I now regret giving up the trombone.

Elizabeth Levasseur, 1917-2007

My grandmother passed away recently.

From the obituary posted over at VillageSoup.com:

ROCKLAND (Dec 15): Elizabeth F. Levasseur, 90, died following an extended illness, Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2007 at Quarry Hill in Camden.

Born June 24, 1917 in Brattleboro, Vermont, she was the daughter of Edward and Carla Ebbinghausen Flood. Educated in Brattleboro, parochial schools she was a 1934 graduate of St. Michaels High School. Mrs. Levasseur attended Brattleboro Business Institute and worked several years as a bookkeeper.

On June 23, 1938 she married Richard J. Levasseur, Sr. in Brattleboro. The couple raised two sons and made their home there until Mrs. Levasseur moved to Rockland in 2003.

She was employed at Brattleboro Vermont National Bank as a window teller. She eventually rose to the position of Commercial Loan Officer, retiring in 1975. Upon her retirement she simultaneously cared for her ailing husband and mother.

For more than 20 years, she served as a volunteer at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital and the American Red Cross. She was a lifelong communicant of St. Michael's Parish.

Predeceased by her husband, Mrs. Levasseur is survived by her sons and their wives, Richard J. and Peggy Joyce Levasseur of Owls Head, Thomas G. and Beryl Levasseur of West Rockport; one brother John Flood of Sturgeon, Missouri; three grandsons, David Levasseur and his wife Traci, Douglas Levasseur, Shawn Levasseur; three granddaughters, Sharon Levasseur, Nicole Prentiss and her husband Richard, Angela Caverly and her husband Todd; eight great-grandchildren, Amanda, Kyle, Devin, Katherine, Nicholas, Levi, Carl, and Helen, as well as many dear nieces and nephews.

Family and friends are invited to visit from 6 to 8 p.m., Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2007 at Burpee, Carpenter & Hutchins Funeral Home, 110 Limerock Street, Rockland, where a Celebration of her life will be held at 11 a.m., Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2007. The Reverend Mark Reinhardt will officiate. Interment will be held at St. Michael's Cemetery, Brattleboro, Vermont, in the Spring.

%*&# DirecTV...

So much for the opening game of the World Series.

Well, at least it means I'm spared Tim McCarver.

And when the last time the Sox won the Series, I had to deal with the local radio station dropping the game automatically at midnight. With the station being automated there was no one to call and complain to . ($#%#@ Clear Channel) So this could be a sign that this will be another championship for the Sox.

21:15 (ET) update: It got back in time for the bottom of the first, at least. I had been looking forward to the Boston Pops performing the National Anthem, though.

22:58 update:


Ah, that might be the problem, they've switched from the satellite to using a blimp to transmit the signal. ;)

Number Six 1991-2007 R.I.P.

I've never been one to blog about my pets. Catblogging is practically an internet cliche.

But today I took my cat, "Number Six" (named after Patrick McGoohan's character from The Prisoner), to the vets, as she'd been loosing a dramatic amount of weight. I was told that she had a tumor, and that before long she would be suffering. I agreed with the vet that Six should be put to sleep before that happened.

I'm taken emotionally back a bit more than I expected. Then again, she was 16 years old. The longest lived of any cat that I or my family has had, so maybe I shouldn't be so surprised that her passing saddens me so much.

Goodbye old friend. I'll miss you.

Now this is just wrong...

via Blog @ Newsarama

Not my idea of employee relations...

What if Darth Vader was a day shift manager at a grocery? See for yourself in the short film "

Day Shift

"

(via Montior Duty)

Technorati Tags: Humor, Star Wars

Communist? Them's fightin' words!

Hoo boy. I usually don't get into knock-down drag out verbal brawls on the net. They are so hard to keep civil, and rarely influence anyone.

Sometimes, however, someone says something so boneheaded I have to do my best to show the holes in their argument.

Today I encountered such a situation when I read at Jeff Jarvis' blog, "BuzzMachine" where he was attacked over his coverage of Dell's handling of his service call, the overall lack of quality service from Dell, and how Dell fails at handling the PR fallout from such poor service.

Amanda "Strumpette" Chapel somehow tries to twist his personal tale and his journalism about Dell into a form of political agenda. Specifically, she accused him or trying to take over the company via extortion and called him a Communist.

In the comments of both Jeff's post on the topic, and Amanda's original post, I (and others) took issue with Amanda's inflammatory assertion. I did my best to point out the holes in her logic, the weakest being the jump from consumer complaint to communism.

Please read through both, as I've done enough writing on the topic in both places. I don't need to hash it all out again here. (Why be redundant when you can link?)

I will however say that Amanda's credentials as a public relations professional take a hit when one reads from her bio page:

I’ve slept with clients. I sleep with my boss.

It's not clear if she did so to advance her career or not. But combine that with some lapses in her understanding of business, and it leads me to believe that Amanda isn't quite the expert that she asserts herself to be.

Then again, in an unrelated article she made the observation,

You want public attention? Today, the key is skin and confrontation.

So, she could very well be just brilliant at driving traffic to her site.

UPDATE:

"Amanda" is apparently NOT a whore. She's a fictional construct. An amalgamation of five writer's work. These five cowards don't wish to stand behind their statements, and don't have the basic ethics to write under pseudonyms. They instead pretend to be someone they aren't.

"Amanda"s authors are liars, and I wasted my time engaging them in conversation.

Technorati Tags: Business, Buzzmachine, Dell, Dell Hell, Jeff Jarvis

Advancing Medicine... A link and some random thoughts.

There's been lots of talk about how to better pay for medical costs. Sadly there's been little advancement on controlling the costs save for financial tricks and rationing systems of one form or another.

Technologies have been advancing in many fields and making many aspects of modern life better and more affordable. Medicine has not added the efficiencies that would make medical care more widespread and cheaper.

from TCS Daily - Rebooting Your Doctor, by Glenn Reynolds

Andy Kessler has worked in Silicon Valley for a long time. He's seen the way that improving technology can lower costs and increase capabilities in all sorts of areas, and now he says that it's time for silicon to do for medicine what it's done for so many other fields.

Later in the article, Glenn quotes from Kessler's book,
The End of Medicine: How Silicon Valley (and Naked Mice) Will Reboot Your Doctor

"Doctors hold the expertise. It's imbedded in their brains. ... But in other industries, the expertise is increasingly embedded elsewhere -- in software, in silicon, in routers, in cell phones, in iPods, in Xboxes, in search engines. That's what made Silicon Valley what it is today. You can take intellectual property and embed it on a chip -- to handle telephone calls, move email around, display 3-D graphics for video games and on and on. A dozen guys with no life design the chip and then workerless factories in Taiwan stamp them out by the millions to be shipped in products you and I can buy for under $100. That's scale. ... Yet here is R2. Cancer-identifying expertise is embedded in an algorithm you can buy for $29. Well, you can't buy it. Some weird system of service and reimbursements pays for it. But it's the first crack in the armor."

In addition, lesser government regulations could help. Most importantly the monopolies that most hospitals have here in Maine need to be removed. Such monopolies are artificially created by the state by not allowing hospitals to open or even provide certain services without a "certificate of need".

It's these "certificates of need" that keep any cancer treatment facility from opening up here in the Rockland area. It's rough to travel to Brunswick time and again for chemotherapy. Especially when you need to get someone to drive you all those times. The time and expense of such travel rarely comes into the discussion. There are health care costs as real as any other.

Maybe there isn't enough "need" for a local cancer treatment center, but If someone is willing to take a chance on trying to put one together, they should be able to go for it.

Admittably my information on this example may be out of date. Its based on my memory of articles about the Bob Gagnon Cancer Fund. (I did a quick google search, but didn't find helpful information)

Hospitals outside of Portland have very little competition that would encourage some degree of cost cutting. True, hospitals have a hard time of it financially, but being short on cash leads to asking for more money. If there was competition for services the pressure would be on to be at least as efficient as the "other guy" or better in some way.

One would hope that computerization would make matters better, as suggested in the above linked article. Certainly the paperwork could be improved. Every doctor's office has incredibly huge sets of files and hospitals even more so. Certainly the paperwork of medicine can be made less bureaucratic. Unfortunatly the deep levels of government involvement in medicine and the finances of medicine complicate matters.

I've also wondered why so much of medicine is a nine to five business. There needs to be some innovations that would allow people to get help for a wider number of services beyond the "business hours" when many people are working. Maybe more doctors working on odder schedules could help. One wonders if the problem of people overusing emergency rooms is due to the that medical needs don't happen on a schedule.

If you can buy a carton of milk 24-7 why can't medical help be easier to get after 5 or on the weekend?

True, you pay a premium to get that milk at 2 A.M. and the selection is less, so I'm sure that there will be trade offs with odd-hours medical practices too. But I'm sure that better could be done with a little innovation.

Mind you, that's all just thoughts off the top of my head. Maybe developments are being made, and I just don't know of them.

Technorati Tags: Medicine, Technology

DrawerBoxes - Anyone in Maine wanna buy some?

WANTED: Comic collectors interested in a new concept in comic book storage:

Drawer Boxes:

Traditional “Short Box” or “Long Box” forms of comic book storage boxes are simple cardboard boxes with lids, specially sized to hold comic books. Drawer Boxes work like file cabinets. The box of comics slides inside an outer “sleeve” box to create a comic “drawer”.

Your can stack these boxes, and still have access to the comics in the lower boxes. With traditional boxes you have to lift and rearrange the boxes to access all the comics.

The big problem is that these babies are made in Denver. Over half the expense of these would be the shipping costs. To keep the shipping costs down, I'd have to buy a lot of them at once, which would be a costly move for me. I concede that with my collection, I could use a lot of these boxes, but I'd rather not have to order such a huge quantity in one shot. I have tried asking some comic shops here in Maine to carry them, but I've yet to have any confirm if they will.

If I could get a few collectors together who want to get in on spitting up a pallet or two, that'd be great. If I have to, I'll get a pallet load of these all by myself.


UPDATE: Nevermind.

Casablanca Comics will be carrying DrawerBoxes soon. They are located in Portland ME, and Windham ME.

Thanks to them, for making what I'm sure will be a profitable business decision (from my own purchases at least, if nothing else.)

Technorati Tags: Comics, DrawerBox

Soundtrack to the Comic Book: V for Vedetta

For readers of the classic Alan Moore graphic novel "V for Vendetta", here's the album that contains the music inspired by and taken from the book.


When I saw the movie adaptation that recently came out, I was disappointed that the song that was featured in the introduction to book 2 of the story, "This Vicious Cabaret" (both the title of the book and the song, made no appearance in the film. (Can Hugo Weaving even sing?)

The lyrics were written by Moore himself, and sent out to David J (formerly of the band Bauhaus) who composed the music, that was then printed into the comic itself.

The music was published in a few forms back in the 80's but has been out of print until now. With the hype the novel has gotten in the wake of the movie adaptation, the time was ripe to release David J's "V for Vendetta".

I look forward to listening to the album while re-reading the comics again.

Technorati Tags: Comics, Music, V for Vendetta

It's Conan, the.... Pimp ?!?!

from Chris's Invincible Super-Blog,,,

Supporting my theory that the 70's was the decade that NO ONE got out of with their dignity in tact.

Technorati Tags: Comics, Conan, Marvel Comics, Pimps, 70's

Reminding us that we won the Cold War.

from Ann Althouse:

It's a good thing -- isn't it? -- that we're more interested in Prada than Pravda.

Graveyards

from "They were elevated moral landscapes..." from Ann Alhouse (who in turn is quoting from the Guardian):

Cemeteries were... once. Shouldn't they be, again? Meet the cemetery architect.

"People always say it's ghoulish," [Michael Howe] says, "but we also design things like lavatories and bathrooms, and that's much more icky. Designing cemeteries is a lot more interesting than designing a middle-class person's kitchen extension."...

"One of the issues that has led to the desecration of burial grounds is fear. Socialising these spaces is absolutely essential, so young people see them as part of the cycle of life and death," he says.

He hopes that people will visit the cemetery as a park and even take a picnic there. "If there are green open spaces and woods, why wouldn't people romp around or have a picnic?"

He adds: "It was only in the 20th century that we stopped using cemeteries in this way. The Victorians thought of them as highly cultured places of genteel resort and instruction. A cemetery was considered a neat and proper place to meet and spend time."

He argues that it is not only the Victorians who can find cemeteries uplifting places. "Everyone thinks of the commemoration of deaths as a Victorian thing, which is amazing since we are not going to get out of the habit of dying."

As a kid, there was a cemetery near my home. On a few occasions, I did some wandering through it, exploring. There was nothing particularly ghoulish in the act, I saw it as more like walking through history.

The older, more grandiose monuments were of particular interest to me. They were far removed from the main entrance of the cemetary. The more recent burials had much simpler headstones that were less distinctive or unique. There is far less art in these memorials than there was in the past. It was like walking through time to move through the eras.

The only really sad thing that ever got me thinking about death at that young age, was the sight of one grave marked with an embossed aluminum plate marked Baby (Family Name) and the dates spanning the very short lived life of the child.

Hint to the Democrats: Follow the money toward insanity, or broaden the base.

It looks like some of the far left blogoshphere have become big money raisers for political campaigns. Since much of the money is spent on ads at these same websites, there has been some pseudo-scandal about. (No crimes, it just looks 'icky' to some)

But another effect is that they have been gaining a disproportionate level of influence with the Democratic party. But these "netroots" don't go very deep, and fall apart in the face of actual voters. The big money donors that make up the bulk of the Democrats funding is going to the "netroots".

I think that this could be a positive for the Democrats over the long haul, or it will doom them. If they try to win back the big money donors, they'll have to pander to them, making the Democratic party even more unelectable than ever. Or they will have to act more like the Republicans by relying on a wider field of donors, and not as much of the deep pocket donors.

Having a wider fundraising base would help keep any political party better in touch with the voter. It would make a dip in fundraising act as a "canary in a coalmine" signaling that something is wrong. But so long as the less numerous and more out of the mainstream donors have the greater influence with the DNC, There will be more candidacies like Howard Dean, a darling of the Progessives, who can't get past Iowa.

And there'll be more John Kerry candidates too afraid of the "Dean"s before Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire Primaries, try to pander to the "netroots" in the primaries and losing the general election.

This is all inspired from an article at Riehl World View, Why Is The Grass-Roots So Green?

Now Hillary and the adults at the DLC have decided to start to play. Many genuine Liberals feel cut off from the grass roots because Armstrong and Moulitsas have been as heavy-handed as they both have been erratic. And it's possible they too will start to moderate their message lest they lose the financial support of their masters. That could leave the real, or perhaps more dedicated Liberals of the blogosphere with nowhere to go. It basically depends on who wins the war in messaging between the old DNC and those who would hope for something new. Only now, the same elitists who have always taken a back seat to the politicians after giving them money, hope to more directly be pulling the strings.

via Kausfiles

Technorati Tags: Politics, Democrats

DrawerBoxes - Anyone in Maine wanna buy some?

WANTED: Comic collectors interested in a new concept in comic book storage:

Drawer Boxes:

Traditional "Short Box" or "Long Box" forms of comic book storage boxes are simple cardboard boxes with lids, specially sized to hold comic books. Drawer Boxes work like file cabinets. The box of comics slides inside an outer "sleeve" box to create a comic "drawer".

Your can stack these boxes, and still have access to the comics in the lower boxes. With traditional boxes you have to lift and rearrange the boxes to access all the comics.

The big problem is that these babies are made in Denver. Over half the expense of these would be the shipping costs. To keep the shipping costs down, I'd have to buy a lot of them at once, which would be a costly move for me. I concede that with my collection, I could use a lot of these boxes, but I'd rather not have to order such a huge quantity in one shot. I have tried asking some comic shops here in Maine to carry them, but I've yet to have any confirm if they will.

If I could get a few collectors together who want to get in on spitting up a pallet or two, that'd be great. If I have to, I'll get a pallet load of these all by myself.

Technorati Tags: Comics, DrawerBox

DeadLess than Live-Blogging the Oscars...

From my earlier post on my lack of watching the Oscars:

Stay tuned... Sometime this week it'll happen...

... Would you believe, sometime this year?

Didn't think so.

Merry Marvel Hayek Blogging Society

A rather simplified version of The Road to Serfdom in comics form at Mises.org

http://www.mises.org/TRTS.htm

via Hit & Run, from Liberty & Power

Technorati Tags: Comics, Hayek, Libertarianism, Politics

Micro-Papers

Small newspapers, targeted to a specific topic and audience are shows as a possible future of the newspaper in Buzzmachine

In London, two former execs from the Swedish Metro free paper started a daily freebie targeted at finance, and the Guardian reports that City AM is now distributing more copies than the Financial Times. The niche freebie strategy makes some sense. In New York, you could tackle the financial markets with geographic ease and advertisers will follow. A free sports daily would get audience; not sure about the advertising. There already are free entertainment weeklies; they used to be called alternative papers. I could see lifestyle weeklies with food, home, parenting, and other content and endemic ads.

Technorati Tags: Newspapers, Buzzmachine

A Comic Shop Closes in Colorado, Internet Used as a Scapegoat.

In Newsarama:

Colorado’s Time Warp to close Longmont store

The Longmont, Colo., Daily Times-Call reports that Time Warp Comics is closing its Longmont store in August, because of a drop in foot traffic and competition from nearby Stonebridge Games.


Time Warp Comics
Owner Wayne Winsett also cites online retailers as part of the problem: “The Internet has hurt comic book sales nationwide, it’s not just that location. Any Tom, Dick or Harry can open up a business and compete against you with no overhead at all. And that can hurt a lot of businesses, not just comic books.”

Time Warp’s Boulder location, which turns 22 this year, will remain open. “The Boulder store is doing really well,” Winsett told the newspaper. “In fact, we’re searching for a larger location for that store right now. We’re trying to find a space big enough so we can have a dedicated gaming area.”

My post in that article's comment thread:

I find the "blame the internet" tack a bit disingenuous, especially when they are looking to expand their other location.

Peter David once wrote about the inherent advantage of physical stores over the internet. This advantage was the immediacy of grabbing a book and buying it over buying a book then wait for it to ship. He summed it up quite simply, "Instant gratification isn't fast enough."

Then again if all the store caters to are "Comic Geeks" and is not reaching out to a broader audience, then they are at risk of going away.

Judging from how they seek to expand in Boulder ("big enough so we can have a dedicated gaming area.") they are going for the "geek clubhouse" model of business...

I've seen good "geek clubhouse" shops and tons of bad ones. But I don't see how they can attract the broader customer base. The have to realize that their direct competition isn't really from other comic shops (online or physical). It's the bookstores they have to look out for.

As far as the Manga audience is concerned, bookstores have taken the lead, and comic shops are merely playing catch up if they are even playing at all in that sub-market.

Technorati Tags: Comic Industry, Comics

Merry Marvel Blogging Society: Life Imitates Comics

from Gizmodo:

There’s a new weapon in the war against non-cool weapons. This is the Israeli Smart Arrow which embeds itself into a surface and begins transmitting video for up to seven hours.

Looks like Tony Stark inherited the arrow designs from the Clint Barton estate.

He had me at, "Hello."

As a child I enjoyed Saturday morning cartoons (okay, I enjoyed TV in general, but nevermind that right now).

The extra special treat on Saturdays would be if I could get up extra early to catch the syndicated cartoon reruns on channel 7 before the network's shows began. Bullwinkle & Rocky, Dudley Do-Right, Underdog, and Mr. Peabody were all great cartoons that have proven to be classics, more than anything the networks were showing at the time.

Glenn Reynolds, of Instapundit fame, has just come out with a book An Army of Davids.

I've just read the first sentence of the first chapter:

Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for 10,000 BC.

The man's a god. 'Nuff Said.

Technorati Tags: An Army of Davids, Cartoons, Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit, Animation, Puppy Blender, Book Review

Coming Soon: Less than Live-Blogging of the Oscars

"What... an.... Indifferent night for Oscar.
Oscar, Oscar.
Who will care?"

Yeah, Yeah, I didn't live blog the Academy Awards. I haven't even watched the show yet. I have it TiVo'ed and will comment on it as I watch it.

Hey, if the Olympics can be broadcast on tape delay, I can "Plausibly Live"-Blog the Oscars!

Problem is, I haven't seen ANY of the pictures nominated in the major categories. So I don't have much of any rooting interests this year. It used to be I'd have seen nearly all the films. I haven't been taking full advantage of my Netflix account as much as I'd intended.

Could it be I've gotten a life, oh well.

Stay tuned... Sometime this week it'll happen...

More about Harry Browne's passing..

(see earlier post for original announcement)

The Libertarian Party issues a press release about Harry.

A discussion thread about Harry is ongoing at the As Maine Goes forum.

Former Washinton state L.P. candidate and current ex-pat in Costa Rica, Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey comments on her blog.

She brings up the "campaign spending scandals" which were one set of slings and arrows I think were unjust. To call the controversy around what the Browne campaigns spent it's money on, a "Scandal" is overkill. The level of outrage some people brought to the table on this issue was way out of proportion, and in some cases was inspired by personal dislike of Browne.

And finally a remembrance of his campaigns by Reason's Cathy Young.

An update about Steve Kubby.

He's out of jail for now.

More over at Reason's Hit & Run

...And Steve Kubby isn't feeling all that good either.

It wasn't enough for the federal drug warriors to kill off Peter McWiliams for daring to speak out in favor of the medicinal use of Marijuana, and being a living example of its legitimate use. Steve Kubby, will be suffering the same fate for the same crime.

At least Kubby, former Libertarian candidate for Governor of California, managed to hold off federal prosecutors only by seeking refuge in Canada. That hasn't lasted, as he's now in prison, having been extradited back to the U.S.

Drug prohibition has caused far many more deaths than marijuana ever has or ever will. Sadly prohibition's tally looks only to be growing.

Follow Steve's plight at kubby.com

Technorati Tags: Drug War, Libertarian Party, Politics, Peter McWilliams, Medical Marijuana, Steve Kubby