Toadfish Monastery

The New York Times has an interesting toadfish article today.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/science/08angi.html?th&emc=th

Snip:

Quote...when it comes to a sensible display of excessive muscular activity, the male toadfish has the right idea. A male toadfish may not look the part of an animal Olympian. He spends his time sitting nearly motionless on the bottom of a marsh, his body like a smeared scoop of pudding and old coffee beans, his full, fleshy lips pulled downward in a perpetual Churchillian scowl. Yet it turns out that inside the belly of this gelatinous, seemingly languorous beast are some of the fastest muscles in the vertebrate world, and the most instructive.

I have been lost in the wastelands of the blogsphere. Where should I go to catch up on the "doings" of The Monastery?
I've done a little digging to try and figure out who is who here. I lost many of my contacts and notes when I went to the new computer. I'll try to be a better community member in the future siblings.

Plus I am sure many of you have missed the sight of my fabulous avatar.

I've always had the high speed internet, well, 'always' in the past 3 years. But when your processor is a tortoise even a cable modem is pokey. The feeling I get from this new machine is similiar of the one I had went I went from a WebTV to a computer.

Happy New Year Sibs! (A wee bit late perhaps.)
My brilliant son gifted me with a shiny new computer and I am just now finding my way around it. I feel as though I've stepped into the 21st Century, computer-wise. (Well, come to think of it, I did, as my old puter is a 1998 model!)

So I'm back and badder then ever!

Whe I did a Google image on Teripie, the only thing that came up was an old picture I had posted at TOP.And that wasn't even a picture of Teripie.
This is Teripie:

The one on the right........

Our early voting here is done on Diebold machines. Absolutely no paper trail. When the supervisor of elections was questioned on this, he protested and said the was a paper trail, then produced the little slip of paper that has the results printed on it. Nothing individual, just a print out of what the machine says the total tally is. To give him some credit, he did test every single machine, something that is not required. He's trying to be a careful as he can be, considering the tools he is given. I think he's still sweating the incident in '04 when Gerhard (sp?) swept the county in the primary and he had dropped out of the race a month earlier.

Oh yeah, did I tell ya our supervisor is an appointee of Jeb Bush?

HBO is showing a documentary tonight at 9 EST. It's about the black box voting and titled "Hacking The Vote."

As to the election results, I predict there will be no change. Maybe the dems will pick up a seat or two, but not an entire branch. The people what to "vote the bums out" but they don't want to vote their bum out. And for what it's worth, if there are exit polls, they will be way off again. Just watch and see.

The smear advertising seems to be right up the media's alley as they seem to cover that topic so much. The ads are getting played on every network and cable news channel over and over. Makes me think if I were a campaign manager with a small budget, the way to get a lot of attention is to run one cheap smear ad, then sit back and watch it go nationwide in play time.

Tonight I got an email form FactCheck.org comparing the two parties in their race to become the sleaziest. The poor dems are trying but they are running a poor second. Article here:
http://www.factcheck.org/article460.html

The US law is indefinate and so broad you can drive a 747 thoguh it. It really is the proverbial "blank check" for Bush and buddies. They can now "dissappear" anyone who displeases them.

Here's the link to Olbermann's commentary on this and other republican ads.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15392701/
Snip:

QuoteThe dictionary definition of the word "terrorize" is simple and not open to misinterpretation:

"To fill or overpower with terror; terrify. To coerce by intimidation or fear." 

Note please, that the words "violence" and "death" are missing from that definition.

The key to terror, the key to terrorism, is not the act—but the fear of the act.

That is why bin Laden and his deputies and his imitators are forever putting together videotaped statements and releasing virtual infomercials with dire threats and heart-stopping warnings.

But why is the Republican Party imitating them?

Keith Olbermann likened the RNC's campaign as "terrorist" activities. He said to deliberately scare people was an act of terrorism. He promised that tomorrow night, Monday, on his program, he would have a comment on it. His stuff is good and usually nails the truth to the wall for all to se. It also hits the internet quickly. I'll post a link to the comment if and when it gets posted.

Recently Rick Santorum has compared our situation in Iraq with Lord of The Rings. At Salon.com, they had readers write in with comparisons of their own to some other works of fiction. They have posted the top 10 here:
https://letters.salon.com/ent/feature/2006/10/18/sauron/view/index.html?show=ec&order=desc
These are pretty amusing and I recommend reading them. maybe come up with a few of our own?
Hitchhiker's Guide Snip:

QuoteThe administration's "stay the course" in the face of continuing degradation of the situsation, is only logical if they are waiting for a very improbable event, like the reincarnation of Lawrence of Arabia, or the Woodstock music festival showing up in Baghdad through a worm hole. Thus, they are clearly depending upon an "infinite improbability" system to make Iraq a peaceful democracy.

James Baker III is charged with finding a solution to the Iraq debacle. It is taking longer to get to the answer than expected. Baker plays the role of "Deep Thought". Just like in Hitchhiker's, we THINK we know what his answer will mean, i.e., how to really stabilize Iraq, but we don't actually understand the question do we? I think we will find out, parallel to the book, that the real question was: "How can we save the petulant, maladroit Dubya's butt as yet one more time"?

Topic: bloggers.
Goal: Share the web sites of your favorites here.

To kick off this thread, here's a link to a documentary in progress entitled. "The War of The Words: The Story of The 101st Fighting Keyboarders"

It's brilliant!
http://www.thewarofthewords.net/

Just the other day I was speculating what would be different if the moon landing had happened today. I'm pretty sure the US would have claimed it. I always wondered why we didn't do so in the first place. We used to be such nice guys, huh?

On last night's program Keith Olbermann did a brilliant Commentary on the new  that Shrub signed  yesterday. Here's a link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15321167/ 
I need to stop watching this guy's show. It really depresses me.
Snip:

QuoteAnd if you somehow think habeas corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this:  If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an "unlawful enemy combatant," exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not?  Do you think this attorney general is going to help you?

The United States has developed a very successful welfare state. It's the "corporate welfare state." The big corps now buy and sell seats of government where they write the laws to suit their pocket books. Why do the people allow this? Is it laziness, head-in-the-sand, or apathy? All of the above maybe?
The poor are ignored by politicians. It's widely known that they have no power and the only time they are courted at all is election season. Then the politicians and media whip them into a frenzy over issues that really do not effect them. Gay marriage, abortion,, and crap like that, the hot button issues are all that are discussed. And the media is in on this game. They're not exactly hot beds of free thinkers. The Fifth Estate is now owned and run by the big companies as well, why would they want anything to change?

Everyone has an agenda. Unfortunately the agendas are ranked by the importance of what value they hold. And if you ain't got the money, your agenda is not going anywhere.