Me: Frank Lynch

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These are my mundane daily ramblings.
For something less spontaneous, I maintain The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page (over 1,800 Johnson quotes).

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If off-shore drilling is a good idea, the argument shouldn't be propped up with lies. But that's what McCain and some conservatives are doing, by claiming there were no significant oil spills from Katrina. It's like they learned nothing from Iraq: at the end of the day they'll want to justify the derricks' presence by virtue of the fact that, if the drilling-minded get their way, the derricks will be in place.

You wouldn't want them to spend all the money to remove them, would you? Of course not! So they stay in place!
Link | | | 8:46 PM | Home
 

Here's something I did this morning that you didn't do. I listened to Humble Pie's "I Don't Need No Doctor," that's what I did. And you didn't. And I don't have to tell you all the reasons why it was cool, but I will say that I'm always astonished that Peter Frampton's solo on it isn't ranked among the top 10 guitar solos of all time.

Steve Marriott is sadly no longer with us (having died in a house fire in 1991), and his manic tenor is missing from this 'reunion' video... though it does show off Frampton. Yet still not as good as the one on the "Rockin' the Fillmore" disc.

And you really should check out 1971 footage of Humble Pie doing the same song in 1971, and you'll see why we miss Steve Marriott. Frampton was, like, 21, and this clip doesn't show him off that well, but he sure found the hoop on the Fillmore recording.
Link | | | 9:24 PM | Home
 

Quote of the Day: "If the detainee dies you're doing it wrong," according to a CIA briefer in 2002. Glad that was settled early on. Wouldn't want to have anyone approaching that asymptote thinking there's room beyond it: you can go as close as you want, just no further. Phew.

George Washington's dictum about how to treat the imprisoned enemy doesn't haunt our leaders enough: I sometimes feel if they had their way they'd be willing to risk meting out the same deaths our soldiers suffered at the hands of the British in the prison ships in Wallabout Bay.
Link | | | 10:22 PM | Home

So is McCain full of it about offshore oil? I'm not deterred by the idea that the timeline could be a decade for the benefits of offshore drilling, but all in all it starts to sound like chasing the end of the rainbow:

The Interior Department offered a wide range of estimates of how much oil might be within reach of U.S. offshore drilling in a 2006 report. It estimated that the Outer Continental Shelf could hold 115.4 billion barrels. However, it also estimated that recoverable reserves off U.S. coasts in areas now banned from production probably hold only about 19 billion barrels.

The figures differ widely because the higher number is a broader measure that includes "cumulative production, proved and unproved reserves."

The world consumes about 86 million barrels a day. The U.S. share of that is about 20.6 million barrels, 60 percent of them from foreign sources.

One thousand million barrels equals 1 billion, so if there are 19 billion barrels in the areas McCain would open to drilling, that's enough to provide about 920 days, or about 2.5 years, of current U.S. consumption.

Florida's Governor Crist, who has struck me as an honorable guy on some other occasions, sounds like he's swallowed a pander pill with his talking about the economic hardships of his state's citizens due to the price of gas. Offshore drilling won't alleviate that soon enough to make that a valid argument; if you want to talk about the future, fine, but talk about offshore drilling as just one tiny part of a healthy breakfast. If the politicos are serious about energy consumption and the cost of fuel, bring back the 55 mile hour speed limit, and strictly enforce it. Make it more points on your license for speeding, and don't make the threshold for attention 70.
Link | | | 9:36 PM | Home
 

Another Bloomsday come and gone. I can think of a lot of things Leopold Bloom did on his day that I don't mind not replicating... Sure, toss me your throw away. And if you've read the damned book, I bet you can make your own list, too. But to be honest with you I wouldn't have minded cooking up an organ on the skittle and enjoying that.

Hell of a book, isn't it? So wonderfully constructed in all its intricacies, I could go on forever.

(And by the way, it seems as if I've failed to toot my horn in a relevant regard. A new book, Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks From Jane Austen's Bath to Ernest Hemingway's Key West, includes one of my photos, a shot of James Joyce's Martello Tower. It's the point from which Ulysses embarks, Stately Plump Buck Mulligan and all that. You can see the shot here for free. Buy the book for other reasons than this, in the book it's the size of a nickel. But it was nice to have someone ask me if they could include a shot from our honeymoon in a NGS book. I'm flattered.)

Yesterday we watched "Shawshank Redemption" together, it was the only part of Father's Day which worked according to plan. As much as I cherish the movie, there are parts of it I always forget. And while I relish the scene with the duet from Marriage of Figaro and how it stills the prison, I'd forgotten the post-mortem, that music is something you can carry inside you to to retain your humanity and stop yourself from being broken down. I think I may need to revisit that lesson with our daughter, but when I think of all the joys which music and literature have given me - - Joyce and Pynchon and yes musicians like Monk and Ellington and Mahler and so on - - I'm not sure if I would really need ten desert island discs.

Of course, the other cool thing about June 16 is. it's. the day before June 17! If you don't yet know about the annual family ritual of this family's photo shoot, you should. (And I really hope that no one has a 'due date' - - and that they all plan their conceptions away from this...)

I don't think the shots are posted on June 17, but that's when they're taken. Visit it now and check out the history, and you'll know why you should bookmark it forever.
Link | | | 11:55 PM | Home
 

McCain a "maybe" to evangelicals? Jim Wallis has taught us that evangelicals shouldn't be thought of as a monolithical voting group, but there's a lot which I still don't understand. If abortion is really a life or death struggle to you, AND it trumps everything else for you, why would you consider voting for a Democrat over a Republican for President? Maybe my problem is the stereotyping: that abortion is important, and maybe it's more important than evrything else, but that it can be outweighed by a combination of other factors?

But it seems as if evangelicals are lukewarm to McCain. I still have trouble grappling with it, just as I did when Giuliani was contending: I figured that even Giuliani would be considered the lesser of two evils to the conservative base, and evangelicals too. The judicial nominations don't stop with the Supreme Court, they go deep into the judiciary. And the President has a lot to say there.

I wonder: if they simply stay at home and vote for neither McCain nor Obama, that will reduce their voices for a lot of other races, not just the Presidency.
Link | | | 9:22 PM | Home
 

"New" Fathers' Days. The Christian Science Monitor reports that the latest effect of the spike in energy and food prices (as well as less than optimistic consumer optimism) is a curtailing of Fathers' Day celebrations. Fewer families going to MLB games, that sort of thing, because of the cost involved. I'll admit that our plans are focusing on kitchen time together (we're making pistachio ice cream, and probably a dinner that entails cooperation, too) rather than a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art or ICP. But that's not due to economics: taking my kid to a museum on Fraher's Day would be pulling rank (she hates them). I avoid acting like the King on Father's Day, there's plenty of other days to be a tyrant.

I just hope and pray that anecdotal articles like the one in CSM don't turn into a wave of stories about nesting and buying candles and picture frames and so on as we all remember the true meaning of family (like after 9/11). Sure, I'd love it if the others played instruments and we could have a hootenanny and sing three-part harmonies on "Down In The Valley." But it ain't going to happen, and that's not how we define family. Not here, anyway. Others might and that's fine. (It's more about being there for each other and talking and telling.)
Link | | | 8:54 AM | Home
 

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