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I just heard from my good friend (and former employer) Dave Caudill and got up to speed on his recent newsletters. I’m glad to see he’s still making great art and getting it out in the world… It’s also nice to hear the human side of the story, about the places he visits, what he sees, and often what he eats… The most appealing of these recent travels, for me, is the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey (

Sporting Events cause a drop in ER visits Ok, this is kindof rediculous… Apparently, Americans put off their emergency room visits, or just don’t have as many problems, during major sporting events. I can understand being into sports, but that seems unreal. Helicopters Scour Louisiana Floodwaters (Rita Aftermath) People checking their hurricane-hit homes and towns returned with stories of flooding to the rooftops, coffins and refrigerators bobbing in the water, and stilts where their houses once stood.

I’ve been working on a comprehensive theme, currently called za1 (very exciting name, eh?). I will be mapping the components of my site into that theme (instead of hacking the themes of the components of my site to look kindof like each other). The themes are driven primarily by CSS, and done in such a way as to allow simple variations in how things should look… there will be an “options” selector on the top-right and it will allow you to easily choose theme options and it saves your options as a cookie (if you allow the cookie) or session variables if your don’t allow the cookies.

Rita Update: Rita, as a Category 3 hurricane (120 mph) made landfall at 2:30 a.m. CDT today in extreme southwest Louisiana between Sabine Pass and Johnson’s Bayou, La. Port Arthur, Texas, clocked maximum wind gusts of 116 mph, while Beaumont, Texas, measured 105 mph. Cameron, La., reported a gust to 112 mph before the anemometer failed. Storm surge flooding of up to 15 feet probably occured just east of where the eye thundered ashore.

Challenged by Creationists, Museums Answer Back (sorry, the link requires login) Apparently, after a few rather agressive (not phiscally) confrontations with creationists, in science museums – docents and volunteers are flocking to training on how to best respond to such challenges. “The goal is to understand the controversies, so that people are better able to handle them as they come up,” she said. “Museums, as a field, have recognized we need to take a more proactive role in evolution education.

Clinton launches withering attack on Bush on Iraq, Katrina, budget Breaking with tradition under which US presidents mute criticisms of their successors, Clinton said the Bush administration had decided to invade Iraq “virtually alone and before UN inspections were completed, with no real urgency, no evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction.” … “What Americans need to understand is that … every single day of the year, our government goes into the market and borrows money from other countries to finance Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, and our tax cuts,” he said.

September 9th, it was ruled that Jose Padilla was still not to be given fair trial, in fact not to be charged with a crime nor to be given legal council. It’s the first time this has ever happened in the US court system (to my knowledge)… Even actual “enemy combatants” in our previous wars, captured on the battlefield all got lawyers and full legal procedings. Our courts were used, to verify and justify and validate.

Saturday Anita had to work, but Phil, Sarah, Jess, and Phil’s friend Tom came over and played Mao [1]2. It’s a great game – and surprisingly effective at bringing about a represive dictatorial feel in the players (who thought that could be so much fun?). We played a variant where after winning 3 rounds you could make up your own rule… my personal favorite was (my rule): you have to use rapper hands whenever you call penalty on someone.

Katrina It’s a huge disaster. Everyone is probably aware of that. To put it in perspective, it’s [Katrina It’s a huge disaster. Everyone is probably aware of that. To put it in perspective, it’s]2 many other natural and un-natural disasters other countries or even this country has had to deal with (or cause)… but it’s still really bad. [the worst hurricanes] So, we use this as an opportunity to blame other people and talk about who should have done what and why we weren’t prepaired and aren’t handling the situation well now [link].

So – Capture the Flag was a lot of fun. We played at the Park of Roses on August 21 2005 (after sundown). We had 9 people show and had a great time, though we were out classed severely by some “in shape” players. I’m hoping to end up with more people in a bigger area for the next game on September 9th (friday) at an unknown location. Google is incredible.