Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

I took a walk over at Sugarcreek Metropark this afternoon to get some pictures. We’ve had a mostly dry summer here, but we’ve had a few good wind storms that have done some real damage. Part of that damage was the knocking over of one of the 500+ year old trees that are a centerpiece of the park. The tree was apparently hollowed out in the bottom, maybe even most of the trunk, and the wind that came through here a few weeks back was finally enough to break it. It’s hard to comprehend that I’m one of the first people to see this spot without the tree since before Columbus discovered America.

Click for full-sized image

Otherwise, the park seems much as it usually does this time of year. I’ve posted a number of pictures of the park and a few things around the house at my MobileMe gallery. A couple of weeks ago, I got a new walking around camera at Target - the Samsung S860 -  for $89. For what I paid, this camera has turned out to be very good. All the pictures you’ll see in the gallery were taken with it. For something simple to slip into your pocket, I recommend this camera.

And now, I leave you with the obligatory dog photos.

Spoiled

Little grumpy

The troubleshooting utility AppleJack has returned. The developers had a little difficulty adapting it for the new things under the hood in Leopard, but their work is now your reward. AppleJack is a shell script intended to be run in single-user mode to simplify some troubleshooting and maintenance tasks, should your Mac begin behaving badly. I strongly recommend it for every Mac user. And thanks to the developers for sticking with a project so many of us find useful.

Now that the Vice Presidential candidates have been announced, I’d like to point out some interesting election trends that have occurred since the 1952 election, the last election where two new candidates were nominated by both parties.

• Of the last 14 Republican tickets, 11 have included a candidate with the name Nixon or Bush. Nixon appears in 5 of 14, a Bush in 6 of 14.
   
• The last Senator elected to the Presidency was John Kennedy. Senators have lost 8 of the last 14 elections. A Senator will be elected in 2008 for the first time in 48 years.
   
• After 1952, a sitting President or Vice President has been at least one party’s candidate every election year, ending with 2008.
   
• Since 1952, 5 Presidents have been elected to two terms. Of those, 4 were Republicans. The last Democrat before Clinton was FDR.
     
• Election winners tend to be Presidents, Vice Presidents, or state Governors. Southern states seem to have an advantage: Carter (Georgia), Clinton (Arkansas), and Bush (Texas). Reagan (California) is the exception. Of new Presidents in office, Governors have been elected 4 of the last 5 times.

Did I miss anything ? Leave your analysis of the data in the comments section.

Attention Dayton haters: According to this article from Fox News, John McCain will be announcing his Vice Presidential nominee tomorrow at the Nutter Center, just a few hundred yards from where I’ll be. This is the second time I know of that a Presidential candidate has introduced his running mate in Dayton, Ohio, the first time being when James M. Cox announced his Democrat running mate at the Montgomery Country Fairgrounds, the Nutter Center of its day, in 1920. That running mate was Franklin D. Roosevelt. I’m no McCainiac, but I do like the idea that Dayton, allegedly a dying city, is involved in this year’s Presidential contest.

I know I’ve been on a jag about sex crimes as of late, which is a departure from the technical and semi-personal nature this blog had when I started it. However, of all the issues that occupy our minds at this moment, I find this one to be especially galling because of the hysteria that surrounds it, and my own determination not to let myself or others I care about get snared in the sex crimes dragnet, especially when we’re not criminals.

Today’s indignity is brought to you by Chuck Goolsbee, who points out this article, from which I quote:

At a Harlan, Kentucky, grocery store last week, perennial gubernatorial candidate Otis “Bullman” Hensley encountered a woman with her two nieces, ages 11 and 13. He offered to trade a “fattening hog” for the girls, a variation on an old Appalachian joke meant as a compliment. The woman evidently didn’t get it. A.P. reports that “the family obtained a warrant for Hensley’s arrest from the local prosecutor, claiming the comment was intended to entice the children into illegal sexual activity.”

Huh? I have read this a dozen times and for the life of me, I cannot figure out how trading a fat hog for your kids is sexually perverse. Maybe not funny, maybe not exactly a compliment, maybe not what you want to hear, and certainly not sexual.

“In Kentucky, … citizens can obtain arrest warrants simply by filing a complaint with local prosecutors,” and ”no investigation is necessary for police to make an arrest when the charge involves an alleged sexual offense.” 

Yep. No criminal investigation necessary, no explicit sexual comment necessary. All you have to do is say something that someone insane interprets as sexual, independent of whether it actually is sexual, have them complain, and you’re charged with a sex crime. Charged is different than convicted, but it is still a gross perversion of justice and only serves to prevent legitimate speech without substantively preventing sex crimes.

Had enough yet?