Free the Animal

Phone Call from Berlin

Just got off the phone with my dad, who's in Berlin. That's not so incredible these days; that he's there with three of his brothers is. Lothar (dad), Hans, Ingo, and Wolfgang met up in Denver two days ago and flew Lufthansa to Berlin, from where they'll make numerous excursions over the next week or so. The other important tidbit is that the last time the four of them were together in Europe at all was when they left as a family of eight in 1952 on the transport General M.L. Hersey. Since then, my dad has been back once, but only a few years back. Ingo is there all the time, as he works for an Austrian company that makes power-grid scale transformers, as a U.S. representative out of Reno, NV. Hans and Ingo haven't been back until now.

Yesterday they went to Wriezen, about and hour northeast of Berlin where their grandparents lived and where my dad got separated from his mom, dad, and siblings during the war -- and for about two years after. The house still stands, is a total wreck, but according to the guy across the street, hasn't been occupied since 1962. But that same gentleman used to live in the house himself, and had a collection of photos that had been left there. Yep: all kinds of photos of my dad's cousins, uncles, aunts, even some of him and siblings. THose would be pre-WWII, and they survived in the hands of a stranger, survived the commies all these years to be placed in the hands of those who ought to have them. Just wow. I'm going to see if I can get my hands on them for digitizing purposes.

Tomorrow, they'll all take the train to Szczecin, Poland, which was known as Stettin, Germany when my dad was born there in 1938. Hope he sends along some photos.

I'll Concede

I must agree with this.

But the appeals court said the state acted too hastily in sweeping up all the children and taking them away on an emergency basis without going to court first.

"Even if one views the FLDS belief system as creating a danger of sexual abuse by grooming boys to be perpetrators of sexual abuse and raising girls to be victims of sexual abuse ... there is no evidence that this danger is 'immediate' or 'urgent'," the court said.

"Evidence that children raised in this particular environment may someday have their physical health and safety threatened is not evidence that the danger is imminent enough to warrant invoking the extreme measure of immediate removal."

The court said the state failed to show that any more than five of the teenage girls were being sexually abused, and offered no evidence of sexual or physical abuse against the other children. Half the youngsters taken from the ranch were 5 or younger. Only a few dozen are teenage girls.

The court also said the state was wrong to consider the entire ranch as a single household and to seize all the children on the grounds that some parents in the home might be abusers.

Good call. I ought to have been more careful and precise.

Kudos to TypePad

Well. After nearly destroying my whole blog last evening and sending off a number of "stream of consciousness," expletive loaded trouble tickets, I got quick action this morning from an engineer. He immediately began restoring the content and asked me to describe my work flow, which took two or three iterations and the final one was the tiny bit of info they needed to locate and fix the bug.

I began searching Google last night and discovered I was not the only one with posts being wiped out and links being broken, so I was glad for the quick fix -- which was done by about 2:30 this afternoon -- and I'm glad to have indirectly helped others already affected or who would have been. It could have been a disaster of important proportions.

They completely overlooked my shouting and cursing, were impeccably pro, effective, and even contrite for my inconvenience and -- yes, I'll say it -- stress. Good job, folks.

I really hate firing people and am gratified to be sticking around.

Huge Blog Problems

"Upgrade."

It messed up the categories, and in sorting it out, broke links to many, many posts, mostly in the "Food & Fitness" Category.

Many other problems as well. We'll see how it turn out. Not a happy camper, right now.

Later: Well, having now worked with WordPress over at the company blog, I think I've decided to make the switch on HonestyLog. I'll for sure use the same guys to design. TypePad has been pretty flawless, and most of the upgrades and improvements that happen without you having to upgrade your own server installation have been welcome. Other obvious should-bees have been way too long in the making (like, for instance, getting your links to open in a new tab or window without using a global widget that kills Firefox's ability to remember commenter personal info).

Anyone know of a good paid hosting service for hosting WordPress?

Whew!

I thought for a good three minutes about a title, but nothing fit. It's lame, but it fits for me. I left Vegas yesterday afternoon (Monday), and my last meal was breakfast at 10am. It's now 8:30 Tuesday evening and I just finished preparing and eating dinner. That's about a 34hr fast, and I worked out hard at the 30hr point. Excellent, strong workout. Then, I came back, shopped, and trained Bea down at our condo gym for 30 minutes hard. It's her third workout and she's doing great. Art's seminar provided some good information as to what to be cautious of with women (mainly less upper body strength). Here's what Bea and I had for dinner.


That's an almond crusted tilapia of my own design. Simple: coat the fillets in olive oil while the pan is heating at medium with a little more oil in the pan. Finely chop up a handful of almonds, place on a plate, and rub it on each fillet. Into the pan, a few minutes per side (I don't really care for medium rare fish -- though I love sashimi; so, cook it, or don't -- the one exception being seared ahi tuna), and be very careful to use a flat, straight spatula so you can scrape. Once on the plate, scrape off the crumbs that remain in the pan and distribute. The veggie is spinach, lots, because it really collapses when you put it in the pan. First, I chopped one slice of bacon into very tiny pieces, and into the pan on medium. Then, about a half teaspoon of minced garlic. Then, chopped red onion. After a minute or so, in goes a whole bag of fresh baby spinach from Joe the Trader. As soon as it's all wilted, it's done, and I finished it off with just about a teaspoon of balsamic. Bea's favorite is spinach and she cooks it for herself. Said it was the best spinach she's ever had. Both of these are my own preparations, dreamed up this afternoon. The salad is simply green leaf lettuce, red onion, a little celery for crunch. Then, I simply use olive oil and a half of fresh lime squeezed in. Very light and citrus. No salt or pepper needed. Here's a closeup.


You know what? This is a hell of a lot more fun than political blogging, though I'm sure rage will soon enough drive me back to some form of it or another. Sorry to those who come here primarily or excluysively for that, but 'tis what 'tis. To give you an idea, Radley Balko's place sits at 84 posts I've yet to read. Same story everywhere, with only a couple of exceptions. There is nothing, nothing I can do about the looming disaster in November, so I'm just going to move right along, I guess.

I'll have another post soon, also about EvFit.

Art De Vany Seminar

It was really good. Comprehensive and integrated. None of it would make amy sense at all without an understanding of evolution. I'll try to put up more later, including a 3-minute video clip I shot. He had professionals record the whole thing and a DVD will be forthcoming.

Later: Here's the video. I managed to process it whilst sitting here at the airport waiting for my return flight (got the $50 upgrade to 1st class again!). Oh, by the way, Art will be 71 years of age in a few months.