But the mistakes can be hard–rock-hard. Or diamond-hard, as in baseball. The Cubs can’t do anything right even on their statuary.

Before the [Ernie] Banks statue went on display at Wrigley Monday, many people had inspected it, and they agreed: Mr. Cub, 7 feet and 300 pounds of bat-swinging bronze, looked great.

Cella, who works at the Fine Art Studio of Rotblatt-Amrany in Highwood, had scrutinized the things that mattered most to him as the sculptor.

How was the patina? Excellent. Was the inscription on the correct side of the granite base? Yes, it was. Right down there on Ernie’s left it said:

LETS PLAY TWO.

Groan.

Katelyn Thrall, a Cubs representative, walked in, brusquely stuck out her hand and didn’t wait for me to explain.

“We’re going to fix it,” she said. “That’s all I can say.”

Fabulous. Will you also fix Harry Caray’s while you’re at it? You can just take his apostrophe off and give it to Banks.

H/t Banks article: J. I saw the Caray myself lo those years ago, last time I was at Wrigley.

Update: That was quick. You can tell there was no space for it to begin with, but we’ll take what we can get, which apparently does not include anybody noticing, commenting on, or fixing Harry Caray’s. H/t J again.

Instead they want to be Tom Cruise in Minority Report:

Primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life, according to Britain’s most senior police forensics expert.

Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard and the new DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said a debate was needed on how far Britain should go in identifying potential offenders, given that some experts believe it is possible to identify future offending traits in children as young as five.

For once, I am on the side of people warning of the coming of the police state if this occurs in Britain. Also for once, I am on the side of their educational establishment, which is, thank God, horrified by the idea. Looks like there are some who want the idea of probable cause to be just as brief a flicker over there as freedom of religion is turning out to be. Here’s a free tip to those agitating for school vouchers in the U.S., or in places where they actually already have them: Stop calling them vouchers and don’t let anybody, ever, say they are state money. They aren’t. They’re your own taxes being returned to you so that you can support your child in the school of your choice rather than support other people’s children in schools of the government’s choice. The moment you concede the semantics that it’s state money being “given” to you for a voucher, you open the door to the kind of nonsense they’re saying in Britain over the Catholic school:

“A lot of taxpayers’ money is going into church schools and I think we should tease out what is happening here,” said Mr Sheerman, the Labour MP for Huddersfield.

The only taxpayers whose money it is (or should be; nobody should get more back for programs like this than what they paid into the educational system to begin with) is yours. It’s your money. Take it back and don’t let them call it state money, or pretty soon your private or religious school will come under state control as well.

Both links via AoSHQ, where Gabriel has some pithy comments.

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It’s not a computer unless you can prove to the TSA that it’s a computer … and the older members who can’t tell a computer from a Lite-Brite won’t necessarily take the word of the younger members who can recognize a modern-generation Mac when they see it.

I’m standing, watching my laptop on the table, listening to security clucking just behind me. “There’s no drive,” one says. “And no ports on the back. It has a couple of lines where the drive should be,” she continues.

A younger agent, joins the crew. I must now be occupying ten, perhaps twenty, percent of the security force. At this checkpoint anyway. There are three score more at the other five checkpoints. The new arrival looks at the printouts from x-ray, looks at my laptop sitting small and alone. He tells the others that it is a real laptop, not a “device”. That it has a solid-state drive instead of a hard disc. They don’t know what he means. He tries again, “Instead of a spinning disc, it keeps everything in flash memory.” Still no good. “Like the memory card in a digital camera.” He points to the x-ray, “Here. That’s what it uses instead of a hard drive.”

The senior agent hasn’t been trained for technological change. New products on the market? They haven’t been TSA approved. Probably shouldn’t be permitted. He requires me to open the “device” and run a program. I do, and despite his inclination, the lead agent decides to release me and my troublesome laptop. My flight is long gone now, so I head for the service center to get rebooked.

At least this guy had the sense not to try to “touch the items in the inspection area” while they were debating whether it was a wooden duck or a witch. The day the TSA actually single-handedly makes me miss my flight might be the day I start driving on all my trips.

Via Ace’s headlines.

As you may have noticed I haven’t quite settled back into a blogging routine since coming home from my trip. A whirlwind of things to catch up on, a new treadmill to walk on (it feels like cheating, but at least I’m walking every day), etc. etc.

Anne wants to know: Did my snack stash for son and self to eat on the planes pass TSA inspection? Yes, they did, but not until after a conversation that went something like the following. Up front I will stipulate that I brought at least some of this on myself by trying to sneak a sealed bottled water through in my backpack. Naturally, as the bag came off the belt, the kid manning the inspection point (he must have been all of nineteen years old) said he was going to inspect it. He pulled out the water bottle, I feigned ignorance and an apologetic manner, all looked to be well … then a chick who had manned the X-ray monitor when the backpack went through nosed her way behind him and said, “There’s some other stuff you need to check out in there, too.”

Damn it. Now I was actually kind of puzzled–what else could be a problem in there?

Mr. Nineteen began pulling out the plastic bags I use to compartmentalize stuff inside my backpack. He dropped one on the belt–bang–and I looked up quickly. It was the bag containing the Bean’s Leapster. “Easy!” I protested. “That’s electronics.”

He wasn’t apologetic. My blood pressure rose.

Then he started pulling out the snacks–individual portions of sealed pudding, applesauce, and diced pears–and I felt the dread. My son is a grazer who eats more or less when he announces he’s hungry, and I don’t feel comfortable on the 2000-plus-mile airline trips we regularly take without a pack full of little snacks we can mix and match when he chooses. We typically have some dry stuff like goldfish and cashews and cookies, but I rely heavily on those little packs of pears and applesauce–and have never had a single problem taking them through security before. On several trips, in multiple airports, nobody has ever so much as looked in the bag.

Mr. Nineteen: “There’s some liquid in here.”

Me, instantly angry: “That’s not liquid, that’s food.”

Mr. Nineteen, with the pedantry that characterizes the petty powermonger everywhere: “Applesauce counts as a liquid.”

Me, gaping in disbelief: …

My mind immediately jumps ahead to the ounces limit. I’ve never had to deal with it before–I simply don’t take liquid in carryons, aside from when I’m feeling criminal and thirsty and try to get the water through. I thought the limit was four ounces, so I stared at him belligerently.

Me: “That’s less than four ounces–” [reaching for the applesauce to check its amount on the label.]

Mr. Nineteen, jerking the applesauce out of my reach: “PLEASE don’t touch the items in the inspection area.”

Blood pressure soaring. Me, decidedly snapping now: “It’s MY STUFF. THIS IS RIDICULOUS. It’s under four ounces.”

Mr. Nineteen, smugly: “It’s three-point-eight.”

Me: …

Mr. Nineteen: “The limit is three-point-four.”

I’m screwed now and I know it. That doesn’t halt the belligerence. Now I just want him to be done, quickly, and get his disgusting mitts off MY STUFF.

Me: “A little consistency would be nice. They didn’t stop me for this stuff on the way out. There’s liquid in the pears too, so if you’re going to throw it all out let’s get on with it–” [side trip to recover straying four-year-old.]

Mr. Nineteen, impassively picking up a pudding and beginning to discourse on it: “I think this might be over the limit too.”

Me, staring incredulously, as any moroncretin can see the containers are roughly the same size: “But you don’t know.”

Mr. Nineteen: “Since it’s not printed on the label, I have to use my judgment.”

Me: . o O (Does your vaunted judgment enable you to process the idea that these items are factory sealed for the eating pleasure of a four-year-old, that I currently am in possession of a four-year-old, things of this nature?)

Me: “Fine, if you’re going to throw them away, you’d better get the pears, too, they’re packed in liquid, let’s get on with this–” [reaching for the pears.]

Mr. Nineteen, practically having a conniption: “PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH THE ITEMS IN THE INSPECTION AREA.”

Me, completely snapped off at the base: “IT’S MY STUFF. THIS IS GETTING OUT OF HAND, DON’T YOU THINK?”

(Bear in mind not many of the words I actually said to him bore any relation to the words I was thinking inside my head.)

Mr. Nineteen: “SUPERVISOR.”

Supervisor, a laid-back middle-aged guy, ambled over. Mr. Nineteen fussily began to show him the snacks in turn. Supervisor passed them all with a wave of his hand. “Sure, she’s got the little guy there. Sure, those are fine. Yeah, she can take those.”

Me, attempting to gather up my things from the dorkwad I seriously want to throw to the floor at this point (and I could’ve done it, too, but then somebody would’ve had to bail me out of jail and my friend in that city was at work and who would’ve looked after four-year-old?…): “Thank you. No, I’ll do this. I’ll put them back in. GIVE THEM TO ME [he didn’t]. Sorry for the unpleasantness [I wasn’t] but I’ve never had a problem before. And I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to touch things [nor do I care, IT’S MY STUFF, ASSHOLES] because I’VE NEVER BEEN INSPECTED BEFORE [slight untruth; I’ve never been harangued over contraband before but I have had the bag opened and its contents rifled].”

Mr. Nineteen, attempting to make it seem as though he hadn’t called over Supervisor just to get me in more trouble: “I just called him over to see if these snacks could go through.” Suuure you did, punk. You were bound and determined to do everything in your power to let me keep my son’s food, weren’t you? Riiiight, sport, keep telling yourself that. I doubt Supervisor was fooled either.

You know, I actually do feel guilty when I show them my temper, because I know they’re doing their jobs. Many of them do it in the most offensive way possible, however, and it just makes me boil. How hard is it, really, to say the following words: “Sorry, ma’am, it’s one of the rules that you’re not to touch this stuff when we have it out for inspection; can you tell me what you’re trying to show me?”

A little tact. And did I mention the consistency? Multiple airports, no problem. This day, because one X-ray chick got her panties in a wad, big problem. Either enforce the rules or don’t. Make me understand what is and is not okay for me to carry for my son to eat, before I leave home and my only option is to enrich the convenience stores around the gates. Sheesh.

J.K. Rowling sues publisher RDR Books and “feels betrayed” by Harry Potter Lexicon founder Steven Vander Ark because they intend to publish a print version of the same name. Seems Rowling was “accepting” of sites such as the HP Lexicon and others while they were thousands of dollars’ worth of excellent free marketing for her books but not so much now that they plan to publish a book that people will have to, you know, buy with money.

Rowling said she was especially irked that the site’s owner and the lexicon’s would-be publisher, RDR Books, continued to insist that her acceptance of free, fan-based Web sites justified the efforts.

“I am deeply troubled by the portrayal of my efforts to protect and preserve the copyrights I have been granted in the Harry Potter books,” she wrote in court papers filed Wednesday in a lawsuit she brought against the small Muskegon, Mich., publisher.

She said she intends to publish her own definitive Harry Potter encyclopedia.

“If RDR’s position is accepted, it will undoubtedly have a significant, negative impact on the freedoms enjoyed by genuine fans on the Internet,” she said. “Authors everywhere will be forced to protect their creations much more rigorously, which could mean denying well-meaning fans permission to pursue legitimate creative activities.”

Poppycock. Is there a copyright violation in the intended work, or is there not? If there is, then for sure there is a copyright violation in the web site, which therefore should have been shut down by legal force years ago. Something doesn’t comprise “legitimate creative activities” when free (and free marketing) on the web but amount to copyright violation only when there are royalties involved. That she would begin to object only when royalties were involved is only too human-nature obvious. And she has a somewhat overblown concept of authors’ rights if she expects to be able to trample what even she describes as “legitimate” work in the name of preventing outright copyright violation.

Is there a copyright violation? I don’t know (insert I Am Not a Lawyer boilerplate here). But on the surface it seems that if there is, then that standard would surely apply to sites like TheOneRing.net and the books I helped create based on that site. So what if Rowling plans to publish her own encyclopedia? Reference material can be copyrighted but surely not the right to create reference material. Suddenly half of academia would be out of business. Fiction utilizing the characters is different, but a publisher would have to be crazy to put any of that (mostly) swill into print for cash. And nobody really believes that upon publication of Rowling’s own encyclopedia, anybody would say “Oh, well, I already bought Vander Ark’s website in print form, so I don’t really need the definitive word from the author herself,” do they?

She added: “I find it devastating to contemplate the possibility of such a severe alteration of author-fan relations.”

Which is just a sentimental (or, in the British, treacly) way of saying “Our relations will be lovely so long as you do nothing that irritates me, whether it’s actually illegal or not.” Nice.

Remember the rant about my central post office (might I add, my annex post office in my grocery store is nothing but sweetness and light–they give my son cheerful and exciting stamps on his hand whenever I take him in! Nevermind that the ink is likely meant strictly for paper use and thus runs all over if he so much as waves his hand in the breeze or, God forbid, touches his shirt! Nevermind that, because we are speaking nice about the post office today, lest we be visited by More Wrath of the Post Office Deity)? In the two weeks following that rant, the following three things occurred:

**A package mailed to me on Tuesday, February 5, the same day as the rant, took two weeks to get here from St. Louis. Two weeks! And though the ship method was one of the less expensive ones, it still wasn’t cheap or anything like it.

**A birthday card mailed to my mother three days before her birthday, containing cash in a denomination I wouldn’t normally send through the mail, took a week and a half to get to her. The cash was intact, though. I consider it kind of a warning shot across the bow (Straighten out your mouth or next time we’ll take your mother’s birthday money, unnerstand?).

**A credit card bill, mailed more or less a week before it was due, returned to me the day after it was due–sheared in half. I kid you not, it looked like somebody simply picked it up in both hands and r-i-p-p-e-d right down the middle. This abomination (but only the one half–invoice, check, and all) was placed into an outer envelope with a letter wrapped around in bland bureaucrese–”We are sorry for the damage to your mail … yadda yadda.” Next time we’ll burn the whole bill and you’ll never know it was lost until the late fee shows up on your credit account, got it?

And did I mention how much I used to enjoy the post office in my small, friendly hometown? They’re great, hardly any lines and helpful people eager to handle your package with the utmost in delicacy, even if they charge the same heinous rates as the big surly post office here–talking nice about the post office today, see?

All of which leads me to the Quote of the Day, from my friend Aughey who sent me the two-week package: “The shipping was ridiculous considering how long it took to get there. I think I could have strapped it on the back of a horse and slapped its butt and it would have gotten there sooner.”

Why the devil can’t they leave bad enough alone?

Maybe, if you cross your fingers, a ticket even more of us will have an even harder time voting for and may sick up a little if we do so. Thanks, haters!

First Peter Jackson sues for his cut of Lord of the Rings, now the (!) Tolkien Estate.

“The Tolkien trustees do not file lawsuits lightly, and have tried unsuccessfully to resolve their claims out of court,” Steven Maier, an attorney for the Tolkien estate based in Britain, said in a statement. “New Line has not paid the plaintiffs even one penny of its contractual share of gross receipts despite the billions of dollars of gross revenue generated by these wildly successful motion pictures.”

Maier also claims the film studio has blocked the Tolkien estate and the other plaintiffs from auditing the receipts of the last two films.

Kansas, what is your problem? Are you located too close to Iowa?

This is what comes of too many people dropping out before all the primaries have been run.

For the parties to mandate that all primary elections/caucuses be held on the same day?

I don’t like having my candidate chosen by default through the elimination processes of other people. And the influence on voters of who won other states shouldn’t be discounted, either.

I know I said I wasn’t going to be quick to name my next candidate, but if Giuliani drops out, that’s two candidates removed from my choosing long before my state’s primary even gets here. Leaving me to vote for a candidate by default rather than by preference. And it sucks.

I bought a pretty, tiny lampshade in the Salvation Army store one time because I liked its design and colors and it was cheap. I bought a lamp on eBay to go with it. They coordinate in size and style. You know what chandelier shades look like, right? And the mechanism by which they’re supposed to attach to the light bulb? A little wire clip. Well, you can take it from me that these shades do not attach to the bulbs they’re supposed to go with. The bulbs are too big; the clip on the shade slides right off.

These are the bulbs that the shade’s clip actually latches right onto: Four- to seven-watt night light bulbs, which are utterly useless for any purpose other than their stated use in night lights, which are neither needed nor wanted in this house. I want to use my pretty little lamp to shed 40 watts on my work without taking up much space on my small work surface, but nooooo. Shade won’t stay on the 40-watt chandelier bulb.

I’m mostly just ranting about a minor domestic problem, but if you know how to get around this, or where to find 40-watt bulbs shaped like night-light bulbs (also the same as older Christmas lights), let me know.

If you want to know how Jena’s nooses and its six-on-one beating came to be related in the public mind even though they weren’t, how it’s plausible that the nooses were never intended as a racial statement at all, how the ringleader of the six is a repeat thug, and who put together the “greater narrative” that the media and the race-baiters swallowed hook, line, and sinker, here it all is in cool, collected detail. (H/t Sarah.)

And if you need comforting over Thompson’s withdrawal from the race: rest glumly assured that it’s because he was every bit as normal as we thought him and not a pandering, lying ignoramus. My favorite passage:

It’s telling that his most notable moments were negative–marked by his refusal to follow some custom of the modern campaign. (From another debate: “Should government step in and help Chrysler and the other auto makers?” Thompson: “No.”) Asked about education reform, he said: “It would be easy enough for someone running for president to say: I have a several-point plan to fix our education problem. It’s not going to happen. And it shouldn’t happen from the Oval Office.” When journalists and candidates, with their typically childlike enthusiasm, suddenly began gumming the word “change” after the Iowa caucuses, Thompson pointed out the obvious: “Change has been part of every election since the dawn of elections, if you weren’t an incumbent.” He noted how easy it was “to demagogue” the issue of federal spending by dwelling on relatively insignificant earmarks: “All these programs that we talk about in the news every day are a thimbleful in the ocean compared to the entitlement tsunami that’s coming to hit us.”

Views like these might have earned another candidate a reputation for “straight talk”–maybe even the title of “maverick.” But Thompson was more subversive than that; he was an existential maverick, and his campaign was an implicit rebuke to the system in its entirety. He was a man out of his time. With its reduced metabolism and procedural modesty, his campaign still might have served as an illustration of what politics once was like and–if we have the audacity to hope–might be again. After all, by the standards of a century ago, Thompson was a whirligig.