Ontario Empoblog

I've previously commented on how people like to overuse and misuse the word "fascist." I've just found an example of a misapplication of another term - "wilderness years." The term has been applied to Winston Churchill in the years before he became Prime Minister, and the application to Churchill has established the general framework for the term. In Churchill's case, you have a politician who previously had an extraordinary political career, but now found himself out of office, ignored, and considered a has-been. In retrospect (when everyone is wise after the fact), Churchill's warnings about Hitler seem wise; at the time, they didn't. Richard Nixon, in his writings, talked a lot about people who endured wilderness years, including Churchill, De Gaulle, and himself. Nixon's career fits the mold - from Vice President in 1960 to defeated candidate for California governor in 1962, Nixon's slide was dramatic. His inability to prevent a Goldw...

A post of Gindy's reminded me of something that I read in print many years ago. I just found an online paraphrase of it: Consider the fortunes of a 19th century American who finally succeeded big time after a whole run of failures and setbacks: 1831 He failed in business 1832 He was defeated for legislature 1833 He failed again in business 1835 His sweetheart died 1836 He suffered a nervous breakdown 1838 He was defeated for speaker of legislature 1840 He was defeated for elector 1843 He was defeated for Congress 1848 He was defeated again for Congress 1855 He was defeated for Senate 1856 He was defeated for Vice-President 1858 He was defeated again for Senate And we should also mention that his mother died when he was young, and he only received one year of schooling. Whatever happened to him? From the Ontario Empoblog

Dayli has posted about a television show (she saw it in Israel, but I don't know if it was an Israeli show) about Israeli fashion photographer Adi Barkan. While mentioning a little bit about his life and activities, Dayli noted the following: In the past couple of years, Mr. Barkan has decided to fight weight disorders such as anorexia. He started a country wide campaign to hire healthy models for his agency. Every model is examined by a nutritionist, and if she shows sign of a disorder, her parents are called for a conversation, she is not hired, and she receives counseling. He took his battle one step further, and decided to sign Israel's major advertisers on a commitment document, that they will only use healthy models in advertisers, approved by a nutritionist. These models are gorgeous. No, they are not overweight. But they are not heroin-twiggy-skinny either. They are sculpted to perfection, with every womanly curve in place. And statistically, a single man's campaig...

The purpose of a museum is to preserve those critical artifacts that will explain the intricacies of our society to future generations, and even to future civilizations. By examining these artifacts, beings from the future will have a better understanding of those items that shaped twentieth century American culture. Yup, Scientology (not Tom Cruise this time, but John Travolta) and Star 98.7 (the Partridge Family's Danny Bonaduce). I laugh about this, but I'm certain that our entertainment activities could be instructive to future civilizations - as long as they understand that this was merely entertainment, and that "Up your nose with a rubber hose" was not a religous chant to the great god Epstein's mother's doctor. (By the way, these exhibits can be found at the entrance to the lunchroom in the basement of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.) From the Ontario Empoblog

From Florida : At least one Seminole wasn't surprised when Von Wafer was selected in the second round of the NBA Draft on Tuesday. Irving Thomas, a Lakers scout who played two seasons at FSU...said Wafer made believers of the Lakers, including general manager Mitch Kupchak, during a Friday morning workout. Wafer made 20-straight jump shots in one drill according to Irving, who played one season with the Lakers.... Irving, who resides in South Florida, saw FSU play three games last season. Wafer missed one of those games because of a suspension. "He had some trouble during the season," Irving said. "We knew Von had some issues. But the background checks and interview were outstanding. All the feedback was extremely favorable".... Yet while Thomas embraced the decision, it was panned by the L.A. Times. "The Lakers have never been known to be masters of the draft, and this proves that again," went its online draft analysis. "It's hard to know wha...

These pictures were taken at a mall at Pentagon City, Arlington, Virginia. See related audioblogs [1] [2] . From the Ontario Empoblog

(Note: this is my first time trying Blogger's new picture feature. In the past, I was using the Hello capability. Here goes.) I'm finally uploading some of the pictures from my East Coast trip to the Ontario Empoblog. The following pictures were taken at the Empire State Building in New York City. From the Ontario Empoblog

The White Grizzly links to a Radar Online animated gif of Hollywood's favorite Xenusian couple. Meanwhile, the Village Voice weighs in: The ominous tagline in early trailers for the alien invasion blockbuster War of the Worlds was "They're Already Here"—but any learned Scientologist could have told you that long ago.... And non-religious stunts abound: The French journalist wanted Tom Cruise to kiss her on national television. Obviously a minor celebrity in her own country, the Parisian TV presenter used the most tedious of gimmicks to make sure her story made the evening news. It was as trashy as it was excruciating and clearly, the American superstar didn't want to play ball. His nervous laughter reached manic levels, but the annoying hack in front of me was not easily dismissed. "Please Mr Cruise, if you kiss me today, I can die a happy la-dee," she purred, in the most affected French accent since that of the The Pink Panther's Inspector Clou...

Rut roh : For the last few days my mom has a new hobby, watching someone dance on a blog called Daily Dancer on my computer, but I don't know for how long, because my dad does not like her staring at Daily Dancers Butt, just his butt, and maybe Gorillas, I think. Just a few minutes ago we was watching Daily Dancers dance in a new video, then dad walked into the room because he herd the music, but he didn't dance, just got mad at mom because she was staring at Daily Dancer shaking his Big Butt in his new video, but I think everything will be ok, because dad has a big butt to, just looks a little different, because I think his butt goes right up to his neck. Anyways, mom is really looking forward to Daily dancer dance to a song called Big Butts by Sir Mix-a-Lot, because that's one of moms favorite songs, and she has a big butt to, but not as big as dads, or long.... The British Sun has also covered Daily Dancer: A WACKY self-confessed computer geek has been entertaining tho...

Askmen.com mentions a low-drafted baseball player who became a success story. However, he had connections : Mike Piazza Drafted: By the Los Angeles Dodgers, 62nd round, 1,390th overall Major League Baseball teams had plenty of chances to draft Piazza, and those that passed on him must be kicking themselves. After Piazza played college ball at Miami-Dade Community College, he entered the 1988 draft, where he watched 1,389 other players get chosen before the Los Angeles Dodgers finally picked him in round 62. It didn't take long for Piazza to start sticking it to all the other teams that dismissed him. He won the National League's Rookie of the Year award in 1993....Three years later, the power-hitting catcher was named the All-Star Game's Most Valuable Player. He hit more than 35 home runs in each of three seasons while with the Dodgers, then again in three consecutive seasons in his early years with the Mets.... The 10-time All-Star has more career home runs than any other...

Some players didn't get the chances that Von Wafer did. Florida guards Matt Walsh and Anthony Roberson might regret leaving school early. Neither was among the 60 players selected in the NBA draft last night. Walsh and Roberson both eliminated the possibility of returning for their senior seasons last week when they decided to keep their names in the draft pool.... Now both players might have a more difficult road to the N-B-A. They likely will join NBA summer league teams, but could find it tough to make rosters.... Things looked a lot better for Walsh last Sunday : When Matt Walsh made himself eligible for the NBA draft after his junior season at Florida, just about everyone figured the experience would be another blow to the head, a temporary jolt of reality that would give the 6-6, 22-year-old some added motivation entering his senior season. It turns out he didn't need another beating. Walsh has gone from draft possibility to a first-round reality. And it's his tough...

From the Sun-Sentinel : Florida State guard Von Wafer left school after his sophomore season, and while he didn't go in the first round, he was picked. He went 35th overall, in the second round, to the Los Angeles Lakers. The FSU coaching staff wasn't sad to see Wafer go, as he often clashed with Coach Leonard Hamilton.... From the Tallahassee Democrat : "I feel like right now that the Lakers got a good bargain," Wafer told the Tallahassee Democrat. "You know when you get a good bargain you never know if the product is going to hold up. I'm going to try to make this a steal for the Los Angeles Lakers." Wafer led FSU with 12.5 points per game last season but was suspended twice early in the season and benched often late in the season. He averaged just 15 minutes in his last five games for the Seminoles.... Wafer's college career was long finished before draft night. His decision to sign with agent Henry Thomas meant there was no turning back for the f...

Von Wafer "Orel Hershiser"?

Recent search against my blog: 28/06/2005 11:16:27 hang hanegraff and rick warren (Google) I've mentioned Hank Hanegraaff in connection to an entry about Paul Crouch, and I've mentioned Rick Warren in connection to an entry about Rick Warren (and in a few other places). So what happened when the two of them got together ? (The following excerpt is undated, but appears to be at least five years old.) )--"Being seeker-sensitive does not mean watering down the message said Rick Warren, pastor of one of the Southern Baptist Convention's largest churches, on the national Bible Answer Man" radio program. "It does not change what you say. It changes how you say it said Warren, pastor of Saddleback Valley Community Church, Mission Viejo, Calif., which averages nearly 15,000 people in its seeker-sensitive worship services and will celebrate its 20th anniversary in January 2000. Warren was interviewed by Hank Hanegraaff, host of the Bible Answer Man" program on ...

Hot Librarian has started this. After making several confessions on her blog (primarily for things she did in elementary school), she stated the following: Now I'm going to ask you for some class participation. You need to confess something and then give me all the credit for starting National Confess Something on Your Blog Week. Your mission is to confess (something good and juicy, that will amuse me) and then you need to link back to me whilst praising my goodness and mercy for giving you something to write about. I mean, first I gave you a Scientology meme - A MEME for god's sake! - (meme is just one of the worst words ever) - and now I'm handing you this opportunity. It's gold. So, what am I willing to confess? I PRANK PHONE CALLED GEORGE WASHINGTON IN ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA...AND LATER MET HIM. Yes, I found George Washington's name in a phone book and prank called him. And yes, I met him later (I think he was a Boy Scout leader, if I remember correctly). Betcha ...

Granted that I'm not a fan of what Clinton did with Lewinsky, but this targeting of Clinton is ridiculous: The photographer who took the picture in Edward Klein’s new book, The Truth About Hillary, catching Bill Clinton in a moment of P.D.A. with someone other than his wife, says that the book’s use of the photo is a “huge misrepresentation of the event.” In his first public comments about the salacious picture, photographer Jay L. Clendenin said in an interview with New York Magazine that the picture was one of “dozens” he took at a rally for presidential candidate John Kerry that Bill Clinton attended in Philadelphia on October 25, 2004. He said that Clinton wasn’t at all intimate with the woman. “I was there,” he said. “She kissed him on the cheek. Nothing more. Two seconds out of each other’s lives.”... The photo appears on the same page of The Truth About Hillary as another candid shot of the former president in black tie half-embracing a woman at an event (or, as the caption...

HireAmericanCitizens.org publishes a "Hall of Shame" list of companies that do not practice "economic patriotism." Among the companies on the list: British Airways Mexicana Airlines SAAB Saturn Nintendo BBC (British Broad Casting) Toshiba TATA Perhaps if the boycott works, these foreign companies will leave the country and won't hire ANY Americans. From the Ontario Empoblog

Beats surfing for porn. AGILE MODELING Agile Modeling (AM) is a practice-based methodology for effective modeling and documentation of software-based systems. Simply put, Agile Modeling (AM) is a collection of values, principles, and practices for modeling software that can be applied on a software development project in an effective and light-weight manner. Agile models are more effective than traditional models because they are just barely good enough, they don't have to be perfect. You may take an agile modeling approach to requirements, analysis, architecture, and design.... AM is not a prescriptive process, in other words it does not define detailed procedures for how to create a given type of model, instead it provides advice for how to be effective as a modeler. AM is not about less modeling, in fact many developers will find that they are doing more modeling following AM than they did in the past. AM is “touchy-feely”, it’s not hard and fast – think of AM as an art, ...

The U.S. Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system has been replaced with the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) . This happened eight years ago, in 1997. Told you that I'm not trendy. From the Ontario Empoblog

There is a Yahoo! Group associated with Ellen Simonetti (Queen of Sky) . One of the members, tuckerooni , has posted the following : For those of you who haven't heard of it yet, "The Aviary" is a new flight attendant movie that was written and produced by a flight attendant. After seeing it (and really loving it) I wanted to pass the information along. I hope you all enjoy it. You can read about the FA who made it and watch the trailer on the site (the only place to buy the film). www.theaviarymovie.com http://theaviarymovie.com/mainpage.htm I watched the trailer for this film ( DVD available ). Other than noting that I kept on thinking I was watching a Client video, it's fair to say that the movie apparently follows the life and love, and the ups and downs, of a female flight attendant. Here's the story : Here's are excerpts from the review that tuckerooni posted at imdb : I just watched The Aviary and think this movie definitely rocks! It gets better wit...

I've blogged a ton of junk today, so it's time to be informative. Here is the history of Ancient Greece, according to Weebl and Bob . Good night. Merry Christmas in six months. From the Ontario Empoblog

Here's how I ended my last post : Here are my current stats: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Personal Profile Handle: OEMPER Sex: M Member Since: 2/19/2004 Last Played: 6/24/2005 Career Games: 102 Career Points: 94800 Home Location: Tequila Hoppers and Grill -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Which, incidentally, appears on the display as "TEQUILA HO." So, when I was number 2 in the entire NTN network , I was OEMPER...TEQUILA HO.... But I'm not a Tequila Ho. Later in the week (Friday, to be exact), I went to the theatre rehearsal for our new production. (I missed last week's first rehearsal because a week ago I was in New York , on Broadway, seeing "The Lion King.") Afterwards, a group of us retired to a pizza place for beer and food. Because it's a children's theatre group, a mixture of parents and kids were there. (My own daughter was not there, sin...

At the moment I'm searching for NTN bloggers...or, better still, an NTN blog. Here's what I'm finding. Clara*s Victory Dance : Friday I met Maria for drinks at the Flatiron . Ah, beer. Now that I don’t drink at home it’s so much more fun going out for beer. Anyway we played NTN and I won the BATMAN round. Since I just saw Batman Begins and you all know my feeling about Christian Bale I feel this somehow means we are meant to be together.... Pua : We'd had a pretty rough week and so were looking forward to Pub Night on Friday. Charlie and I always try to get there early on Fridays. There's no crowd until later, and the dynamics are less bar-like and more restaurant-ish. The older regs are always in their usual barstools playing NTN, and as always, when we walk in the door, we get the "Cheers" greeting; "CHARLIE! PUA!" and then the drinks show up without so much as our asking. That accomplished, Roz (the owner) gets to the business of making sure ...

Having released four books tonight, I'm doing a bit of research on the Bookcrossers in Ontario, California. As of this evening, there are 32 of us . Here is a little bit of information on a few one of them (lost access to the profiles for some technological reason) : abbylicious1 From the journal for The Fat Girl's Guide to Life : I work at the (Ontario City) library and someone turned this book in and it looked prery funny and interesting so I took it home. I read the intro and the book flap, still interested, now I just have to get some free time together to read it. I also liked the Buffy quote in the beginning. From the Ontario Empoblog

All of this talk about censorship reminded me of an old Ronald Reagan joke : [A]t the Geneva summit, Reagan told the following joke which made Gorbachev laugh heartily: An old Russian woman goes into Kremlin, gets an audience with Gorbachev and says, "In America anyone can go to the White House, walk up to Reagan's desk and say, 'I don't like the way you are running the country.'" Gorbachev replied, "You can do the same thing in the Soviet Union. You can go into the Kremlin, walk up to my desk and say 'I don't like the way Reagan is running his country.'" And, in their "where are they now" segment, I can happily report that Gorbachev has invented a "beltway" for Russia. Witness this gobbledygook : The Gorbachev Foundation was set up in December 1991 and launched March 1992. The Gorbachev Foundation's mission is based on the belief that Russia, and the world, needs new thinking, new understanding and a new interp...

I began wondering what the Chinese MSN Portal was saying. So I plugged http://www.msn.com.cn/ into http://babelfish.altavista.com/ and translated from Simplified Chinese into English. Here's some of what I got: Sunday, on June 26 North blue today important news The Anhui hundred students vaccinate the hepatitis A vaccine to appear exceptionally 1 dead The Tibet world bubonic plague 2 people died the medical department name already active control The steam oil ticket exchange must make up the uneven price difference old oil ticket to be possible to buy the European III oil North blue hot spot Taishan restores the normal traveling order expert: Truly has appeared the tiger An original resident "lawmaker" the high plum registers for the central national university North blue media essence After Zeng Yinquan took office to return the port to launch the work Volunteer school principal because the scandal leaves the stage The American enlisted woman bleeds Iraqi Fei Lu Jie ...

Remember him ? Well, here's his latest : The Chinese version of MSN Spaces is linked to the new MSN China portal, launched last month in partnership with Shanghai Alliance Investment, a company funded by the city government here. Last week that partnership plunged Microsoft into the long-standing controversy surrounding the Chinese government's internet censorship policies, after Asian blogs and news reports revealed that MSN Spaces blocks Chinese bloggers from putting politically sensitive language in the names of their blogs, or in the titles of individual blog entries. The words and phrases blocked by Microsoft include "Taiwan independence," "Dalai Lama," "human rights," "freedom" and "democracy." In a statement, lead MSN product manager Brooke Richardson said, "MSN abides by the laws, regulations and norms of each country in which it operates. The content posted on member spaces is the responsibility of individuals who...

From Richard W. Bowers in the York [Pennsylvania] Daily Record : ...Life has a way of dealing a very cruel hand at times. While there are those who maintain strength and courage, they live in hope that there is an answer somewhere for them. They continue to suffer, fear, agonize, pray and despair as they endeavor to keep their hope alive. This is why it is important to remind yourself over and over and over again that you are a person of value. When the demons of depression and disappointment appear, resist them with everything within you. There is an alarming epidemic of suicides in our country ranging from the turbulent teenager to the despondent, desperate elderly person. The sad part is that virtually all suicides are preventable.... At least 39 percent of suicides are committed by those 65 years of age. Elderly men are most likely to commit suicide because they are unable to care for themselves, are in poor health, feel abandoned and are unhappy with their fate. Elderly women, on ...

From The Times of London : Indians are the world’s most avid readers. A new survey shows that they spend twice as much time reading books, newspapers and magazines as the British, and nearly three times longer than the Japanese. The titles they choose may not send pulses racing — How to Help Your Child Excel in Maths is a favourite — but Indians on average read for nearly 11 hours each week.... In small towns, encyclopedias and dictionaries sold by travelling salesman often occupy pride of place as the sole book owned by a family. Penguin India, for example, has sold 5,000 copies of The Ultimate Visual Dictionary. The strong market for educational books reflects the fierce competition faced by young Indians when applying for a job or a place at one of the universities....Self-help books and textbooks are considered the quickest way to improve prosperity and social status.... Reading for pleasure is considered less useful and a novel is a bestseller if it sells 2,000-3,000 copies — a ti...

Yowza. Hot Librarian links to a Radar Online post that lists sample questions from Scientology's "SEC Whole Track" questionnaire: The internal church document was developed by Scientology founder and onetime science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard for use during “auditing” sessions—you know, the ones designed to identify your trapped “thetans.” The “thetans,” or alien ghosts, were implanted in earth’s volcanoes 75 million years ago by the evil intergalactic ruler Xenu, until the nasty buggers escaped and invaded the bodies of each and every one of us. New recruits like Katie Holmes, or “preclears,” answer the questions while hooked up to an E-meter—a crude, polygraph-like contraption—as a Church-sanctioned auditor records the subject’s responses for further expensive inquiry. Well, after extensive spurious research, I have uncovered Tom Cruise's most recent answers to some of the questions. (I guess he was taking a refresher course or something.) • Have you driven an...