A new supermarket opened..

A new supermarket opened near my house. It has an automatic water mister to keep the produce fresh. Just before it goes on, you hear the sound of distant thunder and the smell of fresh rain.

When you pass the milk cases, you hear cows mooing and you experience the scent of fresh mown hay.

In the meat department there is the aroma of charcoal grilled steaks with onions.

When you approach the egg case, you hear hens cluck and cackle, and the air is filled with the pleasing aroma of bacon and eggs frying.

The bread department features the tantalizing smell of fresh baked bread & cookies.

I don't buy toilet paper there any more...

Jonathan Alter on "The Obama Dividend"

Full text at http://www.newsweek.com/id/128548

"The Presidency," Franklin D. Roosevelt told a reporter shortly after he was elected in 1932, "is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership." We don't know yet whether Barack Obama can get himself elected president, much less prove a success in office. He could get swamped by unanticipated problems or suffer from crippling flaws we haven't seen yet. All presidents are blind dates. But Obama is showing signs that he could project his voice in the theater of the American presidency. Even if his legislative agenda founders, he might be able to help the nation raise its sights in new ways. You might think of it as the Obama Dividend.

As the afterglow of last week's landmark Philadelphia speech on race fades, even many conservatives agree with liberal editorial writers that Obama's approach was brilliant. I'm skeptical of that adjective and reluctant to hazard a guess about the political impact of the speech on blue-collar whites. Until the Pennsylvania primary on April 22, we won't know if they even heard about the story of his white grandmother, or how he gave voice to white frustration about affirmative action and busing. But I do know that the speech was "presidential" in the best sense of that word, and for reasons beyond a tone of gravitas and a backdrop of American flags. To succeed in a crisis (and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.'s inflammatory sermons were at least a mini-crisis for Obama), presidents must do more than rally the country enough to win backing in polls for a course of action. That's relatively easy. The hard part is using the bully pulpit to instruct and illuminate and rearrange our mental furniture. Every great president has been a captivating teacher. By talking honestly and intelligently about a subject that most Americans would rather ignore, Obama offered a preview of how he would perform as educator-in-chief.

As usual - my A's get NO respect...

Never mind 4 World Series titles, never mind they've won more games since 2000, never mind they're the ONLY team not named "Yankees" to win 3 STRAIGHT World Series, Japan's only interested in the damn Red Sox:

(03-24) 04:00 PDT Tokyo -- Perhaps they aren't quite the Washington Generals of the Tokyo Dome, but the A's open the season Tuesday night as the anonymous foil to their opponents, the Boston Red Sox. That has been abundantly clear since Oakland arrived in Japan last week.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/24/SPGJVP781.DTL

Well, boys, time to kick some bean-eatin' ass...

So - hot chocolate IS good for you, after all!

"Based on a recent study, researchers found that hot cocoa can help your
muscles recover from an intense workout. The tasty drink contains twice as
many
antioxidants as a glass of red wine, and almost five times as many as
black tea."

This from http://www.thatsfit.com/2008/03/18/hot-cocoa-a-health-drink/

Turns out that free radical damage can also come from intense exercise, and that antioxidant-rich hot chocolate can help with that AND the sore muscles that come after a hard workout.

The best show you're probably not watching

Battlestar Galactica begins its 4th (and regrettably, final) season on Friday, April 4th at 10PM on the Sci-Fi channel. This was a decision made by the producers, who wanted to culminate the story while the show was still good.
If perchance you remember the '70's show of the same name, and think it's the same thing, think again. The only resemblance to the old show is the title, and the names of some of the characters.
This time, instead of being cheesy sci-fi, the show was totally reimagined as a drama in a science fiction setting, with Oscar-caliber actors (Edward James Olmos, 1988 Best Actor nominee for Stand and Deliver, and Mary McDonnell, 1990 Best Supporting Actress nom, Dances With Wolves, and 1992 Best Actress nom, Passion Fish) in the leading roles, and a uniformly excellent supporting cast. Seasons 1-3 are now on DVD, and, as I understand it, Sci-Fi channel is planning a marathon leading up to the seaon 4 premiere. Check this show out - you won't regret it.
http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/home.html

A GREAT take on the Obama speech...

This from Democratic Underground:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=5157337&mesg_id=5157337 for the full text.

We watched Obama's speech over the Internet last night--all 38 minutes of it. Because there are going to be a million people out there addressing the content, let me tell you why listening to that speech has convinced me that although he is certainly a politician and certainly calculating his words in order to win, Obama is at the same time in a different league altogether than the politicians we've been getting used to for the past 10 years.After Edwards dropped out my partner got out Dreams of My Father and read it, figuring that since we were going to have to support Obama we may as well learn something about him. She reported that the book was interesting because it showed Obama thinking about race in an unusually nuanced and complex--and therefore actually useful--way, and that she was afraid that becoming a presidential candidate would force him to abandon that project and embrace the same crude, binaristic, distorted paradigms that shape the way the media and the political establishment talk about race. Last night, instead of performing the "Sister Souljah moment" that the media were clearly demanding from him, Obama did something completely different. He laid out for anyone who felt like taking the time to listen a new paradigm for dealing with racial issues in America, one that actually takes into account the enormous complexity of this country's racial and ethnic makeup, the failures of American history and democracy, and the links between racism and forms of economic injustice that I have long despaired of hearing any American politician, let alone a viable presidential candidate, address in any kind of useful way. Instead of just stringing together a bunch of sound bites that would defuse the manufactured political crisis du jour, Obama took his 38 minutes--an eternity in the world of broadcast news, though it's about ten minutes shorter than the average lecture in the average college classroom--and he actually taught people something.You know how we talk about not letting the other side control the terms of the debate? That's what that looks like.

Next time you're at the doctor's...

Colonoscopies are no joke, but these comments during the exam> were quite humorous...... A physician claimed that the following are actual comments made by his patients (predominately male) while he was performing their colonoscopies:

1. 'Take it easy, Doc. You're boldly going where no man has gone before!

2. 'Find Amelia Earhart yet?'

3. 'Can you hear me NOW?'

4. 'Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?'

5. 'You know, in Arkansas , we're now legally married.'

6. 'Any sign of the trapped miners, Chief?'

7. 'You put your left hand in, you take your left hand out...'

8. 'Hey! Now I know how a Muppet feels!'

9. 'If your hand doesn't fit, you must quit!'

10. 'Hey Doc, let me know if you find my dignity.'

11. 'You used to be an executive at Enron, didn't you?'

12. 'God, now I know why I am not gay.'

And the best one of all..

13. 'Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head is not up there?'

Barack Obama's Speech on Race in America - 2008-03-18

Wow.
Just...wow.
Refreshing honesty on the subject of race in America. Obama is speaking truths that need to be heard in every corner of this nation.
IMO, he just won the Presidency.

I always had a feeling about intuition...

According to the British Journal of Psychology, it seems there IS something to this "intuition" business, after all. According to the article (full text at http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/go-your-gut-intuition-more-just-hunch-says-research-15620.html )

the researchers conclude that intuition is the brain drawing on past experiences and external cues to make a decision – but one that happens so fast the reaction is at a non-conscious level. All we’re aware of is a general feeling that something is right or wrong.

I think we've all had that - that moment our gut told us something wasn't quite right, and we ignored it, usually to our detriment.

Welcome to my mind!

Or at least a piece of it, anyway.

I figured it's about time I got into this blogging game - got a lot on my mind these days, and I'll give YOU, dear reader, the dubious honor of finding out all about it. You'll learn that I love baseball (Oakland A's), football (Raiders, 49ers, and ANYONE playing the Denver Broncos), and the ORIGINAL Star Trek - though Next Generation did well, but that's another subject for another time.
Comments welcome, and TTFN!