I have actually come up with several things to write about recently but haven’t. Why not? Because of time. Not lack of time to write because I could come up with it, but actual time, as in time of day. I have found that I do my best writing at night and without a lot of distractions. I have access to the internet during the day. So I either have to force myself to write during the day which for some reason is hard for me, or, write at night and save the document to a memory stick and bring it in to transfer to the a net accessible computer in the morning to edit, add links, and post. This puts a real damper on doing research while writing.

But enough about my troubles. Last week a rather disturbing little story hit the airwaves briefly from Acworth Georgia. It seems three boys, aged 8, 9,and 9 were arrested for the alleged rape of an 11 year old girl. While disturbing, I am not here to write about the collapse of civilization that may have lead to such an event. No, there is something that I find a bit more disturbing going on here too. But to set the background I will continue with the tale. The girls tells her mother she was raped, police arrest the three boys. One boys parent come out and declares that the sex was consensual and the girl is yelling rape because her mother found out and she doesn’t want to get in trouble. Thus far this all sounds like an old story. Certainly nothing new.
What caught my ear was a comment made by (I believe) the chief of police in Acworth. He said, (not an exact quote but close) “I understand a parent wanting to defend his child, (referring to the consensual accusation) but this presumes that consent could be given. This girl is too young for that, it couldn’t. It was illegal.” Now on the surface this seems pretty clear until you remember that the two accused are younger than she is. So by that logic, they really can’t be held accountable either. In fact, USUALLY the older person in a sexual relationship is held accountable. So this is kind of weird right off that bat. But on a deeper level than this, according to this Police officer, any time an underage person has sex, one or both of the involved parties is committing a felony sexual offense. After all, if consent cannot be give at all by an underage person for sex that clearly means that any and all sexual contact by person under the age of 16 (in Georgia) is rape of some form or another. And everyone involved is subject to being listed as a sex offender and being listed for life. The mind just boggles sometimes.

And yes, before anyone asks, there were people muttering about charging the two boys as adults. (?!?!) Luckily (?) in Georgia you have to be at least 13 to be charged as an adult. (so you can be an adult criminal at 13, can’t drive till you’re 16, can’t vote till you’re 18 and can’t drink till you are 21. Someone really needs to redefine adult sometime soon)

Thanks

In the grand tradition of the day what am I thankful for? I'm thankful my parents are alive and reasonably well. they have both had the opportunity to be otherwise in the not to distant past and bullets have been dodged. I'm thankful for my Oak Trees; for my dog(s), the cats; my fencing club; my health.
My friends of course, the five odd people who still visit this place with any regularity.
Cools crisp nights with the moon and stars shining brightly, the fact that I could borrow a car after my truck passed away.
My family however strange and scattered we may be.

Disapointment

Thanks to Netflix I finally got around to watching the much hyped and discussed 300. Frankly, I was disappointed. Stylistically it was very interesting. One could clearly see the comic roots of the project but film wise, there was nothing to it. A member of the fencing club sort of summed it up best when he said that it was like the WWF in a movie format. Lots of big men stand around talking macho and then there is a fight followed by more macho talk and another fight. I couldn’t argue with him on that. The characters were exceptionally two dimensional. The dialog was stilted and over blown. Plot development was about as linear and uninspired as it is possible to get. And of course, there were HUGE historical inaccuracies. The cinematography was very good. The fight choreography was excellent. (If you kept the fact that it is a comic book firmly in mind.) But overall I was a bit let down. There had been so much talk and frothing about it that I had expected more. I can see why some of the political left declared it a propaganda film. It was. But not to hype a war with Iran (Persia) as they claimed, just a standard “Look at the glories of Western Civilization” type film. And, as is typical with films of this nature, it treats the subject in a totally superficial manner. Which would have been ok I suppose if people had treated it as a comic book put on film when it came out instead of talking it up like some sort of serious cinema experience.
Oh well.

Dead trucks and super mice

It’s been one of those weeks you know? The kind of week that makes you just want to stand on street corners and yell “Buggrit! Millennium shrimp and fish!” (Okay, maybe not you but allow me my eccentricities.) It all got started last weekend when I burned out the engine in my truck. I was hauling all the gear down to a fencing tournament of course and I knew something was not right. The engine had a strange sound going and I was getting a bad feeling. It didn’t help that the low fuel and the battery light had come on. (since I had just put 10 gallons in the tank I knew there wasn’t low fuel so something else had to be screwy) When I pulled off the Interstate, boom, the engine shut off and wouldn’t restart when I tried the time tested method of taking it out of gear and then putting it back in. Much like push starting but at 50 mph. No go. When I came to a stop smoke/steam began boiling out from under the hood, the exhaust pipe, the vents, pretty much every where. We pushed it around a corner and began to transfer all the gear to another vehicle. Then we left the smoking corpse parked on the street in front of some houses in a not quite unsavory neighbor hood in downtown Savannah. I figured there were pretty good odds that I’d never see it again. Needless to say we were late for the tournament which slowed everything down because we were hauling the scoring equipment. Oh well. I actually fenced well enough at that event that one of the younger fellows suggested I burn a truck again before a major event. “Sacrifice pays off!” he said. Heh. Eventually after a few adventures we go the dead thing back home. (Including one meeting with a VERY nice police officer who did not ticket us or throw us off the road for pulling the truck at night on a trailer with no lights or license plate.) It is now at a shop and I am awaiting the word on how much it will cost to resurrect the old beast. Since it is a 1990 Isuzu with almost 300K miles on it I can’t complain too much. If it costs too much I have already seen a couple of replacement options. A motorcycle has been suggested but it is hard to schlep fencing gear, lawn mowers, firewood etc around on one so I need something a bit better. Something that can at least haul a trailer. There is a truck of the same make as mine with “only” 197K miles on it for sale near by that is an option. There is also a mid eighties Saab that needs a new transmission available. This is a possibility only because I happen to have a mid eighties Saab that has a good transmission but a bad engine sitting in my yard at the moment. That would be some work but might be doable. We shall see…

Now all of that Drama aside, I saw something Friday that just amused me. At Case Western University they have bred SUPERMICE. Really. Genetically engineered super mice. They are larger than normal mice(the first report on BBC I read said larger, the one linked says they are actually smaller YMWV), they are faster and stronger than normal mice. (They can run on a treadmill for almost 5 kilometers at a speed of 20 meters per minute. Not fast by our standards but this is a mouse!) They can also reproduce longer than normal mice. i.e. bear litters of new supermice when they are three years old which is like being in one’s eighties for humans)

Now here is where I begin to differ from many right thinking people. Because the thought of these little buggers escaping tickles me. And they will escape, they are mice. Mice always get out of the cage. Hell, they probably already have escaped. I know, I know, I should be shocked and horrified at the idea of genetically engineered rodents running wild but I’m not. Heck, maybe the supermice will get us before the zombies do…

Anyone read The Rats of NIMH