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September 28, 2002 - Saturday
Dan Inouye stood in the national spotlight this week and spoke about the decision facing Congress regarding Iraq, and in reaction to the comments by President Bush accusing Democrats of being unconcerned with national security. He spoke with good sense.
I am concerned about the security of this country. I am concerned about what history will say about this Nation 50 years from now. Did we brutalize people or did we carry on ourselves as a civilized people? As my leader from West Virginia stated, to attack a nation that has not attacked us will go down in history as something of which we should not be proud.
I don't understand why his comments haven't received more local news coverage and follow-up. Click here for the full text of Inouye's remarks from the Congressional Record.
Star-Bulletin owner David Black and his wife were in Honolulu this week, but I haven't heard of anything special happening during their visit.
One reader commented on the repeated use in the Star-Bulletin (and elsewhere?) of a high school photo of the woman being investigated for a mysterious link to the campaign of Mayor Jeremy Harris.
Is it really so important to have a photo that even a shot that is 16 years old is good enough? Didn't B. Uyesugi get the same treatment after Xerox?
On the other hand, for many people the possibility of their high school yearbook photo being made public would be a better deterrent to crime than either the prospect of a long term of incarceration or a fine.
When I see Mayor Harris' high school yearbook photo in the SB I'll know his goose is almost cooked.
Thanks to all who sent condolences following yesterday's news about Ms. Cybelle. I've gathered a few from as far away as Japan and West Virginia. We're still mourning, and giving Duke extra attention as he adjusts to her absence.
September 27, 2002 - Friday
Ms. Cybelle
Seal Point Siamese
Age unknown
Rescued March 1, 2002
Died September 26, 2002
Survived by 5-month old kittens, Duke and Maka. And people who cared.
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I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd. I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their conditions,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, not to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
from Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, Book III, Song of Myself. First read to us years ago by a friend, William Merwin, following the loss of another feline friend.
September 26, 2002 - Thursday
Ah, the plot thickens. Rick Daysog and Nelson Daranciang report in today's Star-Bulletin that the woman arrested for failing to appear before the grand jury investigating the mayor's campaign was arrested last month for "promoting prostitution" and related offenses. She also was paid to work in a hospitality room at the Democratic Convention in 2000. The story doesn't say specifically whether this was a hospitality suite provided by Mayor Harris, but that's the implication. This case is just full of surprises.
Lots of interesting reader feedback today.
A good friend pulled this one from the "small world" file.
Regarding the Redwood City Seed Company, Craig Dremann and his wife, Sue, were clients of the pet hospital where I worked in Menlo Park, CA. I believe they were cat people. Small, slender, quiet "back to the earth" folks, exceedingly likeable, dedicated to heirloom and hard-to-get seeds, to bringing back the original vegetables and herbs. Hard-working and knowledgeable. Interesting to see the name crop up (pardon the ridiculous pun) in your diary. If they say the tepin is hot, I'd believe them. They probably went to Mexico to gather seeds from the original plants, which would never have made it to the "mainstream" of the pepper craze.
Two folks commented on the survey of Internet use at work.
Joe P. wrote:
C'mon, Ian! Nobody ever got fired or sued for sexual harassment for surfing CNN. I think that 18% of porn surfers is only the tip of a much larger group who would surf for porn at work if they had the privacy or thought they could get away with it.
If the Internet could only be used for work related access and polka sites, I bet you would have at least 98% of those workers addicted to Frankie Yankovic in no time.
And Doug added:
If somebody was taking a survey asking how users time on the internet (at WORK, no less) do you think respondents would over- or under-report the amount of time spent on porn? Think about it. "News" Yeah, sure.
Especially amusing since the firm behind the study actually makes the software that could provide the REAL (instead of the dubious, self-reported) data detailing how employees spend time on the internet.
I always laugh when I see articles bemoaning the slow spread of broadband net access to residential customers. Who needs it at home when so many employers provide it 8hrs/day?! ha ha.
| For cat people only. Click on the photo for news of Ms. Cybelle. |
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September 25, 2002 - Wednesday
News is the most addictive thing on the Internet while people are at work, surpassing gambling, shopping, and, yes, even sex, according to a survey by a San Diego firm which specializes in tracking employees' computer use.
The survey found that 23 percent of those surveyed reported news most addicting. Pornography was cited by 18 percent.
Mazie Hirono campaign is off and...disappearing? Apparently she's kicking off the general election period with a week spent mostly in private meetings and out of public view. Without a lot of campaign cash, you would think constant public exposure would be both desirable and necessary. I guess that's not the way it looks from HQ.
I'm increasingly worried about Ms. Cybelle. I'll leave it at that for today. I think we're heading back to the vet with her this morning. More later.
September 24, 2002 - Tuesday
Peppers continue to draw secondary comments. Here's one in defense of the Advertiser's Wanda Adams:
wanda has been "bashed" twice in your diary.
why not point out the good stuff...such as her doing a
fine job with the advertiser book club? in fact, her
articles about books and the books' authors are the
first things i read on-line sundays.
Then an error noted (and since corrected):
Enjoyed the debate over which pepper is hotter, but I feel compelled to point out an error in your poster's reference to the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University and the reference to "UNM." As a semi-native New Mexican transplanted in California, and someone who attended both New Mexico State in Las Cruces and the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, the writer confused the two. State is known as NMSU; UNM is my alma mater, the University of New Mexico.
Not only are the two separated by about 250 miles, they are much further apart in their missions. UNM has, among other things, a med school and law school; NMSU is the ag college.
For what it's worth!
| I spoke too soon about the cat's improved health. Duke, shown here napping yesterday afternoon, is bouncing back. He even went out and found himself a baby rat yesterday afternoon. But Ms. Cybelle is not doing well. She hasn't been able to keep much down for the last 24 hours, and I'm having to go back to basics. Nutrical, water from a can of tuna, some tuna flakes. Just enough to stimulate her system a bit. She spent much of yesterday under my desk in a dark corner. |
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I expect her blood test results to come in later today, so I'll have to hassle the vet a bit to find out more.
September 23, 2002 - Monday
Here's a juicy news flash. Jim Romenesko's MediaNews links this morning to a Washington Business Journal story about intrigue at the Journal Newspapers, owned by Rupert Phillips, former owner of the Star-Bulletin. Lots of charges and countercharges of financial and "personal" misconduct. The Washington Business Journal is a "sister" publication of Hawaii's Pacific Business News. Both are owned by American City Business Journals, Inc.
Rob Perez put the issue of Congresswoman Patsy Mink's health front and center with his column in yesterday's Star-Bulletin. And now the clock is ticking for Democratic Party strategists, who only have a few days to assess the relative risks of the various scenarios that flow from possible changes in Mink's condition.
The Washington Post carried a story today by former Advertiser reporter Sally Apgar on Hawaii's election and the unusual matchup between two female candidates for governor. The story touches on the congressional race in a short paragraph at the end, without any mention of Mink's medical emergency. The New York Times ran an Associated Press story on the Hirono-Lingle race.
| There were a series of wonderfully colorful sunrises last week, so I updated the photo gallery once again. Chick on this photo or the gallery banner and enjoy a shorthand version of our week of early mornings. |
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It wasn't the elections that got several readers hot under the collar last week. It was Advertiser food editor Wanda Adams' column on hot peppers, which appeared in Wednesday's 'Tiser. Adams' blithely dismisses standard wisdom that the habanero pepper is the world's hottest, saying simply, "experts dispute that." Then, as evidence of the wimpiness of the habanero, she refers to the "Dremman hotness scale".
One reader was too steamed to quote directly. Another provided this comment:
check out the utter nonsense wanda adams is spouting in the off-the-shelf column in today's paper. she says tepin chilis are the hottest in the world, based on the Dremann (she misspelled it Dremman) scale. hotter than habaneros. what is this Dremann Scale, you ask, when everyone else is rating chilis in Scoville Units? It's the proprietary, subjective heat scale made up by Craig C. Dremann of Redwood City Seeds.
the chile pepper institute at new mexico state university, using high performance liquid chromatography, says habaneros are the hottest. tepins come in behind tabascos according to nmsu. whether that's the red savina or the chocolate habanero or whatever that's the absolute hottest, reasonable people disagree.
but adams proclaims, without any other evidence than, probably, a press release from Redwood City Seeds, that tepins are the hottest. the only question is whether she cribbed this drivel straight off the Redwood City Seeds web site, or from some wire story. then the caption writer picked up this "fact" and repeated it in the photo caption.
There is apparently reasonable disagreement about what pepper is absolutely the hottest, since peppers vary according to where they are grown, and differ from batch to batch. One extra hot pepper might jump way ahead of the average measures for the same type of pepper. So care is needed in making these comparisons.
The point made by the steamed readers is that Adams went to a single nonstandard source, accepted it uncritically, failed to note that its conclusions are out of line with most other authorities, and led readers to believe this approach is noncontroversial. And got it into the paper without a hitch.
Unfortunately for Adams, pepper people are pretty passionate about their peppers.
September 22, 2002 - Sunday
| This was the scene at the polling place for the 47th district, 1st precinct, at about 10:30 a.m. yesterday.
Definitely a low voter turnout. No lines. No waiting. A few voters inside. A lonesome poll worker waiting for something to do. Apparently it was a scene repeated through much of the state.
I was voter #221, according to the machine that ate my ballot. Not good for mid-morning.
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Ed Case came close in the Democratic primary, but close doesn't count. Now we'll see if he can play the party game and be a gracious loser, contributing to the Democrats' effort in the general.
We lost our senator, Bob Nakata, in a close race. I'm sorry about that one.
I'm interested to see precinct by precinct results for more details of what happened.
We were in town for dinner last night, and tried to find radio news with election returns on the long drive home later in the evening. We couldn't find anything. Public radio had no election coverage, at least during that hour. Nothing anywhere on AM. A reflection of the same social forces driving voter participation down?
Duke's feeling a bit better, as is Ms. Cybelle. Whew.
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