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Bama Illinois
- 4 stars Rating: 65
1953 votes total - Hall of Famer
- (1456)
- 37 months
- 4 stars
1tide said...
I mean really if u r a school like Ole Miss. How can you not take these types of recruits? It's really just laughable to even debate passing on 5 star prospects. Because it makes your class top heavy. U get these guys while you can get them. & then start building depth in the following class. If they can land 5 or 6 5 stars in this class. & build upon last season on the field this year. Chances are they will continue to bring in some really good talent.
Bama Illinois said...
All fair points, but based on your theory, why haven't we seen schools like Arkansas, Vanderbilt, UT, Miss. st, hell LSU, S Carolina, etc have the same success. Not sure I buy Ole Miss being a "party school... do you realize what party they are know for? The tailgating on the Grove just "before" the game.... Last time I check players do not attend.
Now, I don't believe they are cheating, but this will be the best class they have ever signed. What is the real allure to Oxford?? time will tell, but I don't think Ole Miss is any different from the schools I mentioned. They are not experiencing a boon of recruiting.
scottchap said...
Nobody is saying pass on a top tier guy.
The point isn't whether you should recruit potentially great players. The point is that the hand wringing and accusations of cheating are over blown when you look at the overall quality of their class. Top heavy classes don't make a team a top tier SEC team.
Classes like Ole Miss is getting this year will make them more competitive in a league where everyone has 4 to 5 NFL guys on the roster. The difference between and Alabama and LSwho hasn't been the top tier player. The difference is everyone else on the roster.
Recruiting 20 players 4 star or better is how we recruit. Ole Miss is getting a level of player their school has never had and that is great. However, if they are going to reach the top of the conference they will need to fill the rest of the class with 4 star players instead of 18 3 star players.
So, to recap nobody has said you give the top players to avoid being top heavy. If you want to prevent being top heavy then you improve the rest of the class by swapping 3 star players with 4 star players.
New Member of The 247 Crew!
chickenandbeer ●
- 5 stars Rating: 92
268 votes total - All-Conference
- (171)
- 20 months
- 5 stars
- This post is for members of BamaOnLine or All Access VIP members only. 30-Day Free Trial
- 4 stars Rating: 79
754 votes total - Hall of Famer
- (654)
- 15 months
- 4 stars
- 5 stars Rating: 89
5561 votes total - Hall of Famer
- (3539)
- 27 months
- 5 stars
mmatth3606 said...
New here so don't flame! I live in MS(sorry married a MS girl) and its a joke over here. Here is the rundown on how this is happening.
Nkemdiche has a brother, as we all know, and Mom wants them at same school. Kudos to Houston Nutt for this. Also, Dad has taken a job at the med school in Jax, Ms-Hmmm?
Conner, is from S.Panola, an OM football factory. There is a reason D Rudd and DeShea Townsend were the last 2 big time players that came to Bama. Also its only 20 miles from Oxford. Him and DeShea(new DB coach at MSU) are good friends and he may flip him. By the way Hoover smoked S.Panola.
CJones grew up a MSU fan and has a great relationship with that staff. His dad also is very tight with MSU. Doubt he flips.
LHooks was always an OM lock. He will start for them next year. The dline is sucks and they are small all PT for him.
LTreadwell is a big get for OM. However his mom is very religious and freeze played on that, he is always quoting scriptures to parents. She was the decision maker in that. And also grades . OM is easy to get into.
Treadwell and E Daniel are good friends from the recruiting circuit. He more than likely is prep school or JC bound.
Not sure about the others, except PT. They have no depth at OL, DL,LB, or DBs.
Freeze is a good coach. He's won at all stops. But he is that guy that plays this real religious role with parents. He is also cry baby HS coach that gets tight in big situations. Could have beat TAMU but had a 4th and in and had a 6'5 qb in the shotgun and ran a read option.
He and Frank Wilson were the bag men for Ogeron. Needless to say he is a little shady. Also his offense is a gimmick based on one read for the QB, like UM was at UF. They have no JManzeil or Tebow. Bo Wallace sucks an INT waiting to happen. The two QBs arent that good Kincade way to small in stature for this league. The prep school kid is ok but played in a weak league-MS private schools SUCK!! Neither can spin it that well. TIFIW but thats my 2 cents. - This post is for members of BamaOnLine or All Access VIP members only. 30-Day Free Trial
- 5 stars Rating: 86
7734 votes total - Starter
- (5390)
- 37 months
- 5 stars
- This post is for members of BamaOnLine or All Access VIP members only. 30-Day Free Trial
Jos Mit said...
Yep. And i made it clear, if Tunsil and Jones start being an OleMiss lean then i would call foul....so yes now im calling foul. All the others made sense but not them. I thought they may have fell into a few recruits but now. No way. Treadwell tweeting money and now Tunsil who has been down to UGA and Bama just randomly goes to OleMiss...doesnt happen
Jos Mit said...
Yep. And i made it clear, if Tunsil and Jones start being an OleMiss lean then i would call foul....so yes now im calling foul. All the others made sense but not them. I thought they may have fell into a few recruits but now. No way. Treadwell tweeting money and now Tunsil who has been down to UGA and Bama just randomly goes to OleMiss...doesnt happen
This post was edited by Devon97 on 2/1/2013 at 9:43 PM
- 5 stars Rating: 87
65 votes total - All-State
- (92)
- 37 months
- 5 stars


text:
The IRC
was comprised of the following members: Frances Clymer (Buffalo Bill
Historical Center); Kate E. Cunningham-Hendrix (Colorado State University);
Jeannette Dixon (Museum of Fine Arts Houston); Renata Guttman (Canadian Centre
for Architecture); Beverly-Joy Karno (Howard Karno Books); Jing Liao (University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign); Irene Puchalski (University of Toronto);
Susana Tejada (Albright-Knox Art Gallery); and Shannon Van Kirk (Miami
IRC Activities
Related to the ARLIS/NA Strategic Plan
promotion of International Federation of Library Association's conferences and
related activities. (III C)
committee chair promoted IFLA and its Art Libraries Section with Society
membership via ARLIS-L by sharing information about the Berlin conference held
Aug. 2-5, 2003.
addition, information on IFLA's Art Libraries Section was shared at both the
IRC business meeting and at the ARLIS/NA Baltimore Conference through the
IRC's invited guest, Kerstin Assarson-Rizzi, Chair, IFLA Art Libraries
Assarson-Rizzi participated in the IRC's panel presentation entitled, Nordic
Expeditions: Exploring Art Information Resources for Denmark, Finland, Iceland,
Norway, Sweden. The session was a great success with over forty
participants from the conference.
monitoring activities of affiliated organizations. (III C)
The IRC
continued to update its committee web site: www.cam.org/~renata/irc_top.html.
Most notably, papers from the IRC-sponsored session—Nordic
Exploring Art Information Resources for Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and
Sweden—were made available
immediately after the Baltimore conference as a service to Society members.
These papers contain useful information on Nordic art libraries, museums,
associations (ARLIS/Norden) and their respective activities.
The IRC web site also includes current links to all ARLIS/NA affiliate
organizations including, among others, IFLA, ARLIS/UK and Ireland, and the
Association des Bibliothécaires Français.
ARLIS/NA Headquarters continued to route international publications from affiliate organizations directly to the IRC chair
promoted ARLIS/NA on an international level and assist in the formation and
development of "ARLIS" organizations on an international level. (III
The IRC invited every international conference attendee to participate at its business meeting on Saturday, March 22nd. These included members from IFLA, ARLIS/Norden, ARLIS/ANZ, and the Association des Bibliothécaires Français. There was a very positive turnout, with approximately twenty-five individuals present, including but not limited to: Kerstin Assarsson-Rizzi (National Heritage Board, Sweden); Claire Fons (Bibliothèque Jacques Doucet): Anja Lollesgaard (Danish Museum of Decorative Art); Aliyusif Mammadov (Baku State University); and Elizabeth Russell (Victoria University of Wellington). A good deal of information was exchanged when many of these participants reported on activities and the general state of affairs in art libraries from their respective countries of origin.
addition, the IRC organized a group dinner for committee members and
international representatives who were present at its business meeting.
IRC Activities
improve communication among committee members, the chair's employing
institution—the Albright-Knox Art Gallery—continued to serve as host to an
IRC electronic listserv.
IRC submitted two proposals—both a plenary and a panel session—for the 2004
New York City conference. Of these,
only the plenary session was accepted. The
committee's proposed speaker—Okwui Enwezor, Artistic Director of Documenta
11—was available and expressed great interest in participating in the
conference. The IRC, however, was
limited by a very modest budget that did not approach Mr. Enwezor's speaking
fee. As such, the IRC was not able
to follow through with its plenary proposal.
by: Susana Tejada, Chair, ARLIS/NA IRC

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Suitable for Creda DigiMix pumped and non-pumped products. A stunning accessory kit with a diverter control that allows you to switch between an overhead rain shower and multi mode handset.
*Free delivery over £50 refers to home delivery orders placed on diy.com only. Charges refer to the value of goods being delivered and excludes delivery from stores or services. Excludes bulk delivery.
B&Q accepts the above cards and also offers a range of in-store financial services. Learn more
© B&Q 2014 - Terms & Conditions


text:
Detroit Country Club
- 24591 County Hwy 22, Detroit Lakes, MN 56502 | Get Directions
- Phone: 218-847-5790
- Phone: 218-847-8942
- Visit Website
Add to my trip
Error. Submission of this item to your trip planner may have timed out. Please try again or check your trip planner to make sure it has been added.
Pine to Palm course: 18 holes $40. (M-Thur), $45. (weekend). Lakeview course: 18 holes $27 (M-Thur), (weekends) $30.- Pine to Palm course: 18 holes $40. (M-Thur), $45. (weekend). Lakeview course: 18 holes $27 (M-Thur), (weekends) $30.
May 1, 2014 - Sep 30, 2014Pine to Palm course: Public, 18 holes, par 71. Lakeview course: Public, 18 holes, par 64. For Pine to Palm tee times call 218/847-5790. For Lakeview tee times call 218/847-8942. The Pine to Palm course is the site of the prestigious Minnesota resort tournament, held each August. It presents a beautifully maintained 18 hole layout; tight, gently hilly, challenging, and deceptively difficult for its 6106 yardage. Par is 71.
The Lakeview course is a mature 20 year old par 64 course. Lakeview boasts challenging level fairways and hills with a great views of Lakes Sallie and Melissa, two of the 412 lakes within a 25 mile radius of Detroit Lakes. Additional Facilities: Completely equipped pro shop with lessons available by a PGA professional, full service dining in the Country Club Dining Room and Grille, and tee times taken 1 week in advance.
Located on a Lake or River
- Melissa
- Sallie
Other Date Information
- Additional Date Information: Hours: 7am-dusk.
Attraction Attributes
- Accessible to Disabled
- Can Accommodate Groups of 45 or more


text:
This photo provided by Sotheby's in New York shows some of the romantic letters and drawings the late "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz sent to a young woman 23 years his junior, who infatuated him. The love notes from 1970-1971 are being offered for sale at Sotheby's in New York by the family of Tracey Claudius, who the auction house says is ill at her home near Philadelphia. It's estimated they'll bring $250,000 to $350,000 at the Dec. 14 auction. (Sotheby's / Associated Press)
Read the article: 'Peanuts' creator's love letters going to auction


text:
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Now it's our turn … to live courageously
By WALLACE BAINE
On Tuesday, Feb. 26, I had a mid-day appointment in the Seabright neighborhood of Santa Cruz. It was a little after 2 p.m. when I left that interview, after which I stopped in at Shopper's Corner where I bought a pastrami sandwich. It was a warm, sunny day, so I had my lunch sitting in my car, which was parked on N. Branciforte Avenue.
Less than a hour later, I started my car and cruised up N. B40 on my way to Glen Canyon Road and the back way to Scotts Valley, unwittingly driving past a house inside of which was an armed man wearing body armor who was about to unleash one of the most horrifying episodes of violence in Santa Cruz's history.
But it would be grotesque vanity to claim that I had had a close call with fate that afternoon. I did not, no more than anyone else who happened to be in the area at that time. That's because on that day, just like every day, there was a line that separated me and you from violence and chaos, a thin blue line.
The unprecedented outpouring of grief and compassion since the shooting deaths of SCPD officers Butch Baker and Elizabeth Butler has been a searing experience for the community and convincing proof that cops won't be taken for granted in Santa Cruz for the foreseeable future.
It's also been a reminder that the death of a police officer in the line of duty is an entirely different thing than the sudden or violent death of anyone else. The latter is mostly about bad luck, bad choices, tragic circumstances or a combination thereof, in every instance worthy of our grief and sorrow.But when a cop dies, we have to face the ramifications of the implicit social contract we have with police, firefighters and first responders, and that kind of grief is leavened by equal parts gratitude and guilt.
One of the most profound lessons all of us learn as we grow up is that civilization – the rules and agreements that allow us to live in freedom and safety – doesn't just happen. It rises out of a primal yearning to live beyond our animal nature, in which brute strength and power are the only virtues and violence, or the threat of it, the only law.
In this sense, our humanity itself depends upon a self-selected handful of people to stand at the edge between civilization and chaos. Without them, the jungle would consume us.
We all have our place in society and we all make our contributions. But the vast majority of us live in an enormous circle, on the perimeter of which stands the men and women of law enforcement.
And we are grateful. On Thursday, you could see that gratitude in the crowds lining the streets and the overpasses for the procession to the memorial in San Jose for the fallen officers, and in the people watching it live on TV in the Del Mar and the new downtown basketball arena – inside of which were dozens of strategically placed boxes of tissues. This has been a traumatic experience and people everywhere are seeking solace in connection with the slain officers, their surviving fellow officers and in each other.
Very few lining the streets or watching the memorial knew Sgt. Baker or Detective Butler very well, if at all. But after Thursday, they were, to everyone, "Butch and Beth."
We owe them a prayer, a eulogy, a lapel ribbon. We owe them roadside tributes and tears of empathy for their families. But we owe them something else too.
Exactly a week after the shootings, Santa Cruz painter Andrew Purchin set up an easel at the corner of N. Branciforte and Doyle Street, at the scene of the tragedy. He lingered all afternoon painting on his canvas, engaging local residents and passersby. It was his way of, you might say, re-santicifying a place of violence, applying balm to a wound.
And in the symbolism of that act is the debt we owe to Butch and Beth and every man and woman in blue. If you paint, paint for them. If you dance, dance for them. If you surf, go to Woodies on the Wharf, listen to the Giants on the car radio, take cooking classes, write short stories in hip downtown cafes, do it for them.
Because if we succumb to fear and paranoia, if we barricade ourselves in our homes, if we change the way we live based on some pet theory that this town, this state, this country is turning into some kind of criminal killing field, then we've tarnished their sacrifice. Policemen, fire fighters, paramedics – not to mention those in the military – do what they do as a service to you, to allow you to live as free as you imagine yourself to be. If you stop doing that, then what's the point of their service?
You may remember the climactic scene of the 1986 film "The Mission." Jeremy Irons is a Jesuit priest who takes it on himself to protect a South American Indian tribe from Portuguese invaders. The moment the Portuguese attack the remote mission, Irons, knowing the end is near, marches out into the open carrying a cross. When he is shot down, someone marching behind him pauses, then reaches down and picks up the same cross and continues marching forward to his doom.
The analogy fits the challenge of the police in these dark days; You and I will never know the courage it takes to wear the uniform and the badge.
But the good news for the rest of us is that to live courageously means to live as you always have, to occupy the public spaces in your town, secure in the protection they give you. It's no inoculation against random tragedy. If it were, where's the courage in that?
The courage is in trusting that the thin blue line will continue to keep the circle safe and intact. More so than the flowers and cards, that's what you owe those who wear the badge, the trust that the circle remains unbroken.
Meet me on 'The Dark Side of the Moon'
When the Overlords of the Universe finally get around to visiting us here on Earth to demand the human race justify itself or face oblivion, I'll be ready for them.
I'll be the one standing by with an iPod and a variety of retro-fitted ear buds – just in case the Overloads have more than two hearing orifices. So armed, I'll be able to demonstrate the mind-blowing awesomeness of the human species in just under 45 minutes.
I'll play for them Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon."
Of course, they might kidnap the surviving members of Pink Floyd to take with them, but they'll go away satisfied that any species that can produce an album like that can't be completely worthless.
To me, one of the confounding mysteries of existence is how there could be anyone in the English-speaking world with functioning ears who has never, or does not now own, a copy of "Dark Side of the Moon." It's like going through life without ever having tasted chocolate or seen a baby smile.
OK, so I'm overselling it a bit, but that's what you do at a big birthday celebration , right?
Indeed, March 1 marks the 40th anniversary of the release of the landmark Pink Floyd album that first showed mainstream audiences that the recording of an album was a work of art in itself, above and beyond the artistry of songwriting and musicianship. Before "Dark Side," people were satisfied with the hi-fi in the living room. But "Dark Side" ushered in the audiophile age, an arms race to bring more and bigger and better stereo equipment into the home. It was, in many ways, the first great headphones album.
It is tempting, yes, to mark "Dark Side of the Moon" as yet another tiresome chapter in the Baby Boomers' ongoing catalogue of "How Everything Was Better Back In Our Day." But I didn't discover it until I was in college in the Reagan years, and I've talked to musicians who weren't even born when the album was released who readily agree it ranks as one of the greatest achievements of the rock age. Sometimes those insufferable Boomers are right.
And let's not forget the chart muscle of "Dark Side," a psychedelic rock album that lingered on the Billboard album charts alongside all the ephemeral pop glop of the times for an astounding 773 consecutive weeks – that's more that 15 years! Once it finally slipped off the Billboard 200 charts, it popped up on something called the "Top Pop Catalog Albums" – a chart for old but still popular albums – for another 750-plus weeks.
But there's more: It re-emerged on the Billboard 200 in 2009 and has been on and off that chart ever since, hitting the milestone of 800 weeks on the chart last year. In second place is Johnny Mathis's "Greatest Hits" at 490 weeks. "Dark Side of the Moon" has been on one Billboard chart or the other for close to 30 years. It still sells between 8,000 and 9,000 copies a week. It's a classic-rock zombie monster.
Somewhere, right this very moment, a 17-year-old boy is hearing the album for the first time and his bio-chemistry is being changed forever.
It is here where we must rise to the defense of "Dark Side of the Moon," often thought of as a "druggy" album, thanks to its ravishing sonic textures, spooky sound effects and overall pillowy lushness. The ignorant and hostile will too easily think "Dark Side" is to the ears what giant bags of Cheez Doodles are to the tongue, a banality designed to reward the stoner for being stoned.
This is an ugly slander. You don't have to be baked to enjoy "Dark Side" – though with Pink Floyd's later album "Animals," I'm afraid it's a prerequisite.
For years, the album has been saddled with this silly myth that is actually a commentary on "The Wizard of Oz" and if you play "Oz" and "Dark Side" at the same time, the action and the music sync perfectly.
Well, OK. I guess there is some synchronicity there. But, I tried it with "Bowling for Columbine," "Silence of the Lambs" and a couple of "Die Hard" sequels and it lined up with those too. That's just part of the album's genius.
The "Oz" thing is just a way to snicker about a work of genius from people who prefer their pop music less demanding. What's really remarkable about "Dark Side of the Moon" is that, unlikely almost all its neighbors on the Billboard charts over the decades, it's not a dance record, it's not soaked in sentimentality and it's not about sex. It's about mortality, war, greed and the supreme weirdness of being alive.
And though it's now 40 years old and though it was designed for the joys of stereophonic home listening, "Dark Side of the Moon" is still relevant as an artifact of today.
Don't believe it? Load it on to your device, take a walk on a cloudless night, find your favorite contemplative spot – with or without consciousness enhancements – and skip ahead to "The Great Gig in the Sky." That's the one with the wistful and haunting piano accompanying the otherworldly wordless vocalizing that sounds like a woman being dragged through the heavens by a giant white bird to sit at the right hand of God.
I dare you not to be moved by that piece. I dare you to live with this album for a while and not trot out the m-word once you've absorbed its rhythms and textures into your body, to come to the conclusion most of the rest of the record-buying public has already arrived at:
This one's a masterpiece.
The end of 'Significant Other': What do you call the One You Love?
This is the moment, people. This is the time to act.
As legal marriage between gay people becomes more common, as the whole notion of marriage shifts with contemporary values, a door is opening and we must walk through it.
I'm talking here about nomenclature – It's time to come up with better language for the person we love.
In the last couple of years, certain gender pronouns have become attached to certain nouns in a way that has never happened before. Contemporary English is making way for the phrases "her wife" and "his husband," triggering acid reflux in many social conservatives – I think they were the real reason the pope resigned.
The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to rule on California's notorious Proposition 8, and one possible outcome is that the Court will remove legal barriers for gays to marry all over the country. In that case, this new language will become normalized pretty quickly.
You can't really blame gay Americans for embracing the labels that have always been legally withheld from them and reveling in the comfort and legitimacy of those words. I have a recently married gay male friend who admitted to falling in love with just saying "my husband."
But just as gays are rushing to the titles "husband" and "wife," straights may be moving away from them. A straight married woman I listen to regularly on a podcast once said that, in contrast to my friend, she can't bring herself to utter the word "husband" when referring to the man she married and she's even more horrified of referring to herself as a wife.
For close to 50 years now, "husband" and "wife" have been loaded words. Many feminists found "wife" to be a dreary, oppressive term but the real etymological landmine is "husband," which came from the Old Norse for "master of the house" or "house owner." The word had survived in verb form as a synonym for managing or cultivating. So buried in the very language was the idea that the man in a heterosexual relationship was the homeowner and the house manager. And the wife – the word is from the Germanic meaning "woman" – was simply … the woman. Well, that's not how my marriage works and it's probably not how yours works either.
This notion of the husband as the shepherd and the wife as the sheep may have once fit traditional gender roles but are today clearly at odds with modern relationships. Gender equality is hard to come by if the very words we use undermine that equality.
Of course, gays and unmarrieds know all about the awkward groping about for the comfortable term for their monogamous relationships. Both groups have, for generations, defaulted to "boyfriend/girlfriend," which are terms that came about back when people typically married at 20 and the only times when they were unmarried were literally when they were boys and girls, or close to it. Now, we have grown adults – sometimes even middle-aged or elderly adults – calling each other "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" only because our language has failed to come up with alternatives.
Not that there aren't alternatives; they're just awful ones.
"Lover"? Seriously? First of all, there's a too-much-information issue with that term. But it's also more than a little bit decadent and ridiculous. A lover is something Sophia Loren might have, not you and me.
"Partner" is accurate, I suppose. But it's prissy and uptight and sounds like a euphemism used for the benefit of whoever in the room might be in denial that anyone outside a heterosexual marriage could physically love another person. It's also slippery and vague. You can have a business partner, a musical partner. You can even make partner at your law firm. Why is a word like that applied to the one true love of your life?
"Significant Other," or worse, "S.O.," is a hideous term, devoid of life, scared to death of intimacy. It's like something that the family in the old "Saturday Night Live" skit "The Coneheads" might call each other. It's just a step up from "Domestic Unit."
"Soulmate" sounds good … in the bedroom, or snuggling on the couch. It's not so useful at a business function where no one wants to acknowledge anyone else has a soul. Besides there's a permanence about "soulmate" that can be intimidating. You might be cool with calling some decent guy you've been dating for three months your boyfriend, but "soulmate"? That kind of ratchets up the intensity to a high level.
"Sweety" or "sweetheart" are nice terms, but they're way too grandmotherly. "Manfriend" or "Ladyfriend" cannot be uttered with a straight face. "Paramour" sounds like a defunct car model – I think my dad had a Buick Paramour. "Spouse" is a sexless census word that makes anyone who says it sound like a walking insurance form. "Escort" is code for hooker and "special friend" just gives everybody the creeps.
Pop culture occasionally provides us with more, uh, colorful alternatives. "Baby Daddy" or "Baby Mamma" are not references to "Baby," as in "Baby, It's Cold Outside." It's a reference to a literal baby and really means, "this annoying person that I had a baby with." In hip-hop circles, some rappers have taken to referring to their girlfriends as their "shorties." They would so not work in my house.
So, where do we go then, when husband/wife have outlived their usefulness and the alternatives are all bad? I say to turn to another language. Spanish is great for words that are gendered but equitable, words that work for marrieds and unmarrieds, gay or straight, words not saddled with all the bad connotations of the English words we're used to.
By the way, have you met my "compañera"? She's as beautiful as the word, even more so.
Remembering the first Obama inaugural
The following is my three-part of account of attending the first Obama Inaugural in January 2009.
This is what happens when your mouth sometimes tends to work faster than your brain, when you see on TV a scrawny politician with dark skin and a weird name announce that he's running for president, and you can't fight the impulse to smirk. "Sure, buddy," you say to the TV for the benefit of anyone who is within earshot. "If you win this thing, I'll be there at the inaugural."
You say it as a joke, a commentary on the absurdity of such a thing. In fact, you might have added that you would arrive at Dulles International Airport upon the back of a blue-ribbon Saddleback hog since surely the day Barack Hussein Obama moves into the White House would only follow the day that pigs learned to fly.
You think you know this country and how it acts. If there's one thing that has never let you down, it's your hard-earned cynicism about the American electorate. Then, this happens and you're on the hook. Nobody remembers your facetious pledge back in the winter of '07, but the word of the season is "audacity." And, even in the face of a considerable logistical anxiety that has taken on the form of night sweats and serious ibuprofen abuse, you're ready to do something audacious.
I can't say with any kind of precision where I'll be on the morning of January 20, but wherever I'll be – gazing at the Capitol Dome in the bright winter sunshine, marooned on a freezing subway platform or offering a fistful of greenback dollars for access to a gas-station bathroom in suburban Virginia – it's safe to say I won't be alone. With my Obama-warrior brother Michael and my 16-year-old daughter Quinlyn, I'm making the trip to Washington, D.C. to take part in what is surely to be one of the most significant political moments of American – scratch that – world history.
I go of my own accord, on my own dime, not on assignment per se, not as part of the privileged news media. I'll be among the estimated four million souls that will converge on the nation's capitol, pushing my way through the subways and the streets alongside the rest of the Great Unwashed on the way to the Washington Mall. It's my purpose to experience the event the way everyday people experience it, which is to say, I won't be sharing bran muffins and French roast with Wolf Blitzer, nor catching a ride with Al Franken's entourage. I am ready for suffering and deprivation.
Is the strict no-refund policy of American Airlines the only thing stopping me from backing out of this insane notion? Maybe. I'm not really cut out for this kind of thing. My waiting tolerance is taxed by iTunes downloads. I avoid shopping malls in December like Karl Rove avoids the Castro. To paraphrase Dorothy Parker who once cracked "I hate writing; I love having written," I'm looking forward more to the afterglow of having experienced the inauguration than the experience itself.
But, like millions of Americans – and millions more who wish they were, or aspire to be, Americans – I have for most of my life been captivated by the idealism spelled out in this country's founding documents and remain a true believer in the American Story, despite the cascade of evidence that suggests it all may be a pretty lie. This event, to me, suggests that moment when Idealism, pummeled and bloodied, finally rose up off the mat to flatten Cynicism, however temporarily, with one well-aimed and devastating blow (a left hook, surely).
I do not go to Washington, as some of my conservative friends might believe, bearing frankincense and myrrh. The rapture accompanying the election of Obama is bound to exact a price sooner or later. In fact, my cynical side asserts, the inauguration may turn out to be the highlight of the Obama presidency. We really haven't seen this kind of hubbub around one ritualistic event since the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Di, and we all know how that one turned out.
Yet, even if Obama turns out to be Millard Fillmore Jr. – or worse – that's all really beside the point, isn't it? This event is symbolic of what we've all been led to believe about this country as schoolchildren – that your future is not bound by your past, that your upbringing does not necessarily determine your destiny. In almost every other country in the world, that's just not true. But here, men like Carter, Reagan and Clinton – all of whom came from obscurity and/or poverty – prove American exceptionalism.
Obviously, Obama breaks a barrier that his predecessors didn't have to worry about, and that matters, in a big and important way. Just a few years ago, a divided country could still agree on one thing: a mixed-race kid with an African name whose mother once took food stamps had no chance at becoming president. Up until Nov. 3, 2008, there were still those holding on to that belief. No more. Obama's election means, for good or ill, that America is still open to anyone.
On a personal level, my trip to the inauguration feels like the opening moments of a cute indie film, a kind of Sundance-friendly comedy that might work well as a double feature with "Little Miss Sunshine." I will carry with me the best wishes and a few good-luck mementos from friends in California radiating hope and envy. Conversely, I will see red-state relatives who take a dim view of Obama and all he represents. I suspect I will get to know my brother and my daughter on a deeper level than I do now, and that we will have random experiences – absurd, profound, disorienting or a combination of the three – that we can not now quite imagine.
But the real reason I'm doing this? Like almost every one I know, my experience of the country where I was born is too often mediated through TV, the Internet, newspapers, etc. Of course, media technology is one of the greatest things about being alive today, but there's no hi-def digital big-screen TV that can ever equate with being in a place in body and soul, witnessing history outside the lens of a camera.
Because what the camera won't capture is the breathtaking electricity in the air, that feeling you get in enormous crowds that you're a cell in a giant organism, that indefinable spirit that there are ghosts around you, envying you being alive at this time. I can do something that Frederick Douglass, Fannie Lou Hamer and Thurgood Marshall can't do. I can see something that they and millions more long-dead souls paid for in blood, sweat and tears.
Lincoln can only witness this in marble. What would Walt Whitman give to be in my shoes this week? Man, I would love to conjure up that slave-owning idealist Thomas Jefferson to stand beside me, just to watch his head explode with cognitive dissonance.
The idea of America is something that grows and matures with every American as he or she gets older. This event gives me a chance to stand beside two people I love and literally millions of others with whom I share a less immediate kinship, and meditate on my own rocky relationship with those old notions of patriotism – the "sweet land of liberty" as the song says – and do so without irony or detachment, and with a heart glowing with pride – even if it is on a freezing subway platform.
If I had been a Boy Scout – if I had not, in fact, been waylaid by the onerous demands of the Webelos – this week might be a bit easier. But the whole notion to "Be Prepared," as the Scout motto goes, is still a work in progress for me.
The trouble is that the two people who are accompanying me to Washington, D.C., to experience the inauguration of Barack Obama – my brother Michael and my daughter Quinlyn – have similarly sketchy histories with the Scouts. As a result, we are setting out for Washington with somewhat less preparation than, say, the Allies had in the liberation of Normandy.
Though, we do have a plan. With maps of the area laid out before me, and Google Earth at my fingertips on the laptop, we sat at a table dreaming up a suitable strategy to slip into the nation's capital. I felt like Peter Sellers in "Dr. Strangelove" and waited for Mike to take on the role of George C. Scott. But he was agreeable to everything.
Our plan, approaching the city from the south is to swing west, away from the core of madness at the Capitol steps where the swearing-in is to take place. We'll find some way to park at the outermost subway station on the southwest corner of the metropolitan area, where we will join the queue to board the train.
We'll disembark at Arlington National Cemetery – maybe pay our respects to JFK – and walk across the bridge closed to cars into D.C., sneaking up behind the Lincoln Memorial. We'll wander, gawk, dance in the streets, high-five the new president, make several new friends-for-life, breeze through the Smithsonian and be chilling at a convivial D.C. brew pub by nightfall. Easy as pie.
I'm trying to exude confidence, but I feel a bit like that wretch who convinced the Donner Party to take a shortcut. Michael sees through my desperately manufactured equanimity, and suggests we could be marching to our doom, referencing that 1979 Who concert in which people were trampled to death by a panicked crowd.
Getting trampled? Thanks, bro. I was just thinking that the list of things to get freaked out about – weather, toilets, traffic, lines, food, thieves, toilets, cell phone outages, exhaustion, cheesed-off Secret Service agents, did I mention toilets? – was just not quite sufficient.
My problem is that I don't know how to find the right measure of preparation. My efforts to be prepared are largely mocked by my 16-year-old offspring in whose eyes I am half-insane with irrational worry. I packed so many winter clothes for my flight that my bag was too heavy to check, and suddenly, I was in the middle of a "Seinfeld" episode, having to board wearing four shirts and two jackets pulled from my suitcase right there in front of God and American Airlines.
I bought a big bag of hard candies made from coffee, so we'll able to meet our caffeine intake requirements without the burden of extra fluids, since the idea is to concentrate on Obama Nation, not urination. I crawled all around 70-degree Santa Cruz in search of thermal long underwear, and what did I get for it? What anyone who spends any time around a teenager gets – that baleful half-smirk that is universal non-verbal communication for "I'm in the presence of a world-class idiot."
My unease is only inflamed by the wall-to-wall media coverage of the inauguration. I know it's historic and all, but wouldn't it be nice if the celebs would just stay at home and let us normal folks celebrate for once?
Maybe if Bruce Springsteen and Denzel Washington and Jessica Alba and their substantial entourages and bodyguards weren't around to push the radius of the crowd further into Virginia maybe even West Virginia, then maybe more of those anonymous working-class heroes the Democratic Party loves to evoke wouldn't have to experience the event on the outside looking in.
As for our intrepid trio, we go to today's epoch-making inaugural actually hoping to encounter some difficulties. An experience like this feels like it should be earned with sore feet, cold bones and over-stressed bladders. To all those who paid for Barack Obama's ascendance to the White House at the blunt end of repression, violence and bondage – whatever discomfort we experience? That's a day at the beach.
On the day that Barack Obama became President of the United States, the Potomac River was frozen. In the dark, pre-dawn hours, the river ice reflected a gray and ominous sheen. But in the afternoon, after Obama had taken the oath of office in front of an immense crowd still astonished that such a thing was actually happening in front of their eyes, the Potomac's ice changed character. Almost as if Obama's inaugural committee had planned it, the river turned into a sparkling expanse of what looked like crushed diamonds. Now, that's a president who knows how to make an entrance.
Was it cold on this particularly historic event? Oh, no colder than the seventh moon of Saturn. It was cold enough – particularly with a wind that could peel the paint off an oil tanker – to make a person renounce the religion of his ancestors in exchange for a lukewarm cup of coffee.
It was the kind of cold that I and my traveling companions – my daughter Quinlyn and my brother Michael – will be boring our loved ones with for decades ahead. And what's more, we lingered in that cold for eight hours, either walking or standing just about the whole time. At the end of the day, my feet were hamburger, my back had seized up, my face had turned into a rubber mask, and my kid was contacting a lawyer.
Still, going to the first ever inauguration of a non-white person in U.S. history was worth every torment – though, don't put me under oath and ask me if I would do it all over again.
What made the day magical was the unexpected. To get a jump on the crowds, we went absurdly early. That meant our first experience of the event everyone has been wringing their hands over for weeks – Four million! No, five million! – was as a ghost town.
We arrived from our subway stop at around 4 a.m. and walked the bridge across the Potomac virtually alone, giving a certain dizzying surrealism to the whole event. And I'm left with moments I'm sure I'll die with.
At the Lincoln Memorial, in the wee hours before dawn, only a handful of visitors moved in and out of the great marble chamber where Abe sat on his throne. A few wandered away, and suddenly it struck me with a sense of crippling awe, that I was, for a few minutes, utterly alone with Abraham Lincoln's iconic likeness on the one and only day an African-American had ever become president.
We had assumed that even at this ungodly hour, people would be carpeting the National Mall, but we virtually had the thing to ourselves for a couple of hours. We saw the black wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the blackness, but the numbing cold had robbed Quinlyn of proper daughterly curiosity about American history. As the sun rose we found ourselves with the Washington Monument at our back and the majestic tableau of the U.S. Capitol before us.
It was an astounding ritual as we watched the world's strongest nation exercise peaceful transfer of power while our extremities went numb. After Aretha Franklin's arresting version of "My Country Tis of Thee," my usually blasé brother pointed silently to his eye, where he had managed to squeeze out an already half-frozen tear.
After Obama's address, we adjourned into a maze of madness trying to escape the Mall, only to be driven well to the south against our will. But even that had its pleasures.
We looked up in time to see Marine One, the helicopter now transporting former President George W. Bush out of Washington D.C., hover above the Capitol and circle the crowd. Most of us on the ground, even many experiencing cold-induced organ failure, knew who was in the bird. Thus, thousands of people were afforded the satisfying thrill of saluting an outgoing president as he flies into history. Sadly, there were very few "atta boys" directed at him, and I indulged in the fantasy that Bush's final experience of Washington D.C. was looking down at me, though he was more likely gazing out at the Potomac and its crystallized icy surface, ringing the city like God's own diamond necklace. (Jan. 21, 2009)
The myth of the 'slippery slope'
Since we're now in ski season, I suppose it makes sense that we take a minute to celebrate this thing called a "slippery slope." With apologies to the masochists known as cross-country skiers, skiing wouldn't be much fun without some kind of slope, slippery or otherwise.
So, as a literal thing in the world, you have to love it. As a metaphor, though? Ugh, the slippery slope is crippling us.
I refer, of course, to the slippery-slope argument, a rhetorical device you hear over and over again, particularly in political or social debates. It sounds cogent and rational. And it's many times difficult to counter. But it's almost always bogus.
The slippery slope argument can be used to marshal resistance against some form of permissiveness, or against its opposite, some kind of limit.
In the former category, we have the counter argument against gay marriage that states if we allow men to marry men, or women to marry other women, what's to stop polygamy? What's to stop a person from marrying his dog or her horse or his car? If we allow anyone to marry any person, persons or thing, what the heck will marriage even mean anymore?
In the latter column is the argument against limits, now being employed with ferocious combativeness by the gun lobby and Second Amendment purists who contend that legislation to control, say, banana-clip magazines that allow you to shoot 100 rounds a minute leads inevitably and inexorably to law-abiding citizens being picked clean of any means to defend themselves including kitchen knives by chrome-helmeted government thugs.
Not to pick on the right wing on this score. You hear plenty of slippery-slope nonsense on the left as well. There are some atheists, for instance, under the impression that a nativity scene in a public park is the first step toward a theocratic state with Pat Robertson making all the rules. Civil liberatarians often resort to the slippery slope on such subjects as government surveillance and wire-tapping.
In most cases, right or left, people trotting out the slippery slope are not talking about the thing itself, but about some lurid nightmare fantasy they've convinced themselves is possible without absolutist diligence. What might sound absurd to you sounds just as absurd to the slippery sloper, but in a Kafka-esque, it-could-happen way.
This is, in many ways, a very American problem. Our Constitution creates absolutes when it comes to things like free speech, freedom of religion and, many believe, the right to bear arms. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say, "Well, that's a gray area. Use your best judgment, but be smart about it." The Constitution invites us to draw lines in the sand, to use a similar cliché.
But absolutist thinking should be regarded with great heaps of skepticism. Free speech is about as close to an absolute right as we have, but even that has limits. The Supreme Court has decided that you have no right to deliberately scream "Fire!" in a crowded theater when there is no fire, or its metaphorical equivalent.
That case dates back almost a hundred years, yet the slippery slope from that decision should have delivered us by now to prisons full of people jailed for nothing other than saying illegal things. The 26th Amendment, to cite another example, granted the right to vote to anyone over the age of 18 more than 40 years ago. Slippery-slope arguments at the time insisted that the pressure would continue to push that age every lower, which means by now, first-graders should have the vote. It was argued a century ago that allowing women to vote would inevitably result in a government made up entirely of women. Yeah, how's that working out?
The maddening thing is that slippery slopes do exist, in everything from sports-star salaries to Internet usage. The U.S. Senate's current crisis in the use of the filibuster is an example of dealing with an especially pernicious slippery slope.
Every public decision to limit or permit rights or privileges has some kind of natural equilibrium in the real world. But few of us are wise enough to know what that level is beforehand.
Which is exactly why the slippery slope argument – which is rarely accompanied by any real evidence – is almost always a fallacy. If we allow A to happen, then B,C,D and E will follow with ever accelerating force until we come to rest in some hellish situation that we had not foreseen.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia employed the slippery slope argument against the health-care law last summer, stating that individual mandates to buy insurance on the free market could lead to the government legally forcing Americans to eat broccoli, which is a particularly weird kind of tyranny, if you ask me.
The point is not that the idea of mandatory broccoli intake is several degrees beyond ridiculous – though, I should add, I'm already on board with broccoli (yummy).
The point is that if anyone should be wary of slippery-slope thinking, you would think it would be someone sitting on the Supreme Court. And if the Supreme Court is engaging in this particularly persistant form of irrationality, then what hope do the rest of us have in combatting it.
The slippery slope is an illusion but it will remain a favorite tool for dishonest and deluded people until someone puts their foot down, and discovers that that foot is not sliding after all.
Christmas morning, blow by blow
Welcome to the first ever live blogging of the Baine family Christmas morning – which should also be the last ever blog post created on this beat-up old laptop I'm using. Let's just say I see a new dual-core MacBook Pro in my immediate future, unless Santa is a total flake, which certainly can't happen two years in a row. C'mon, I've been good! At least, relative to my relatives.
8:32 a.m. – We're still waiting for Passive-Aggressive Teenager to wake up. She made an announcement last night that she had figured out that Christmas was a "lurid orgy of materialism" and that her conscience was too tender to participate as anything other than an "anthropologist," whatever that means. She can Occupy her bedroom all day, for all I care.
8:34 a.m. – Hyperactive 8-Year-Old Nephew is jumping around like he's got Mountain Dew in his veins. There's no lobbyist in Washington that works the floor harder than this kid is working it right now, going from adult to adult looking for any hint of a green light to attack the mountain of presents. The kitchen smells like that kind of coffee you can only buy in December. Christmas or not, there's going to be an uncomfortable scene if there isn't an alternative to Pumpkin Spice Egg Nog Decaf.
8:36 a.m. – The dam of tasteful adult restraint bursts and the kids descend on the tree like hyenas on a wounded antelope. The Wife is in the middle of it all, trying to maintain some kind of order, which is difficult without an airhorn. I offer to pass her the fireplace poker. She's got a notepad in hand, determined to catalogue who got what from whom. I don't see this an ideal occasion for bookkeeping myself.
8:51 a.m – The first gift of the day for your correspondent and it's … a San Francisco Giants World Series Championship T-shirt, a hot item from Christmas 2010 which is, I figure, stale enough now to be had for $5 on a Target clearance table. Hey, there's a recession going on. I'll take it. Last year, I got a Mardi Gras 2006 T-shirt. It's better than that, right?
8:56 a.m. – Hipster Younger Brother and Sentimental Mom are having the first loud confrontation of the day. Bro has put on some insufferable re-mix of Christmas songs he found on the Internet that just sounds like musical vandalism to me. Mom just wants some nice Nat King Cole. Bro's looking for some support, but Mom plays the trump card. "You can play that stuff all day long after I'm dead and buried." Is it too early for the rum?
9:06 a.m. – Devout Sister-In-Law is dressed for services and standing out in the driveway talking to Single Neighbor Lady who is holding a pie. I can't hear what they're saying, but it's clear from Neighbor Lady's expression that Sister is reminding her how the rest of us have forgotten the Reason for the Season. No argument here.
9:12 a.m. – Passive-Aggressive Teen shows up, stands in the doorway with a sneer and goes back to her room. We won't see her until Wednesday.
9:17 a.m. – The Wife didn't respond to her gift from me as I had hoped. She probably didn't even know she needed jumper cables. She'll thank me the next time she leaves her headlights on at work.
9:31 a.m. – I get a lot of dirty looks when I decide to start up my brand-new leaf blower in the living room. Thought it would be a good way to get on top of this wrapping-paper situation. At least, Nephew likes it, especially when I aim it as his face. Man, I'm going to have some fun with this baby.
9:35 a.m. – There's a guy in the kitchen I've never seen before.
9:42 a.m. – "Little Drummer Boy," beautiful song of devotion or wretched ear torture? The opinion seems about 50/50. There are no fence sitters on this one.
9:48 a.m. – Someone holds up a truly ugly sweater from a gift box. There could conceivably be times, I suppose, when you want to be truly repellant to the opposite sex. I share my theory that there are only six ugly sweaters in existence and they're all in constant Christmas-gift circulation.
9:59 a.m. – Nephew and I eat a whole jar of maraschino cherries together. He eats three quarters of them. We have to do it quickly before his mother sees. This is what Christmas is all about. Red-toothed Nephew apparently agrees.
10:07 a.m. – The Wife wants the Christmas lights turned on. It's broad daylight, I tell her. What's the point? She says it's just the right thing to do. I again point to the sun in the sky. We could go on all day like this. I do what I'm told.
10:13 a.m. – The painful truth is becoming apparent. There is no MacBook Pro in this house. Santa blows it again. Funny, when I was a kid, you wrote a letter to Santa, dropped in the mail and, bam, he delivered. Every year. Now, even with e-mail and Twitter and texting, the guy never seems to get the message.
11:02 a.m. – Nephew is in the throes of sugar-induced ecstasy, dancing around like some Sufi mystic. Someone dragged a finger through the bean dip. I picked up what I thought was coffee, which turned out to be root beer from last night. The Wife is asking about the empty jar of maraschino cherries. The stereo is playing what sounds like a Johnny Mathis song, if he were drunk and underwater. I grab the ugly sweater and put it on. Mom hands me the phone and demands I speak to Dotty Hard-of-Hearing Aunt. And I do.
God, I love this holiday.
Never-ending American violence — React. Reflect. Repeat.
By WALLACE BAINE
This is what we do in America. Whenever we are confronted with a despicable act of violence against innocent people like what happened Friday morning in Newtown, Conn., we play out a mass response as ritualized and predictable as kabuki theater.
Horror and heartbreak filtered through contemporary media culture manifests every time in grab-the-lapels news coverage, sidebars about the accessibility of guns and a cascade of "thoughts and prayers" statements by celebrities and public officials, the more daring of them mixed with an enough-is-enough broadside against guns.
I'm certainly not cynical enough to believe that such a response is done with calculation or self-justification by anyone, regardless of their stance on the gun issue. It is, instead, the path of least resistance to those deeply troubled and/or outraged by such acts. How else do you express a sense of anguish and empathy this overwhelming?
But somehow we have to find another way to talk about these kinds of tragedies, because our responses to them are becoming rote and commonplace, a thought that should be nearly as disturbing as the original act of violence itself.
This is not to suggest that we shouldn't talk about guns. Count me on the side of those who believe we should talk about guns loudly and forcefully.
But let's for a moment leave the gun-control debate to others. There are two factors at play in these quintessentially American horrors and only one of them has to do with firearms. That's the how. But we need to address the why.
I think most Americans – left, right and center – can at least agree that there is something disquieting happening at the core of American public culture these days. It's something that often pops up as public displays of anger and vitriol that many times flirts with paranoid delusion. Maybe it's always been there and we just never were exposed to it on a mass scale before the Twitterverse. Regardless, we live in a culture where violent rampages against strangers, though never condoned, are now simply not beyond the pale of American daily life. We call such acts unacceptable, and then by our continuing inability to address how to stop them, we quietly accept them.
Yeah so, humans are occasionally capable of unspeakable violence. News flash. Still, the nature of these incidents and their commonality suggest that this is an American thing, a revelation that puts an ugly stain on that old trope of American exceptionalism.
A political culture held hostage by the NRA is only one way into this thorny existential dilemma. In the history of inhabiting the North American continent, violence, particularly at the end of a gun, is deeply ingrained in the American DNA. But instead of facing up to that violent impulse, Americans tend to romanticize and glorify the more Wild West aspects of American life, and translate those aspects into the way we act day to day.
We've come to believe that competition in a free-enterprise system has to be ruthless to be effective, that individual effort and initiative is the primary factor in who succeeds and who fails, that respect is only truly earned with menace. "The Lord helps him who helps himself"; "Speak softly and carry a big stick"; "Trust the Lord and keep your powder dry" – these are the songs in the American hymnal that we've all internalized.
Lurid revenge fantasies of one man against the system – it's always a man, it seems – find a warm, hospitable place in the American psyche. Even arguments in favor of the Second Amendment suggest that vigilante violence lurks just beneath the veneer of American life, ready to be revived at the first sign of government tyranny.
Pop culture is dotted with myths and stories, the first assumption of which is that nobody has your back, least of all institutions such as government, education or big business. Reality shows celebrate dog-eat-dog justifications to win. The most critically praised TV show of the era, "Breaking Bad," is, at its heart, about a decent man pushed into the illegal drug economy by a system that didn't value his talents.
Add to that legacy deep economic insecurities, unprecedented wealth inequality, political figures not above scapegoating an indistinct "them" – immigrants, politicians, hedge-fund traders – as the source of your problems and what we have is a culture that acts as an incubation chamber for angry, alienated people to give in to the impulse to "go out in a blaze of glory," to point to one particularly odious and fundamentally American cliché.
Like most Americans, I don't want to ever get "used to" the kinds of devastating events like the one that took place Friday in Connecticut. But the alternative is painful, difficult, costly and requires millions of small and large acts of courage over generations – to face squarely the American propensity to violence and its spiritual component, the absence of empathy and respect for others.
There is something frightening unfolding in our larger culture. More and more people are beginning to feel that they're being exploited and/or abandoned, yet they don't have a way to know by what or by whom.
We keep calling these kinds of tragedies "senseless," and therein lies the dynamic that perpetuates them. We are sense-making animals. We better start applying some sense to random violence and our cultural responsibility for it, or these things will continue to shatter our otherwise quiet routine mornings … again and again and again.
The People Vs. the Rolling Stones
Help me out with something here, readers.
Is hating the Rolling Stones a dangerous and contrarian "emperor-has-no-clothes" kind of stance? Or is it obvious and tiresome, like declaring "Y'know, I really hate flying coach"?
Because I have recently had yet another flare-up of a lifelong disdain for the aged bad boys of rock 'n' roll and I just need to know: In terms of hatred for the Stones, am I part of the 1 percent, or the 99 percent?
If you haven't heard, I'm sorry to be the one to break the news, but the Stones recently announced that they're getting back together for a series of concerts to mark their 50th anniversary as a band.
The first of those concerts, in fact, is set to take place today in London with a few follow-ups shows in early December in New York and New Jersey. The big news this time is that former Stones Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor will join the band for a reunion that I can find no evidence that anyone was even asking for.
In the news items about the new tour, I looked in vain for that word "farewell," but alas found nothing of the kind. The Stones have apparently just turned the corner on the way to 60.
Hey, it's no skin off my nose – or maybe I should say lips – if audiences still want to see a bunch of scrawny old guys plow through "Honky Tonk Women" for 10-millionth time. But, to quote a Stones song from the disco era, how are we ever going to "Miss You" if you won't go away?
I'm not here to argue that "Sticky Fingers" or "Exile on Main Street" weren't groundbreaking rock 'n' roll records. Of course, the Rolling Stones of that first decade were giants of the genre. If rock 'n' roll was invented to give voice to teenage alienation, then no song has ever topped "Satisfaction" in that category.
And I'm not declaring that all aged rockers need to do the world a favor and disappear. Bob Dylan has been touring and recording longer than the Stones, but the obvious difference is that Dylan has gone through several wholly distinct creative periods – many of them weird and awful, but that just underscores his artistic integrity. Dylan is still, even at 71, capable of surprises.
The Stones, by contrast, are the world's most expensive jukebox. Put in a quarter – or, to be more accurate, $830, which is the general admission price for the New York show – and out comes "Brown Sugar."
I'm a kid of the '70s, so it's true that the Stones' greatest period of creativity was already in decline when I started buying records. But, in terms of image and career arc, I can't resist a comparison to a band of my era. When KISS first emerged in the mid '70s, they also were a dangerous band that scared the wits out of parents. Yes, it's a comparison likely to give a Stones fan an aneurysm. But in both cases, a transgressive teenage rock sound has become a pitiless and cynical corporate brand.
With more than a half century of rock music behind us, we fans have learned a few overarching truths about the rock revolution. And one of them is that bands have a lifespan, at least good ones do. The Beatles' break-up was shattering for millions back in 1970, but looking back, who can doubt such a thing was inevitable? Up until the moment when John Lennon was killed, the pressures for a Beatles reunion were building to a "Day in the Life" kind of crescendo. Maybe, the Fab Four would have succumbed to the pressure and re-united for a few shows just for the paycheck. But can you imagine the intact Beatles in their 70s playing shows today? Lennon never would have allowed that to happen. Just imagine what John would have to say about Jagger and the Stones today? There's a tweet I want to read.
Those of us who love rock 'n' roll, from Chuck Berry to the White Stripes, like to think of great rock music as a kind of untamable buckin' bronco on which very few can ride for long. The Sex Pistols, the best bad rock band in history, came together for one brilliant album and one insane besotted American tour, before dissolving before the world on stage in San Francisco. That's an extreme case, sure, but man, what a shooting star that was. Try to imagine the Sex Pistols playing in 2012. It would be like eating a great meal you ordered 30 years ago.
A band's lifespan doesn't have to be short. REM, for instance, bowed to the inevitable a couple of years ago after a long and magnificent career that I'm sure has set up all the great grandchildren of the band for life. Perhaps the dreams of U2's Bono is troubled by such thoughts right about now too.
The point is that the Rolling Stones have transcended that natural lifespan for a rock band at a terrible price. These guys are a zombie band now, a cynical oldies act with nothing new to say to the world except, "pay me."
For any true music fan, the ironies are almost too bitter to contemplate. The band who said "I can't get no satisfaction" are the very definition of "satisfied." The band who said, "You can't always get what you want," continues to get everything they want by ransacking their legacy.
But, in one surely unintended way, Mick and Keith and the boys are right. For those of us immune to the charms of the Stones, we can't ever get what we want.
How to avoid a dining-room civil war at Thanksgiving
There is some evil genius lost in the mists of American history – evidence points to Abraham Lincoln – who first made the decision to put Election Day and Thanksgiving Day in the same month.
Coincidence? Please. Whoever made that call did so as a clever little piece of social engineering, as a way to get Americans to break bread in brotherhood – "sisterhood" hadn't yet been invented – after an acrimonious election season. It's like when two pre-schoolers get into a crying, screaming fight and their respective mothers make them hug and apologize.
The three weeks and change between the election and Thanksgiving gives us all a little time to get our more demonstrative emotions out of our system, be they smug triumphalism or bitter resentment, so we can be more mature adults and share pumpkin pie with relatives who deep down think we're political cretins. Because nothing defines the American experience more than learning to live with people you believe are fools.
This year's Thanksgiving is likely to be more super-charged than most, following an election season that long ago devolved into the world's most expensive food fight. There are no ties in the American system, and, like a Catholic marriage, we Americans are stuck with each other. So, short of moving to Canada, we all have to learn to get along, and if you won't do it for America, do it for Canada.
So, herewith we offer a bit of advice for surviving Thanksgiving without verbal or actual fisticuffs with your political opposites, because on Thanksgiving, a food fight isn't just a metaphor. It took me two months to get the cranberry sauce out of my hair last year.
If you're sick and tired of the election and its ugliness – can I see a show of hands? – and just want to keep the Rachel Maddows and the Rush Limbaughs in your family from ruining your holiday, you can always do the mature thing and have a private conversation with each a week before asking them to stuff the political talk. Of course, the mature thing will often only inflame the immature, so why do the mature thing?
Look, you're perfectly free to take the floor once all your guests arrive and announce that the election is over, and we all need to find a way to reconcile and let's all go around the room and say something nice about the other side. But only a masochist or an independent filmmaker would attempt such a thing.
But, if you're of the mind to avoid confrontation and hope for the best, you're going to have to work at it. You're going to have massage the conversation constantly, like a moderator in an on-line chat room.
You'll be able to judge soon enough if you're going to have to break a sweat. Once you lay eyes on your know-it-all Obama-phile college-age daughter, you'll be able to see the urge to gloat in her eyes. You can't miss it. Ditto the brooding cauldron of venom in your sore-loser dittohead Republican brother-in-law.
Once you've assessed the situation, it's time to stage-manage the conversation. Talk about the food – in depth. Chatter on about how hard it was to find a suitable turkey, and the step-by-step process of making the mashed potatoes, and your likes and dislikes of every supermarket in the county. Of course, that might lead to someone bringing up Prop. 37, the defeated food-labeling measure. Just remember, change the subject. Watch how it's done:
"Speaking of 37, doesn't Jen have a birthday coming up?"
"Speaking of Trump, who wants to play bridge?"
"Speaking of Benghazi, um … I love your new car, Bill!"
Awkward? Maybe, but would you rather be scraping stuffing off your wallpaper until March?
Once the food thing is exhausted, move to people's personal lives. It's perfectly reasonable to catch up with family members you haven't seen in a year, and it allows you to get granular.
"OK, so that covers April and May. Now, let's go into June. What did you do for Flag Day?"
Remember, you're likely to find an ally or two in your efforts to squelch the political talk. Take them aside and discuss strategy. Assign any volunteers to stay close to a potentially troublesome guest, like a basketball coach putting his best defender on LeBron. Work as a team, people. You can't keep the peace alone.
Sports will likely occupy the menfolk for a while, as Thanksgiving remains the only day of the year that women give thanks for the NFL. Remember there are three games broadcast back to back to back, and they are absolutely brilliant at serving as doze-inducing distractions. Remember it's possible the only thing standing between you and domestic civil war is the Dallas Cowboys.
Also, keep in mind that people will see what you're trying to do. Democrats dying to do a victory dance and Republicans bottling up their rage will note your resistance to them. That doesn't mean they can resist over the course of a long afternoon. Be vigilant.
And, finally, realize that time is on your side. The day after Thanksgiving – Black Friday, the opening gun to the holiday shopping frenzy – is becoming ever more powerful by the year. Soon, the economic pressures to begin earlier and earlier will allow Black Friday to jump the calendar altogether and move into Thanksgiving Day itself. By 2016, the next election year, Black Friday will begin by 3 p.m. on Thursday and Thanksgiving dinner will be a pleasant hour-long affair after which you'll be blissfully napping instead of sweating an outbreak of hostilities in your living room.
So, all you have to do is get through this year. Now don't you feel a bit more thankful?
San Francisco 2012: Baseball Heaven
They say this used to be a football town.
They say that, at one time, nothing could elevate the heart rate of the San Francisco sports fan more than something called – and I hope I have this right – "Montana to Rice." Hmm, sounds like some kind of cowboy diet plan.
That kind of talk has now been drowned in the roars coming from China Basin. San Francisco is now, fully and passionately, a baseball town.
From the press area in the nosebleeds in deep left field, the crowd at Thursday night's World Series Game 2 at AT&T Park resembled a rippling orange carpet. Forty thousand tangerine-colored rally towels were handed out free to ticket holders streaming into Game 2 and, considering the San Francisco Giants are now playing in their second World Series in three years, you'll have to excuse Bay Area baseball fans if they now consider orange to be the color of baseball royalty. These days, even in the bluest corners of Dodger myopia, it's hard to argue otherwise.
The day after Pablo Sandoval blasted three home runs to give the Giants a victory against Justin Verlander, the stud ace of the Detroit Tigers, in Game 1, a poignantly beautiful fall afternoon reflects shards of sunlight off the far Berkeley Hills. In a glass showcase in the club level, the 2010 World Series trophy gleams, and another is there for the taking. As the game begins, there is but one conclusion – San Francisco in late October 2012 is one Iowa cornfield away from being baseball heaven.
What's most astonishing about this amazing set of circumstances is how far this franchise has come. You don't hear much about it, but this year marks a significant anniversary of the Giants' darkest moment. Twenty years ago this month, a dispirited team finished a bleak season at dreary Candlestick Park, shortly after it was announced that the team would be sold and moved to Tampa. Fans came out to the Stick that fall certain the team would never play in San Francisco again.
Of course, we all know the miracle that followed – the white-knight ownership group fronted by Peter Magowan, the signing of Barry Bonds, the construction of the glorious new ballpark by the bay and, eventually, a World Series title. And, as the nation looks on this fall, San Francisco is taking its place alongside New York and Boston as one of the greatest baseball cities in America.
The thing about the World Series that makes it fundamentally different from any other ballgame is the presence of baseball's one-percent, the media figures and grand old faces of the game that use the Series as old home week.
With a media pass that gave me the run of the ballpark, I got up close and personal with many of the game's most famous names, from media showboats such as ESPN's bombastic Chris Berman, Fox's glamour queen Erin Andrews and the demigod of all baseball writers Peter Gammons, to the many of the ex-ballplayers and Hall of Famers that make often turn grown men into quivering children.
Will "The Thrill" Clark, the sweetheart of the Humm-Baby Giants of the late 1980s, appeared during batting practice in full uniform. After a back-slapping TV appearance, Clark jogged to the outfield to shag flies with the current Giants. Sometimes the universe sings.
Later, with the game still scoreless going into the late innings, I found myself in a hallway with two African-American gentlemen of advanced years, the tall one admonishing the shorter one not to forget his glasses. The former was Frank Robinson, the latter Joe Morgan, two of the greatest to ever play the game. I not only didn't speak, I'm pretty sure I didn't breathe.
But I spent most of my time out with the orange-and-black hordes who lustily chanted "MVP!" whenever Buster Posey came to the plate, and roared with every pitch thrown to Sandoval. To anyone showing a little gray, I attempted to reminisce about the bad old Candlestick days when parkas regularly came out in July.
For all the famous VIPs crowding the luxury suites, and the grousing about the price of World Series tickets, there was still a lunch-bucket vibe to the evening, if you knew where to look. Out on the concourse behind right field, outside the ballpark, Giants fans without tickets lined up for a chance to peer at the field through the right field fence for free. A local man named Chet was making the case that the thousands of Giants fans clogging the concourse do not know how good they have it.
A bit later, leaning against the railing hovering over McCovey Cove, where the kayakers and pleasure boats famously wait for home run balls that will probably never come, an old-timer named Rex can't stop talking about the old days at Candlestick. Rex is possessed of the kind of mountain-man beard that's apparently fashionable in the Giants bullpen; picture Brian Wilson 40 years from now. Rex never had any intention of going inside the ballpark and seeing the game. As World Series Giants' caps are being sold for $50 nearby, Rex is wearing an old construction helmet that he painted himself orange and black. I told him if we could mass-produce those babies, we might make a fortune.
Rex is here not to see a game, but to feed off the energy of the crowd and the team. "I'm here every night," he says. "I ain't going nowhere."
Later as the night ripened, in the middle of eighth on the way to a 2-0 Giants victory – and a 2-0 lead in the Series – the ballpark rose for what has become one of the most intoxicating of game rituals at this ballpark.
On the loudspeaker came the old Journey song "Lights" and 60,000 voices, giddy with baseball magic, sang lustily, "When the lights do down in the City …"
Take your Dodger Dogs and your Green Monsters and your ivy-covered outfield walls. This is where baseball lives today. This is where baseball has come back from near death to reign as the City of Champions.


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Loaded with root vegetables and sweet Savoy cabbage, this robust white bean soup from southwestern France is enriched with smoky bacon and duck confit.
A rich pan sauce of reduced red wine, armagnac, and black truffle butter adorns seared duck breasts for an impressive holiday dish that's also surprisingly simple to make.
Duck legs are dry-brined and braised in an aromatic stock, then shredded and mixed with armagnac and spices and sealed into a serving dish with duck fat, making a delectable spread for a toasted baguette.
Slowly braised duck infused with the aroma of Mexican cinnamon and orange is shredded and pan-fried until crisp in this recipe from chef Roberto Santibanez.
For this indulgent dish, duck legs are cured in herb-laced salt, then slowly braised in a bath of duck fat before being roasted until crisp.
Traditionally prepared with a whole duck, this updated stir-fry lends duck breasts a gentle, caramelized smokiness.
This three-part technique starts with a stove-top sear to render fat followed by a stint in the oven for a steam in a flavorful broth.
This satisfying dish was adapted from Lidia Bastianich's cookbook Lidia's Italy (Knopf, 2007).
Associate test kitchen director Farideh Sadeghin learned the technique for this wonderfully crisp duck with soy glaze while working in the kitchen at Huka Lodge in Taupo, New Zealand.
This duck-lover's version of the classic southern French casserole includes the bird in rich sausages, bone-in legs and thighs, breast meat, and the traditional confit.
In Bali, this aromatic chile and garlic stuffed duck is wrapped in coconut tree bark and steamed. We found it bakes beautifully rubbed in coconut oil and covered in aluminum foil. See the recipe »
The apple's sweet-tart flavor is a natural pair for rich meat dishes from pork tenderloin to roast duck, not to mention the genius combination of apple and cheddar cheese.
Heston Blumenthal, chef at the Fat Duck in Bray, England, gave us the recipe for this dish, which was inspired by his trip to Transylvania.
The fiery chile-based rub on this chicken is balanced by a basting of sweet-sour duck sauce.
The recipe for this entrée was given to us by Off the Shelf, a film catering company.
Page 1 of 8


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In Angels and Demons (2000), Dan Brown introduces Robert Langdon, the Harvard symbologist who would later star in Brown's worldwide best seller The Da Vinci Code (2003). The two books share numerous characteristics. Though fictional, both novels claim to be built upon a base of researched facts. Both seek to revise aspects of generally accepted histories, especially those related to the Catholic Church and its relationship to free thought. And both books put Langdon in the middle of violent interactions among shadowy factions, clashes whose outcomes may well determine the future course of Western civilization.
The two books differ in setting, threat, and focus. While The Da Vinci Code tackles ancient speculations about the Holy Grail, Angels and Demons involves more standard thriller fare. It puts science and religion into conflict by reviving the Illuminati, a secret society of scientists and freethinkers whose relationship with the Catholic Church has long been, Brown indicates, intimate, tangled, and not fully known. This secret society returns as a threat when the major church leaders are gathered at the Vatican to elect a new pontiff. Increasing this centuries-old tension is a more specific threat: the Illuminati claim to have stolen a rare sample of antimatter and hidden it somewhere in the Vatican. It is highly explosive if it comes in contact with normal matter, and it will do so when a protective magnetic field runs out in twenty-four hours. Add to this the fact that the four preferred candidates for the papacy have been kidnapped, and the result is that Robert Langdon must decipher a grand puzzle and save the day while half a dozen clocks are ticking. Although the novel's style is melodramatic, and its exposition and moral judgments are heavy-handed, Angels and Demons remains a first-rate thriller.
Extended Summary
When physicist Leonardo Vetra is found murdered with the word "Illuminati" branded onto his chest, Maximilian Kohler, the director of CERN (European Council for Nuclear Research), contacts Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon for help. Kohler has Langdon flown to CERN. Langdon explains the role of the Illuminati—a secret society of artists, scientists, and freethinkers—as a long-standing enemy of the Catholic Church. While Langdon is explaining this, and learning more about Vetra's research, Vetra's adopted daughter, Vittoria, who is also a physicist, joins them.
Vittoria and her father had created antimatter in a CERN lab. This was doubly important to her father because he was a priest, and the discovery promised to give humanity access to the secrets of creation. However, it is also a great threat because antimatter explodes when it comes into contact with normal matter. This becomes a pressing issue when they learn that their biggest sample has been stolen, and the battery that generates the magnetic field (and keeps the antimatter stable) has only a twenty-four-hour life span.
CERN is then contacted by the Vatican: a threat has been issued indicating that the antimatter is hidden at the Vatican. This is especially dangerous since a Conclave is being held to elect a new pope to replace the one who recently died. Kohler cannot go immediately because of his poor health, but Langdon and Vittoria make the journey. However, the pair find it impossible to convince Olivetti, the head of the Swiss Guard, that the threat is real. In fact, the commander locks them away while he investigates. Langdon uses his knowledge of Vatican protocol to get them released, appealing to the "camerlengo" (the pope's chamberlain), who is in charge until the election of the new pope is complete. While they are pleading their case, a representative of the Illuminati calls. He tells them that not only is the antimatter hidden in the Vatican, but the Illuminati have kidnapped the four cardinals who are the favorites to be elected as the new pope. They will kill them, one per hour, at 8, 9, 10, and 11 p.m., at churches around Rome, building the threat before the bomb goes off at midnight, destroying the Vatican, killing many of its leaders, and incinerating much of its wealth.
The camerlengo and the commander of the Swiss Guard decide to let the Conclave continue while they search for the bomb and the missing cardinals. In the Vatican archives, Langdon finds clues to where the cardinals will be killed in a manuscript by Galileo. (The murder sites will be located at places important to the Illuminati, and each candidate will be killed according to one of the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water.) Langdon leads the Swiss Guard to the Pantheon. Langdon and Vittoria enter the church. However, through a conversation with the church caretaker, Langdon realizes they are in the wrong place. They race to Santa...
(The entire section is 1197 words.)


text: I tried this line and it did not work even after a restart. I think I may be missing something else. I have read about creating a plist for my operator and symlinking it further back in this thread but could not understand exactly what to do. Is there something that I am missing?


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Nutritional Facts
Hearty Ham Loaf
Hearty Ham Loaf combines ground ham, pork and beef in tender meaty slices. Says Luella Feck of Bexley, Ohio. "I volunteered to cook for a regular group meeting of senior citizens. When I started, there were 35 attending. Now the members are up to over 100, thanks in part to dishes like this tasty ham loaf."
24 Servings
Prep: 15 min. Bake: 1-1/4 hours
3 eggs
2 cups milk
1-1/2 cups crushed saltines (about 35 crackers)
1-1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1 teaspoon onion salt
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
3 pounds ground fully cooked ham
1 pound ground beef
1 pound ground pork
2 cans (10-3/4 ounces
) condensed tomato soup, undiluted
2-1/2 cups packed brown sugar
1/2 cup cider vinegar
2 tablespoons ground mustard
In a very large bowl, combine the eggs, milk, cracker crumbs, onion
salt, salt and pepper. Crumble meat over mixture; mix well.
Shape into three loaves, about 9-in. x 3-1/2 in. x 1-3/4 in. each.
Transfer to greased 9-in. x 5-in. loaf pans. Bake at 350° for 1
to 1-1/4 hours or until a meat thermometer reads 160°.
Meanwhile, in a saucepan, combine the sauce ingredients. Cook and
© Taste of Home 2014
2 of 2
Hearty Ham Loaf
Directions (continued)
stir until sugar is dissolved. Serve with ham loaves. Yield: 3
loaves and 4 cups sauce (8 servings each).
Nutritional Facts:
1 serving (1 slice) equals 375 calories, 18 g fat (6 g saturated fat), 86 mg cholesterol, 1,103 mg sodium, 32 g carbohydrate, 1 g fiber, 20 g protein.
© Taste of Home 2014


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Hot tags Animals Botany Climate Change Earth Sciences
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Articles, documents and multimedia from ABC Science
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Huge explosion most distant ever seen
Thursday, 26 May 2011
Scientists have set a new record for the most distant object ever observed - 13.14 billion light years way.
Some black holes may be older than time
Friday, 6 May 2011
An intriguing new hypothesis suggests some black holes could have formed before the formation of our universe.
Geologists aim for mantle of the Earth
Thursday, 24 March 2011
Scientists are planning to drill through the Earth's crust to retrieve a sample of mantle.
Scientists unlock cosmic ice riddle
Friday, 11 February 2011
Scientists have discovered the mechanism behind an unusual material that shrinks when heated and expands when subjected to pressure.
New thinking on asteroid belt
Tuesday, 14 December 2010
An alternative explanation for planetary formation may shed light on how the solar system's asteroid belt was formed.
Yawning doesn't catch on in babies
Wednesday, 1 December 2010
Young children don't find yawning contagious, according to a new British study.
Image shows echoes from before big bang
Monday, 29 November 2010
Concentric circles on an image of the early universe are an imprint of violent events before the big bang, according to a new study.
Dino demise supersized the mammals
Friday, 26 November 2010
The demise of the dinosaurs kick-started a spurt in the growth of the mammals which would see them become supersized within a mere 25 million years, new research has found.
Models show pterosaurs flew long, slow
Wednesday, 24 November 2010
Palaeontologists have moved a step closer to understanding how pterosaurs were able to cruise the skies of the ancient world between 220-65 million years ago.
Bush cricket has the biggest balls of all
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
The world will never look at the humble bush cricket the same way again, after research which appeared today.
Whales showing more sun damage
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
Whales are showing signs of acute sun damage that researchers believe is due to rising levels of ultra violet radiation.
Tarantulas help map the fear factor
Tuesday, 9 November 2010
Research exposing people to spiders has shown that the brain's response to fear is highly complex and involves a balancing act between raising the alarm and signalling the all clear.
Stars let us see the light
Thursday, 4 November 2010
Astronomers say the first stars and galaxies rather than black holes or elemental particle decay, has given us the universe we have today.
Natural born cell killers
Monday, 1 November 2010
We now have a much clearer idea of how our body's immune system kills cancer cells and cells infected with viruses, thanks to a joint UK and Australian project.
Study reveals why the leopard got its spots
Wednesday, 20 October 2010
Rudyard Kipling was right - leopards and other big cats have had to change their spots in order to survive.


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Fix Boot Lid Lock Random Opening Problem
Posted 13 September 2010 - 08:21 AM
The wife's CMax started playing up the other day. I knew for a while that she couldn't open the boot using the switch, only the remote button could unlock the boot. No big deal, so we left it.
However, a couple of days ago, the boot started opening at random times, mainly when the car was started. It quickly progressed to opening whilst driving or sticking it into reverse.
I had a look on here and the internet. It looked like I might have to shell out a few quid for a new switch. I read that recently someone had used a small button switch from a mouse, so I thought I'd have a go at that before giving my hard earned cash to the people who designed the car badly in the first place!!
Tools required....
Hex bit for screws in grab handles
10mm spanner (ratchet spanner preferred)
Soldering iron and solder
An old computer mouse
Silicon sealant.
This is what I did;
I removed the 2 screws in the grab handles at the bottom of the bootlid cowl. Then I gently prised the cowl off the bootlid. This was surprisingly easy to do and none of the clips or plastic broke.
I then loosened the 4 nuts that hold the outer plastic trim using the 10mm spanner (where the boot switch is located) onto the boot. I prised this away from the bootlid and pushed in the grey plastic clips on the side of the switch mechanism which released it. I then unplugged the switch from the loom and removed it from the car (along with the grommet). (You can see I had 3 switches lined up to see which fitted best, 2 were from the mouse and one was from an old led bike light)
I peeled back the rubber 'gaitor' from the switch and found the same white powdery stuff that others have found, which meant that water ingress was probably to blame. I gave this a good clean and had a play with the switch to see if it still worked. The multimeter told me it was intermittently faulty.
I removed the original seal where the wires join the switch and pushed the switch out from the bottom of the plastic trim.
I found an old mouse and butchered it. I got out my old soldering iron and removed a couple of hopeful switches, stabbing myself in the palm in the process. I am a rubbish solderer, so if I can manage it, everybody else can!!
I cleaned up the plastic trim and dried it thoroughly.
I then de-soldered the original switch. I fed the wires back through the little gap and soldered the new switch on. Took me half an hour because I'm terrible at it. A couple of burns later and it was done.
I had some strong superglue lying round, so I used that to fix the new switch in place, making sure it lined up with the button in the trim.
I didn't have any clear silicon sealant so some white anti-mould shower sealant had to do the job. I plugged up the hole by the wires thoroughly with the sealant and made sure it was neat inside the trim.
Next up was putting the rubber trim back in place. Some careful application of the sealant later, and the whole switch was watertight (hopefully).
I put it all back together and for the first time in a couple of years the boot opens using the switch. The random problem of it opening seems to have stopped as well.
It's early days but looks promising. Only took an hour or so and didn't cost me a penny either!!
This seems to be a common problem with CMAX's and Focus' between 04 and 07. I've put this in a couple of places as well to help as many people with this problem as possible.
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Posted 14 September 2010 - 08:14 AM
Thanks very much for this, i have problems with mine intermittantly not working (it doesn't open itself but sometimes doesn't open at all - the number of times i've emptied the boot by folding the rear seats down!!!).
I'm going to strip mine down now i know its so easy, thanks again for the well illustrated info.
Posted 14 September 2010 - 03:29 PM
If you haven't got a mouse to dissect, I had a quick look on Maplin and found the following which seems similar to my switch;
These seem to be around the right size; SWT105 4.3mm Black or SWT105A 5.0mm Black.
Or these;
I haven't seen physically seen these but the type/size seem about right. Good luck!
Posted 14 September 2010 - 04:07 PM
Posted 31 December 2010 - 03:37 PM
Posted 02 January 2011 - 03:52 PM
Posted 08 January 2011 - 01:36 PM
Posted 09 June 2011 - 05:25 PM
Posted 01 August 2011 - 08:19 PM
I found this great thread from a Google search and I followed Lippo's instructions. It all worked perfectly (apart from a few burns from inexperienced soldering) and a great feeling of self satisfaction has set in. It takes me back to the old days when you could really do DIY stuff on your car.
So thanks Lippo, for saving my sanity; I couldn't have taken the aggro for much longer ;-)
Posted 07 February 2012 - 11:16 AM
Posted 24 May 2012 - 08:16 PM
My Focus (MK2) boot handle was not working since i bought the car whitch i didn't really mind as i just used the key. But it started unlocking on its own unless the car was locked. This got really annoying really quick.
Iv searched around any there docent seem to be a definitive answer. Mainly just people saying that it was down to water ingress.
so i thought id have a little mess with it and see what i could do.
I peeled back the rubber of the boot handle to find i full to the brim with water and a white power/residue
After i seen how bad it was i took it apart from the inside and gave it a good clean. Wiped everything and gave anything Easily detachable a good soak in the sink.
It was a hot day so i drove around without the Rubber on the handle to air it out.
And then Blasted the handle and cover in WD40 (to evaporate any left vapour).
Since putting it back together its been fine. The boot handle still does not work (in need of a new switch). But it sees to have fixed the unlocking problem.
Hope this helps.
Posted 27 May 2012 - 02:55 PM
Not wanting to attempt repairing or soldering I took the decision to buy a new one.
I bought a genuine Ford part from a main dealer for £12, much less than I had been led to believe on here.
In fact I looked on ebay first and they all wanted £30+
Changed the switch in less that 30 mins
Posted 03 February 2013 - 12:39 PM
Posted 04 February 2013 - 03:40 PM
Posted 27 May 2013 - 09:34 PM
Many thanks for all the kind posts.
Quick update; after working seamlessly for over 2 1/2 years, the switch has stopped working again. No random opening this time, but I'm still assuming it's the switch. I'll have a go at it in the next few weeks.
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4 out of 4
1 Reviews
great skinny fitting pants !
February 27, 2013
These pants have a skinny fit ! I'm 5'6 155lbs. And a small fit perfect. I wore them for 3 all day snowboarding trips and they kept me warm n dry. Of course I had some good base layers under them . You can get them on this site ! I always order from altrec for all my snowboarding things. Great pant and snug fit , not too bell bottomy like a lot of snowboarding pants .
Pros: Great design, Build quality, Performance, Great value, Cons: dont buy if you dont like slim fitAirblaster Men's Sissy Pants Photo
Black and Grey.
Available sizes, while supplies last, include size xs, size small, size medium, size large, size extra large and size extra extra large: xs, s, m, l, xl, xxl.


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Sorel Toddler Snow Commander
The Snow Commander Boot by Sorel is their first Toddler only style that makes iteasy for mom and dad to pull on andoff. Velcro closure ensures it stayson the foot during wear. ThermoPlusline. The pefect boot for the childthat wants to be outside but not fortoo long.
DECENT FEATURES of the Sorel Toddler Snow Commander
- Upper: PU backed synthetic textile upper
- Insulation: Full-length fleece lining with 200g insulation
- Footbed: Removable EVA footbed
- Midsole: 2.5 mm bonded felt frost plug
- Outsole: Injection molded waterproof thermal rubber shell with multi-directional lug outsole for enhanced traction
The SPECS of the Sorel Toddler Snow Commander
- Weight: 14.4 oz / 410 g