Leave it to the French to build a city below sea level. It makes me shudder to ponder the intellect of the person who said, "Let's build big walls all around this place, pump out all the water, and then put up a city." It may have worked for awhile, but it looks like time and nature have finally caught up to New Orleans.

A hint of nausea overtook me when I heard the news report about plans to build a cantilevered, glass-floored observatory deck out of the side of the Grand Canyon. But when I saw the artist's renderering, I decided that not only would I not pay the $25 admission, but they'd have to pay me a lot more than $25 before I would agree to go, and that's not counting the cost of the drugs needed to knock me unconscious before they could drag my listless body out there.

The project, proposed by Arizona's Hualapai Tribe, is scheduled to open in January. How many people fork over the admission fee to use it is anyone's guess, but I sure won't be one of them. The numbers explain why:

• The platform will jut out 70 feet (21 meters) from the canyon wall.
• Underneath, there's nothing but air until the Colorado River 4000 feet (1.2 kilometers) below.
• That's a long way to fall, folks, and anyone unlucky enough to do so, unlike the famous Wile E. Coyote cartoon figure, won't have a chance to try again.

It was bad enough that 19-year-old Neil Goodwin of Salisbury, Massachusetts, kicked in the door of a Civil War-era crypt. And that once he got in there, he hacked off the head of the corpse and removed it from the crypt. But what came next defies rational explanation.

Goodwin propped the skull on his own shoulder and had someone take a picture. Now he has been arrested for desecrating a grave and disinterring a body, and the photograph is evidence against him.

But even that isn't the best part. The alleged crime took place while doing community service at the cemetery—part of his probation for a prior crime.

Intelligence clearly isn't this kid's greatest asset.

Last Saturday evening, I went to a friend's 44th birthday party. It was an indoor/outdoor affair, and we moved variously among the screen porch (cocktails and hors d'oeuvres), the back yard (barbecue dinner and marshmallow roasting), the kitchen (post-dinner conversation), and the dining room (birthday cake). By the time we moved indoors, I was beginning to feel the maddening itch of mosquito bites.

What prompted me to sit outside for an hour without using insect repellent is unclear. I have long had moderately severe, albeit localized, allergic reactions to mosquito bites, so I should have known better. Yet I left myself vulnerable to attack—and attack they did. While they pretty much left my face and arms alone (excepting one bite on my neck), they feasted on my lower legs and feet, those parts of my lower body left exposed by crop pants and sandals. By the time I got home and began dabbing Benadryl cream on the growing wheals, I counted a whopping 19 bites. And that's on top of the half dozen or so I had gotten a couple days earlier while picking blackberries after dinner.

Rather than complaining about the uncomfortable bites, I should be grateful that I didn't end up with West Nile Virus or Eastern Equine Encephalitis, both of which have been found in my neck of the woods this year. Indeed, I am grateful that I did not contract one of these potentially serious mosquito-borne diseases. But I wasn't feeling terribly grateful during three days and two nights of sheer agony as I resisted the urge to scratch the hell out of my legs. And did I mention that walking on feet afflicted with mosquito-allergy-induced edema is one of life's more horrible experiences?

Fortunately, these things are temporary, and today I'm feeling much better, even if I do look as if a pox has infected me. By this weekend, even the now-teeny bumps will be gone. The memories, however, will linger—and the next time, I'll use bug spray.

Cindy Sheehan is a grieving gold-star mother. She is also an anti-war activist, a shameless opportunist, and a nut case.

No one has disputed the account of how Army Spc. Casey Sheehan found himself in harm's way in Iraq. As summarized by the Los Angeles Times' David Gelertner:

Casey Sheehan enlisted in the Army in 2000 at age 20. The country was at peace. When he was asked to reenlist four years later, he knew that he would probably be sent to Iraq. He reenlisted anyway. In March 2004, he was sent to Iraq as a mechanic attached to the artillery division of the 1st Cavalry Division. When a convoy was attacked in Sadr City a month later, he volunteered to join the rescue mission—although he had no obligation to take part in combat.

One can only imagine what Spc. Sheehan's mother said to him when he joined (and re-joined) the Army. Did she call him a warmonger? Did she accuse him of bloodlust? Did she berate him for his active, conscious, and deliberate participation in Bush's "reckless and wanton foreign policies"—and did he tell him she though his actions, too, were reckless and wanton? Or does she merely think he was too stupid to know any better? Those are the choices: Either Casey Sheehan was a moronic dupe who had no idea that re-enlisting in the Army while the country was at war may likely get him sent to Iraq, or that volunteering for a rescue mission at one of Iraq's most dangerous locations may get him injured or killed—or he wanted to do his part in a war he believed was worth fighting.

Let's not forget that Cindy Sheehan's purpose in protesting outside Bush's ranch is not to meet with him. She already did that with her family in 2004, according to the conservative WorldNetDaily and her own web site (from which a picture of the meeting has since been removed). But she's counting on the probability that you don't know about that meeting and will believe her when she complains that Bush refused to meet her. She doesn't like George W. Bush (or Israel or neo-cons), so she wants to stir up further opposition to all of the above. In fact, her letter to Nightline (reference by Slate's Blake Wilson and reproduced in its entirety on a sympathetic Google group) reads like a talking points memo from the country's most vociferous of the far-left, complete with inaccuracies:

How hard to you think it is to have a child killed in an illegal and immoral war? (NOTE: The "illegal" allegation has never been explained by those who use it, and it's telling that the "immoral" allegation has never been leveled against the Saddam Hussein regime or the foreign terrorists who have streamed into Iraq.)

[ . . . ]

Why wasn't I given a chance to talk about 04/04/04 and the series of lies, mistakes and miscalculations that led to my precious oldest child's death?? (Sheehan was angry that someone else was interviewed instead of her.)

[ . . . ]

[M]y son was killed after L. Paul Bremer inflamed the Shi'a by taking away their tv station and newspapers. (Impossible to respond to, because she gives no details.)

[ . . . ]

Has there ever been an invasion/occupation of a sovereign country that hasn't been resisted? Anyone with half a brain and an even rudimentary understanding of history would know that all occupations are resisted. (A "rudimentary understanding of history" would presumably include the post-war occupations of Japan and Germany, neither of which was resisted.)

[ . . . ]

I may remind you and the General, that Iraqi elections was [sic] not the reason that our President and his Neo-Con war mongers invaded Iraq with our precious human resources. I will give the two reasons given for the invaseion [sic] here: Saddam had WMD's and he was an imminent threat to America... (Actually, Bush said in his State of the Union Address on January 28, 2003, that Saddam was not an imminent threat to America, but that September 11 showed us that if we wait until a threat is imminent, it's usually too late.)

[ . . . ]

The second reason that America was given before the invasion was that Saddam was the biggest sponsor of world terrorism and he supported Osama Bin Laden! Oh really??? The hijackers were predominantly Saudi Arabian as was Osama (who is still at large, by the way). (Article in the Tennessean, no longer online but quoted by camedwards' blog) pointed out that an Iraqi diplomat established a relationship with bin Laden via the embassy in Pakistan.)

[ . . . ]

I am so glad the First Cavalry came home from this senseless and needless war based on the imaginations of Neo-Cons and fought with ignorance and arrogance by the Commander in Chief and the Pentagon. (There is nothing specific here worth commenting on, besides the general tone and tenor that reveals that Cindy Sheehan's motivations have little, if anything, to do with her son.)

There's much more, but my fingers are getting tired typing all the bunk contained in Cindy Sheehan's diatribe. Her ideology and agenda should be clear in the portions I did quote, and they explain why, according to the Washington Post, she has been working with a political consultant and a publicity firm to maximize anti-Bush media attention.

Sheehan is working with a political consultant and a team of public relations professionals, and now she is featured in a television ad.

[ . . . ]

[H]er cause has also been aided by political organizers who swiftly mobilized around her -- recognizing an opportunity to cause acute discomfort for a vacationing president and put a powerful emotional frame around the antiwar movement.

[ . . . ]

TrueMajority—an antiwar group founded by Ben Cohen, one of the creators of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream—hired Fenton Communications, a Washington public relations firm that has worked intermittently with Sheehan over the past year to coordinate media coverage.

With this help, Sheehan has courted coverage from the traveling White House press corps with a news conference.

[ . . . ]

Joe Trippi, the political consultant behind former Vermont governor Howard Dean's early success in the 2004 Democratic presidential primary race, hosted a conference with Sheehan for liberal Internet bloggers, hoping their online dispatches will draw even wider attention.

Would Sheehan be opposed to Bush, to the war, to the existence of Israel, etc. if her son were still alive? You bet. But no one would be giving her the time of day. She would be just another paranoid conspiracy theorist of the likes that would make John Birchers during the Cold War look like Gandhi. And she wouldn't be embarrassing her soldier son, who unfortunately isn't here any more to argue with his mother.

Cindy Sheehan deserves our sympathy for her loss. She deserves contempt for using that loss to denigrate everything her son believed in.

After two years of badgering by a friend, I joined a fantasy baseball league. It isn't the typical fantasy league in which teams are made up of real players and their real stats are used. The owner/GM can make trades, sign free agents, promote or demote players between the farm and the big club, set lineups, etc.—but the players, like the games, are totally computer-simulated.

Our season started yesterday. With last night's sim, my team—the Lincoln Llamas—won 5 and lost 2. My left fielder, 27-year-old Leo Dacosta, is fourth in the Fungos League in batting average (.458), having hit in all seven games so far, and second in RBI (9). The center fielder, veteran Quinn Holthaus, leads the league in home runs (3) and stolen bases (5), and is just behind Dacosta in RBI (8). Among pitchers, Nicholas Kendrick leads the league with 2 wins; he and teammate Phillip Burwell are in the top four in strikeouts.

All of which is pretty good considering that the team is still running on auto-pilot after I've had repeated software problems. The next sim is tomorrow, by which time I hope to have the problems solved, though I'm almost afraid to change anything for fear of screwing things up.

A day after right-wing Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, he is backtracking.

"I didn't say 'assassination.' I said our special forces should 'take him out.' And 'take him out' can be a number of things, including kidnapping; there are a number of ways to take out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted by the AP [Associated Press], but that happens all the time," Robertson said on "The 700 Club" program.

Earth to Robertson: U.S. special forces aren't trained to kidnap bad guys. They're trained to kill them. But he already knew that, and the reason he said it is because he thinks Chavez should be assassinated. The left-wing Media Matters for America posted the quote in context (with emphasis by me):

There was a popular coup that overthrew him [Chavez]. And what did the United States State Department do about it? Virtually nothing. And as a result, within about 48 hours that coup was broken; Chavez was back in power, but we had a chance to move in. He has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he's going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.

You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don't think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United ... This is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.

Sounds pretty clear to me.

You couldn't pay me to go to a Rolling Stones concert, even if it is at Fenway Park. But I'm all excited that one of my brother's old friends, with whom he went to last night's tour opener, had his review published by Rolling Stone. Way to go, Jon!

In these the waning days of summer, there are the last of this year's crop of blackberries to be picked and shortcake to be made, barbecues to give and attend, ball games to enjoy, friends to carouse with, weekend trips to squeeze in. Work is busy, but play is busier. No wonder I haven't gotten around to writing about some of the more blog-worthy news of recent weeks.

The nice thing is that this blog isn't a newspaper, so I can offer fresh insight into otherwise stale stories any time I want. And that I will do, soon.