Home is where they have to take you in

The official Montana GOP platform states:

We support the clear will of the people of Montana expressed by legislation to keep homosexual acts illegal.

Which had drawn a bit of attention, needless to say. But I love this bit from state Senator John Brueggeman:

"I looked at that and said, 'You've got to be kidding me.' Should it get taken out? Absolutely. Does anybody think we should be arresting homosexual people? If you take that stand, you really probably shouldn't be in the Republican Party."

And I wonder, why? Where else would they go?

Don't do this

Irony. I loves it.

A Taiwanese man who won a poster design competition to promote copyright protection has been stripped of his prize after he was exposed as a copycat, officials said Thursday.

Memories of WWI

This is what every history-minded person dreams of: a British woman inherited a mass of family papers and found her great-grandfather's diary from World War I. It seems her ancestor was also skilled with pen and ink, as these sketches indicate:



and this page describing the Christmas truce in 1916, when the British and Germans allowed each other an unmolested holiday dinner:


On top of these skills, the soldier - Lt. Kenneth Wootton, tank driver - was decorated for gallantry and devotion to duty. I hope the entire work finds a publisher soon.

Those poor rich

Via Paul Krugman, I became acquainted with this post by J. Bradford DeLong over the travails of being rich in America. A certain professor of law at the University of Chicago and his physician wife probably pul in half a million dollars a year between the two of them, but he presents himself as just a poor working stiff, being taxed to death and barely scraping by. The problem? DeLong probably has it right: our Prof. X is trying to keep up with the megamillionaire Joneses, which puts a strain even on his resources. The Joneses can afford everything and more besides; Prof. X can only afford everything, and then only if he budgets carefully. What's a poor millionaire to do?

It's the basis of our economic problems today. This country spent the last eight years with an economic policy designed solely to gratify X and the Joneses; now that the bubble has burst, guess who expects to be last in line to pay for the damage? Ah, that would be Prof. X and the Joneses.

Really, I don't mind that people are rich. Prof. X and his wife have certainly worked harder than I have and I don't begrudge them their wealth. But at the same time to be such whiners! It's ... well, let's remain civil and just call it unseemly.

Friday photo

Goldeneye Ducks, Yellowstone Lake. May 2005.

Following up on the photo of a frozen Yellowstone Lake, here's what it looks like from the ground. I was taking photos of this pair of ducks when they hopped out of the water and first one, then the other, took flight. I was lucky to catch this one in the act of lifting off. As you can see, the sliver of open water was closing as the ice pushed up against the shore, so they had to vacate immediately or get their little legs squished.



Although I heard the sudden increase of crackling in the ice all along the shore, I was staring through the viewfinder and concentrating on the birds, so I didn't see what had spooked them until I downloaded the photos later.