**GRRR**

Joe Garofoli of the San Francisco Chronicle:

The McCain campaign is attempting to do something unheard of in the modern political era. It is not just running against the mainstream media, it is running around it. It's about the GOP's continued sheltering of its vice presidential nominee, Alaska Gov Sarah Palin. She has yet to hold a major press conference 32 days after McCain announced her as his running mate - and that's not changing anytime soon. McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb said Palin will do at least one news conference before election day. That could mean that the person who could potentially lead the free world will have done one national press conference before being sworn into office. The Democratic vice presidential nominee, Joe Biden, has given more than 89 national and local interviews over roughly the same period of time

**Sitting here...**

Proctoring an exam, working on my paper for my Australia trip, but so tempted by the Rough Guide to New Zealand sitting right next to me on the table......

**Don't Know Why, But it is Cracking Me Up**

Two tidbits from the NY Times:

RE Supercollider in la France:

But last Friday the machine was shut down after an electrical connection between two of the superconducting electromagnets that steer the protons suffered a so-called quench, heating up, melting and leaking helium into the collider tunnel. Liquid helium is used to cool the magnets to superconducting temperatures of only about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit above absolute zero. Stray heat can cause the magnets to lose their superconductivity with potentially disastrous consequences.

To make repairs, it will be necessary to warm the magnets up and then cool them back down again, which takes at least two months, engineers say. And that leaves scant time to run the collider before it has to shut down for the winter in early December to save money on electricity.

And also in the NY Times... the headline:

Athletes to Leave Their Brains to Concussion Study

By ALAN SCHWARZ 6 minutes ago

A dozen athletes, including six N.F.L. players, have agreed to donate their brains after their deaths for research on the long-term effects of concussions.

**Why did the chicken cross the road?**

Viral email sent to me. I thought it was funny....


BARACK OBAMA: The chicken crossed the road because it was time for change! The chicken wanted change!

JOHN MC CAIN: My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road.

HILLARY CLINTON: When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure right from Day One! That every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn't about me.

GEORGE W. BUSH: We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either for us or against us. There is no middle road here.

DICK CHENEY: Where's my gun?

SARAH PALIN: Where's MY gun? That chicken's got no choice!

COLIN POWELL: Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road.

BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the road with that chicken. What is your definition of chicken?

AL GORE: I invented the chicken.

JOHN KERRY: Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken's intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it.

AL SHARPTON: Why are all the chickens white? We need some black chickens.

DR. PHIL: The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he must first deal with the problem on this side of the road before it goes after the problem on the other side of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he's acting by not taking on his current problems before adding new problems.

OPRAH: Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN: We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road.

NANCY GRACE: That chicken crossed the road because he's guilty! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.

PAT BUCHANAN: To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.

MARTHA STEWART: No one called me to warn me which way that chicken was going. I had a standing order at the Farmer's Market to sell my eggs when the price dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any insider information.

DR SEUSS: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I've not been told.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die in the rain, alone.

JERRY FALWELL: Because the chicken was gay! Can't you people see the plain truth? That's why they call it the 'other side.' Yes, my friends, that chicken is gay. And if you eat that chicken, you will become gay, too. I say we boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination that the liberal media whitewashes with seemingly harmless phrases like 'the other side.' That chicken should not be crossing the road. It's as plain and as simple as that.

EVERYONE'S GRANDPA: In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough.

BARBARA WALTERS: Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heartwarming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its lifelong dream of crossing the road.

ARISTOTLE: It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

JOHN LENNON: Imagine all the chickens in the world crossing roads together, in peace.

BILL GATES: I have just released eChicken2008, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook. Internet Explorer is an integral part of eChicken2008. This new platform is much more stable and will never reboot.

ALBERT EINSTEIN: Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?

COLONEL SANDERS: Did I miss one???

**He knows how to soundbite**

Gotcha moment from Obama.




Also, I am so impressed with this NY Times writer Timothy Egan, and not because he is from the west. His recent entry, Moo, is worth reading.

**Lake Conneware**

I have been thinking a lot about this lake in southeastern Australia as Ike bore down on my niece who lives close to a similar lake on the edge of Galveston Bay. They both are in relatively low lying areas, probably have varying salinity levels based on lake levels and tidal flow. They both are relatively shallow (certainly more shallow that the glacial lakes in my area).














So as I fretted along with everyone else about the storm surge, I remembered Lake Conneware. No storm surge there but it faced other shallow lake challenges - low water levels and correspondingly high salinity.











This lake was the location of E.'s research and we spent a morning there collecting mollusks (I think) and measured them. We are not talking 10 or 20 little shelled creatures, but about 700, most smaller than a pinky fingernail.









Then each little creature was counted and measured and released. These little dudes have an amazing ability to adapt to varying salinity levels. Ah, field research, how inspiring!

**Great Ocean Road**

We spent much of the second day in southeast Australia traveling the Great Ocean Road. What is not pictured here was the paralyzed look of inexplicable fear when I was departing the farm of our delightful hosts and started driving down the road. I was still in the mode where every move with the car is second-guessed because 32 years of driving means nothing when everything gets switched.

Before even my first exhale, I see a car coming straight at me on the road. My first thought is "crap, I am on the wrong side of the road." But I was on the wrong side of the road, which is the CORRECT side of the road. Turns out it was our host, completely messing with me. He will not like the payback next time he comes to the States.

Nevertheless, I was grateful for the gentle reminders offered up by a helpful Australian government.

















The Great Ocean Road is much like the roads along the U.S. west coast. We spent some time looking at famous surfing beaches and checking out local national forests. We quickly learned that we would be eating our first of many PBJ sandwiches because any restaurant food was going to cost a more than I could regularly spend over three weeks. Fish and chip lunch for 4? $50.

Of course, we became quicly obsessed with the graphical signs around Australia. Here is the first of several pictures we took during our visit. No sugarcoating anything here:




















Homes are pricey along the road as it, apparently, is still commuting distance to Melbourne. This was one of the more interesting houses. It actually is a rental:














Picnic site in Otway National Park:

















These trees were really impressive. Heights similar to Douglas Firs in Oregon:





















Silver Creek Falls State Park flashback....











This little guy was nestled in the trees along the dirt road to Otway NP. I just caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye. When we drove back several hours later, he was still there and in the same position.




















We wandered into on little town because we heard you might see kangaroos on the golf course. There were many and people just played golf around them. Those little round dark spots scattered densely on the golf course. Not rocks. Not tree nuts. You guess.















On the way back we watch the sunset light up the waters over Bells Beach - another famous surfing beach.






































































And, apparently, like one might expect an abundance of deer at sunset, we were treated to this silouhette on the way home.

**Missing Spring**

These were a couple of the pictures I took of some of the spring and summer birds that frequented our feeders.



The rose-breasted grosbeak and its female (pictured on her own) isn't around these days.





































The woodpecker and cardinal still come by. Tons of sparrows and chickadees.























And of course the finches - red and yellow.


I never saw any orioles although they are in the area. We will get some fresh fruit out in the spring to attract them. On the shopping list for the fall is a nice birdbath as we will drain the pond when things begin to freeze

**Ahh, yes, I did travel somewhere last May, didn't I...**

Okay, it is about time I starting posting stuff from Australia. My lack of blogging about it was because the number of photographs were simply overwhelming. I have only labeled the first two days of the trip. So maybe trying to put a couple pictures and description from each day will help.

So voila, Day One in Australia....

We arrived in Melbourne after 23 hours on a plane. E. met us. She had arranged well in advance (because she is that way) for a car rental. But, there was no rental on record. We are all pretty tired, and a little giddy, but we manage to find the rental car receipt, only to discover that Budget Car Rental services more than one Melbourne and we had, apparently, rented our particular car at the airport in Melbourne, FLORIDA.

Regrouping... a theme of the trip... begins.

I am not going to lie to you or embellish this tale. They had more cars and we got one of them and were on our way. But, since to list anyone but a middle-aged, female as a driver would dramatically increase the rental fee, it was up to me to do all the driving on the trip. Sooooo. I IMMEDIATELY learned how to drive on the "other" side of the road. This leads to a couple of quick observations:

While at this point in my life, driving is completely intuitive, driving on the "other" side of the road is not.

I will be much more patient with ANYONE who drives slow, or tentatively... or has wet or extraordinarily clean windshields... or seems otherwise paralyzed with panic because they, too, may be learning to drive on the "other" side of the road.

Manufacturers who ship cars to Australia flip the locations of the turn signals and windshield washers on their cars (see above).

So, slowly.... we headed off to Geelong, the Aurora, Colorado (meaning a sprawling suburban bedroom commuting base for people who work in nearby cities) of Melbourne.

I can't say Geelong was that impressive, but was built on a bay where there were plenty of these:















And these:













We stopped in at local uni (Deakin University) to see where E. had been hanging out for a year.


In the uni student parking lot some guys were attempting to assist a poor helpless.... BABE... jump start her car. My son, who has been brought up to always help those in need, lept to her assistance, (although you can see in the image below that he was not alone in his eagerness to ease the troubles of a stranded driver).

The "assistance" went on for quite a while, and, I might add, it did not seem to bother any of these young men one bit that this young lady had no idea how to pop a clutch.

Honestly, if someone (not completely under a hormonally-induced sense of civic duty) had not stepped in to end this pattern of pushing the car up the hill and pushing it back down the hill, G. and probably everyone else whose asses you see in this picture would still be there.

Did I mention the young female was quite attractive?

G. has told me, with not a small degree of frustration, that this is NOT the picture he would have gotten if he had the camera. And the adventure begins....

**Phew**

See below ;)

**3:30 AM**

So, it is 9:36 EST and I am going to bed. The supercollider is set to be tested at 3:30 AM in the morning. So.... if I don't wake up ever again, I guess the whole black-hole-sucking-the-planet-in is, well, not so much a theory anymore..... So see you tomorrow?

**For Your Consideration...***

From the front page of the NY Times online edition:

Thailand's prime minister was forced to resign along with his Cabinet on Tuesday after the Constitutional Court ruled that he had violated the constitution by hosting TV cooking shows.

So that is what all those protests were about!

**Lost in Space**

Normally, when things are looking this grim, I search the job ads in Canada. But alas, no openings for next year. So instead I must do something.

Interesting fact check article on the Rep. VP candidate.... I love Alaska, but.... its not enough.

And then there's the other half of this ticket.... I will actually meet the producer of this video next week. I look forward to talking to him about this:

**Under Pressure**

Given that my promotion file is due in less than 24 hours, this seemed like a good time to update my ring tone to the classic Queen song. It was the first music video I ever saw, not that that has anything to do with anything, except maybe allowing my to digress even further from the deadline looming before me.

Looks like, given those who are able to accompany me on the "down under" adventure, the south island of New Zealand is the front runner for a week of avoiding the real world.