Curse You John Edwards

As Motherrocker commented, the minute I go to all the work about posting how this could be the most interesting presidential convention in decades, Mr. Edwards drops out just before Super Tuesday to almost ensure that someone is going to have the nomination locked up on the Democratic side before the convention. Darn him. One has to hope that Huckabee sticks it out and we at least have some fun on the Republican side.

A comment on eating meat: I've been following the blogs of Chris Cosentino and Michael Ruhlman who have been writing a lot about humane meat raising and slaughtering practices. If you're interested go to these two sites. But take this as my two cents.

• Man became what he is because a million or so years ago he started eating meat which allowed brain size to increase.
• Meat is an incredibly inefficient means of converting energy from soil and sun into food for humanity.
• Mankind has a millennia long history of overusing his environments resulting in civilization collapse (see Jarad Diamond's book, "Collapse")
• Most societies that have collapse had perfectly logical reasons (from their perspective) for what they did even though they were ultimately self-destructive
• It's pretty hard for any one person to change the world, but you can change yourself.
• I still like meat, I just don't eat a whole lot
• Wine is vegetarian

Let the Real Race Begin

Isn't it fascinating that we have an actual, for real political race in both parties this year? I for one have been totally put off by politics for decades now as we've had a series of shoe in candidates or inept candidates or decisions between candidates that were the lesser of two evils. Now we have a variety of people with very different personalities and no one to date has the clear advantage. We've eliminated some of the pretenders and we're down to the legitimate contenders and a couple of spoilers.

Before the election of Ronald Reagan, presidential political conventions were often tumultuous affairs where there were many rounds of voting until via back room wheeling and dealing a candidate was finally chosen. Subsequently, most of the years since, candidates have already had the nomination locked up before the convention. Wouldn't be great if this was a throw back to that prior time. Here's how it happens. You need the third candidate (Edwards and Huckabee) to each stay in the race to the end and have enough delegates to prevent either of the front runners from having a clear majority. Then you go into the convention where on the first (and maybe the second, I don't actually remember all the rules) round each delegate has to vote for the candidate that they were elected for.

Now here is the cool part. After that first round, when nobody has a majority every delegate is up for grabs. They can now change candidates, vote for people who weren't even in the primaries. That's what I'm hoping for - a real electoral circus. For more information on what can happen read this.

Should We Give People a Second Chance

I was reading an article in the WSJ about Bill Gates new efforts in charity. Already having set up a record setting foundation along with Warren Buffett's fortune, as he is moving away from active involvement in Microsoft, he is moving to a much more active role with his foundation. One of the major themes he was discussing was the failure of historical capitalism in the vast majority of the world that suffers from endemic poverty and sub-standard living conditions. The gist of his argument was that a revised approach to capitalism and charity were called for.

The article's author quoted many who were quite critical of Mr. Gates saying that who was he to be criticizing classic capitalism when he has been a primary user of that system to build up his wealth. Efforts by Microsoft to squelch competition has been the critics example. Mr. Gates says he was younger and as he and his wife have traveled the world for their foundation, he has changed his opinions.

This gets to our topic. Because we are inundated with people who want us to forgive always their prior lives, decisions and actions. It makes no difference if it is the politician caught stealing, the religious leader with the sex problems, the athlete with the drug problems, and on and on, when they are brought to task there is the great mia culpa and claim that they've learned their lessons and now they're going to be different and a credit to humanity.

Is this all bullshit? Have we just made it so no one ever should suffer the consequences of their actions? Or is this an acknowledgment that people can change and we should embrace that change.

What do you think?

I Have a Dream

Unfortunately mine is lot more pedestrian and self-centered than the great MLK. I dream that all my travel the year round would have the traveler density of mid-January. While the weather may cause a problem here or there, loads on planes, hotels, rental cars, etc. are down 30 to 40%. This means short lines, empty seats next to you, upgrades, low prices on rooms. If things were like this all the time, life would be so good.

I'm happy to say after two days of illness and non-eating, I'm finally somewhat back to my old self today. I'm in LAX waiting to catch a late flight back to Albuquerque.

Answer to the last History Trivia Question (or as we call it in de-I land, our nefarious plot to turn Lakeview into a history geek by exploiting his inherent competitive instincts).

Indeed Lakeview is 2/3rds right. The Sassanids and the Parthians were both legitimate Persian Dynasties. However, I think most historians would exclude the Greeks as they were outside conquerers. I believe that most experts would choose the Achaemenids which included Darius the Great, Cyrus and of course Xerxes. They build the largest Eurasian land empire which stretched from the Indus River in modern Pakistan to Egypt up to Turkey and north of current Iran. Alexander the Great ultimately conquered Achaemenid Persia and one of his generals became the founder of the Greek Dynasties there.

If You Have to be Sick

...And you're on the road, there are worse places to find yourself than the Lafayette Park Hotel in Lafayette, CA. Monday night I had a horrendous evening with no sleep whatsoever. I had to be up early to catch my flight to CA and just wasn't feeling right at all. I couldn't even eat anything for breakfast. I slept on both flight (unheard of for me), got to the hotel, did an hour's worth of work and then jumped into bed at 3 PM and stayed there until 5 this morning fighting off the fever and chills (which seem to have gone thank goodness). The bed in this particular hotel is fabulous and the heating consistent (not a given in any hotel). So all in all, a pretty good place to be bed ridden.

On the menu today

Nourishing Glycerin Soap
Exfoliating Sea Salt Soap - (some how rubbing my body with salt doesn't seem exciting)
Detoxifying Sea Kelp Shampoo - (I didn't even now I had toxins in my hair!)
Moisturizing Sea Moss Conditioner - (Sure I want to lump a bunch of sea moss on my hair)
Relaxing Sea Fennel Body Lotion - (is this lotion for sea fennel that are up tight?)

I hope I don't go to my meetings today smelling like a rank lagoon.

Today's History Quiz

Guest poster Pulisha referred to Persian Dynasties a couple of days ago. What were the three great Persian Dynasties prior to the Islamic take over in the 7th and 8th centuries AD. Points taken off if you use Wikipedia Lakeview!

Comment Card from Pulisha on Casa de-I

This is a very nice hotel. The staff are pleasant, though a bit territorial when it comes to the televisions and computer areas. Printing is free, but you must do your own laundry (there is a little jar next to the machines since the coin operator appears to be out of order).

Dinner is only occasionally provided, so be prepared to cook some of your own meals. Also, the cook can be a bit surly at times, and he tends to start ranting about ancient Persian dynasties (I think, I may have tuned out at that point), but the food is excellent so I suppose the eccentricities can be forgiven.

Hubs wants me to point out that the sports stations are severely lacking. You can find a soccer game in any language at any time of day, but there is a distinct lack of any Buffalo sports teams package on the cable. I just want to point that out because I know that it is a very important point for many travelers. Also, the service is a bit lacking. You have to clean up after yourself, change the toilet paper roll, wash your own linen, etc. They also do not carry cat litter for when your car leaks oil onto the driveway (can you believe that!). And the woman who runs the place will give you a very dirty look if you even think about asking for turn down service!

But, it is a fabulous place for children. The staff will even watch them for you if you need to go out and run errands! At least, I think they were the staff...I wonder where J went...oh well, I'm sure she'll turn up sooner or later. That plus the endless supply of booze makes this quite a charming little place full of character. I give it three stars. Wait, this isn't Trip Advisor? Shit.

Not Much

Not much of anything to report. I was on the road again last week spending the first four days in Chicago before going on to Wichita. It will be on to the Bay area and LA next week for three days. In the meantime I will fall back on a time tested posting technique, pictures featuring the Pulisha clan.

Mr. A showing off his prowess at standing up himself up.
He wasn't doing that when I left last week!

Miss C showing her prowess as vegetable cutter

(also her prowess as vegetable eater since only about 60% of what she was cutting avoided her mouth and made it into the bowl)

Miss J showing her coolness and "above it all" attitude
(She is a two year old you know)

Finally Pulisha and Tim de Buffalo
This was just after they got back from signing a lease for their own place.

This week's contest - What was Tim de Buffalo saying when this picture was taken

1. Thank goodness I can escape from de-I's clutches
2. I can't believe the New England won again
3. If de-I feeds me truffles for one more meal I swear I'm going to....
4. Hmmmm, being puked on or changing a horrible diaper. Which would be better.