June 26, 2005 Announcements

There's quite a lot afoot here and in my immediate neighborhood, which continues to grow....

Reason Roundup

This week's Reason Roundup has been posted at the Charlotte Capitalist

Welcome to the Reason Roundup. New Interview. Sham in Iran. Scenes on screens. the dope on hope. It's a drag about the flag. There's more in store...

On the Iranian elections, a fellow Houstonian was inspired by a Publius Pundit post on the sham elections and decided to do a little fieldwork of his own at the illegal Iranian polling place here in H-Town. He shot photos, some of which have uniformed HPD officers (!) as security.

Unknown Master

Robert Tracy over at Illustrated Ideas has a nice post about my favorite watercolor artist.

Wine!

Willy Shake has this week's wine recommendations over at Unconsidered Trifles.

Happy Blogiversary!

Bothenook over at a geezer's corner has been blogging for just over a year now. I've not only enjoyed his blog, but his recipes as well. The man can cook! He was also the first submarine blogger to welcome me to the blogosphere. Thanks to him, I've met a bunch of other great guys from the submarine force and get to experience some of the camaraderie from those times again.

Happy blogiversary, Bo!

Another Instalanche Hits my Blogroll

Way back, before I knew too many other submarine bloggers -- but Bothenook, apparently, knew us all -- he kept making the point on his blog that submariners, on the whole, make good bloggers. (I think I know why!) I started looking at a few of the other blogs from time to time and came to agree with him.

Not that I'm one to appeal to authority, but it looks like the grand master of blogging, Glenn Reynolds, is in full agreement with Bothenook: Fellow submariner Bubblehead got buried with hits a couple of weeks ago. I can't resist this quote from his account.

This is really screwing with my Sitemeter graphs. I mean, with the few hundred visits a day I was getting, you can't even see them now with the 12,000 hits skewing the y-axis."

Hearing this is just like being on a submarine all over again. Part of the job, I think, is to find something outside the normal band to complain about. No reason to believe this man is not a submariner! Check. Wanna print out that sitemeter graph and whip out a red pen? Oh. I see. You did that first, didn't you?

Now that I'm done giving him a hard time, visit the post for which he got the Instalanche and see why he got it.

The asshats [Fred Phelps and Co.] coming to protest today at the funeral of Cpl. Carrie French say that God killed her, and will continue killing American soldiers. Since those who killed her also think that God is on their side, it seems to me that the protesters share beliefs and goals with the terrorists in Iraq.

He photoblogged said protests. Unbelievable!

Blogroll Additions

I've added two more bloggers I met through Ultraquiet No More to my blogroll.

The first is Alex Nunez, a civilian submarine enthusiast and (chortle) New York Yankees fan. His blog is called The Noonz Wire, and among many other things, contains gems like this.

Is baseball the national passtime? Nah, that's just what everyone else tells Yankees fans. The real national passtime is listening to Yankees fans like Alex when their team is near or, preferably, below, the .500 mark. So, if you need your fix, you know where to go!

Welcome to the submarine clan, Alex! Smack talk is just part of the game! I have nothing against the Yanks, but still....

The second blogger is Rob Schumacher, who will be the second lefty on my blogroll. Nevertheless, he wasn't thrilled with the recent Kelo decision, so there may be some hope for him yet. (On his post, inter alia: But how is this seizure of homes any different from the myriad income redistribution schemes favored by leftists? Money, too, is property. Perhaps Kelo affords capitalists the opportunity to drive this point home.) If his pal Bubblehead is a South Park Republican, then perhaps Rob is a "King of the Hill" Democrat.

Blog Changes

I finally got around to making a few tweaks to my Blogger template. I cleaned up the appearance by moving my logos to the footer, added a few new resource links, and updated my list of favorite posts. I may be doing a few minor changes of a similar nature as time allows over the next few days.

Fans of my China/Latin America roundups will note that I have included a link to the index post under the "favorite links" on the right. I finally updated that post as well.

Home Brewing

I am pleased to note that my first home brew was also my first successful home brew. It still needs to age for about another week before its flavor is optimal, but it tasted fine today. I had been worried that bacterial contamination would ruin it, but those fears turned out to be exaggerated by my training as a scientist.

I did innovate by dry-hopping this Irish stout, and it seemed for awhile that this was a terrible idea. Last week, the beer tasted awful, with an overwhelming hop aftertaste that did not fit into the overall flavor scheme of a stout. Fortunately, some other flavors seem to have intensified enough that the hop aftertaste is much less intrusive. I still don't like the aftertaste, but I have learned how dry-hopping affects the flavor of the final product.

Batman Begins

The wife and I saw Batman Begins last night. Felipe's review was pretty much on the mark. A-.

-- CAV