked for several years in software development in the largest producer of pre-press software and hardware in the world. And I recently reconditioned an Underwood #5 typewriter from the 1920s for fun.

So I'm not an expert, but I feel qualified to offer an opinion that these documents are bogus.

The best way to deal with a lot of the misinformation about this is to respond to a Daily Kos posting by Hunter, on each of his points.

First Claim (LittleGreenFootballs): "The documents can be recreated in Microsoft Word".

Hunter says that this just proves that they used the same font. Well, not quite. Much as I detest LGF, this overlay is the real memo killer. What it proves is that the memo was written with identical attributes that just happen to be Microsoft Word defaults. Identical font, identical margins, identical leading, identical superscript (when printed), identical justification, and identical kerning. The kerning is also a dead giveaway -- mechanical typewriters don't do kerning, and kerning is a application-specific feature. To say that a 1973 typewriter could do the same is absurd.

"This typeface -- Times New Roman -- didn't exist in the early 1970s."

Hunter says that the font was created in 1934. Well, Times Roman was, and Times New Roman is pretty much the same. But this doesn't matter, as the real issue is the kerning, leading, and spacing of the text. Some of those are specified by the font characteristics, but kerning tends to be an algorithm, not a specification. And mechanical typewriters were, once again, not capable of following spacing specifications, but could only make a crude approximation.

{UPDATE} As many have pointed out, kerning is off by default in Word. This is true, as true kerning is a complex task that impacts performance. But Microsoft TrueType fonts contain a form of pseudo-kerning that is faster, and is on at all times. Take a close look at the August 18th memo at the word "interference". You'll see that the second "e" is actually under the top of the preceding "f" character. This was not possible with any typewriter, or even any mechanical typesetting machine at the time, and this actual spacing requires the Microsoft Times New Roman Truetype font. Type the word into an MS Word document, and examine it there, then compare it to the reproduction of the memo.

"Documents back then didn't have superscripted 'th' characters"

Hunter correctly indicates that there were shifted superscripts. Quite right, except that most typewriters simply moved the carriage down half a line. The superscripts were printed higher, but in the same font size. In these memos, the superscript characters are a smaller point size. The low-end IBM Selectrics had a type ball that could be swapped out to change font size, but I think that's a little unlikely.

{UPDATE} Forced to eat my words here. Some of Bush's other records do have a smaller superscript "th" in them. Must have been a special key on that typewriter. Note that this is in a monotype font, however.

"This document uses proportional spacing, which didn't exist in the early 1970s."

Hunter points out that there were, and that they were sold to government agencies. Yes there were, but they were difficult to use (you had to type each line twice), and they were primarily used by experts who were producing in-house newspapers, brochures, etc. They certainly were't used for memos. And even these didn't do the kerning which is evident in the memos.

"OK, fine, but no single machine had proportional spacing, 'th' characters, and a font like that one."

Hunter indicates that there were, but notes that they were very expensive. But why not just then theorize that these memos were typeset on a linotype machine, which offered all the features on the memo? They were only a little more expensive than the IBM typewriter he mentions. Well, probably because it would be ridiculous to assert that memos were typeset. But it's only slightly less ridiculous to assert that the memos were typed on these high-end typewriters that were designed to cut into Linotype's market. And I'm flabbergasted at his assertion that the 111th Flight Interceptor Group would buy a hideously expensive typerwriter (they cost about equivelant to $20,000 in today's dollars) just so the could see the "111th" use proper superscript. That's just silliness.

Last night, I discussed this with a friend who also has typography and design experience. He had read about the memos, but not about the possibility of them being forgeries. We debated about the possibility for a minute or two, and then I mentioned that Word default settings produce identical line breaks, word spacing, and center justification. His immediate resonse was "Oh, well that settles it, they're fakes." Having design experience, he knew exactly what that implied. Most self-educated "experts" don't, and I wish they would seek out some real expert advice.

{UPDATE} Here's an actual IBM Selectric collector who has printed out some samples. Hopefully, some of the people who are claiming that just 'cause Word creates an identical document doesn't mean that a typewriter can't will take a long hard look at the spacing on the Executive, which does proportional spacing.

The Bush Memos

My take on the released Bush memos is that they're suspicious.

There's debate over at Powerline that points out that they use proportional spacing. Some parties indicate that there were certain typewriters that used proportional fonts in those days (EG - IBM Selectrics).

As a former user of a Selectric, I have to say this is true, but they didn't use proportional spacing. While the fonts may have been proportional, the individual characters each took up the same amount of space. If you measure the text in the released memos, you will see that this is clearly not the case (EG "i" takes far less room than "x"). In my judgement, these memos have either been created on a computer, or were done using a typesetter, which was an unlikely occurrence for a simple memo.

I call bullshit.

{UPDATE} Hmm, it looks as if there were Selectrics around that could do actual proportional spacing, so I'm wrong on that count. I'm still suspicious though.

{'NUTHER UPDATE} Boing Boing has an interesting point, via the vile blog of the equally vile Charles Johnson, whom I will not link to. If you type the text of the memos directly into Microsoft Word, using the default Times Roman font and default page margins, you get identical output to the memo as printed. To believe that a 60s/70s typewriter could do the same thing, including line breaks and identical word placement is somewhat unbelievable. I think this is definitive, these have got to be forgeries. Now, by who, and for what purpose?

Must. Maintain. Self. Control.

One of the more frustrating things about the current political situation is the overwhelming urge to go on an "I told you so" rant (for more info read this and this and this and this). But that accomplishes nothing, as those driven by pure partisanship excuse eveything away in their minds, and those who don't already admit that errors were made and things are fucked, so what's the point of nose-rubbing?

So instead, I'm focussing on a kayaking trip that I'm making in the Gulf Islands in a week or so. While only a three day long trip with a kayaking pal, I'm using this as a test run for a six-or-seven-day-long trip on the West Coast of Vancouver Island next spring (maybe the Broken Islands Group, maybe something around Tofino), probably with some of the older children, and whoever else we can haul along. Two things are mostly occupying my mind in preparing this trip: safety and cuisine.

I'm making up a couple of bailout survival gear packs (mostly stuff for self-treating hypothermia, minor injuries, and signalling for help). These are worn or carried on the PFDs, and are used if you end up in the saltchuck and make it back to land. I've never had a need for one before, but you never know. Sooner or later, if you kayak enough, you run into trouble.

The other item that I'm bringing on this trip is a sourdough starter in a tightly sealed container. This will allow for pan-fried sourdough biscuits to munch along with freshly caught crab dipped in butter, and for sourdough pancakes, which are friggin' awesome.

Much more fun to think about than politics.

{UPDATE} Someone stop me before I buy this. Freshly baked sourdough bread on the beach. Pizza. Coffee cake desserts. Mmmm.

Hurricane Ivan

Ivan, while currently flattening Jamaica and Cuba, last night passed over Grenada. It also gave Trinidad and Tobago a passing whack. That's pretty far south for a hurricane, and Trinidad, my childhood home, is usually bypassed. However, I experienced Hurricane Flora there in 1963. Again, we only got a glancing blow from this monster, which killed over 7,000 in other islands, but it was easily one of the most terrifying events of my life.