The Illinois State Police has a Web page with advice for women to defend themselves from a rapist. Tamara finds the advice wanting:

Instead of a handy, portable weapon that requires no great amount of strength to operate, we are instead advised to attempt to take on a 250lb rapist with a teasing brush or a handful of keys. Brilliant plan, that. "Well, sir, we couldn't revive her, but her assailant should be easy to spot in a lineup. Judging by what she had clenched in her hand in her last moments, his hair should look fantastic."

The worst part, the part that makes me want to scream and throw things at the monitor, is when they drag out the old primate appeasement behavior: "It may sound disgusting, but putting your fingers into you throat and making yourself vomit usually gets results." No. No way. Why should I worry about getting vomit stains out of my clothes when I have the means available to make my attacker worry about getting blood stains out of his? Sorry, ISP, but I'm sticking with the gun.

One of Tam's commentors makes the point that the Illinois State Police advice is about one step removed from "relax and enjoy it."

Self defense. It's a human right.

Aunt B. isn't crazy about the Illinois State Police advice, either.

We bought an Easter Lily for my mom tonight. While I was checking out the cashier mentioned that he always planted his, and they kept coming back. I didn't know that you could plant Easter Lilies. Did you know that?

Here's info on how to plant Easter Lilies from Hortchat.com. (And is it just me, or does Hortchat sound vaguely dirty?) They're not hardy in all parts of the country, but Tennessee is apparently warm enough for them to overwinter.

Last week on the morning talk show "The View" Rosie O'Donnell advocated for the conspiracy view of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, saying “I do believe that it’s the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel."

Preston Taylor Holmes notes that, in fact, fire is pretty much what's always been used to melt steel.

Which leads to this week's poll question.

On Saturday I got to try Backroom BBQ. It's at the old Lucille's space in Knoxville's Old City, and is part of the Patrick O'Sullivan's enterprise. I had the Pit Sampler, with a quarter rack of pork ribs, beef brisket, chicken, and pulled pork for the very fair price of $13.95 with two sides. I couldn't eat it all and wound up bringing the ribs home.

The beef brisket was very tasty. The chicken was boring, as BBQ chicken tends to be unless it's spicy. The pulled pork was very nicely smoked, and I enjoyed the ribs for my Sunday brunch.

Sauces on the table are Memphis-style sweet and tangy BBQ and Carolina-style BBQ which is less tomato and more vinegar and therefore hotter (and thinner). Knoxville is about halfway between the two styles geographically, so it's nice they offer both. Both sauces were good. I liked their Carolina sauce better.

Jay had the pulled pork sandwich and was very happy with the size of the meal for the modest price. About six bucks as I recall.

The sides were a weak point. The hushpuppies were overdone, the coleslaw was on the bland side, and the flat-sliced potatoes were completely overcooked. Corn on the cob - one of my favorites - is only available deep-fried, which is an abomination of nature. Granted I didn't taste it, but based on past experience with fried corn they could have thrown the ears on the smoker and gotten corn that was both tastier and healthier.

The place was not what anyone would call clean or snazzy. I expect authentic BBQ joints to be a little grungy, but Lucille's was a classy enough jazz dive and Sullivan's is a nice enough place, so it seems like Backroom BBQ's grunginess is a combination of overeager pseudo-authenticity and a general lack of cleanliness. I may have been a little sensitive because I had the kids with me, so judge for yourself. If you can deal with the hygiene standards at the usual run of BBQ joints you probably won't mind, and Backroom's 'cue is good and the price is right.

This is one of my new favorite bourbons. It's right in the narrow price range between Wild Turkey 101 and Maker's Mark and I like it better than both.

Based on the Wikipedia entry, it doesn't look like Elijah Craig bourbon is really related to the Baptist preacher who invented bourbon, but it's nice of them to honor the good Reverend with such a fine whiskey.

Expressed in a poem.

Cucoloris - A filter that casts patterned light. They're apparently often just pieces of cardboard or other materials with patterns removed. Also called a cookie by people in the movie biz. I couldn't find any pictures of a cucoloris, but here's a photographer's example of using a potted palm tree as an improvised cucoloris to make a scene more interesting.

Via Roger Ebert's glossary of movie terms. And note that he spells it differently.

Previous WOTD - Ceteris paribus

In From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype, The New York Times quotes both scientists who largely agree with Gore's main points, and others who disagree with both large points and particulars.

“Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet,” Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog. “Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.”

In October, Dr. Easterbrook made similar points at the geological society meeting in Philadelphia. He hotly disputed Mr. Gore’s claim that “our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this” threatened change.

Nonsense, Dr. Easterbrook told the crowded session. He flashed a slide that showed temperature trends for the past 15,000 years. It highlighted 10 large swings, including the medieval warm period. These shifts, he said, were up to “20 times greater than the warming in the past century.”

In other global warming news, polar bear numbers are increasing.

Viacom is suing Google over the use of unauthorized Viacom content on YouTube, which Google recently purchased. Mark Cuban, among others, predicted massive lawsuits over YouTube's copyright violations once Google's bank accounts became involved.

In other recent Google legal news, Google lost a case in Belgium which claimed that Google News violated newspaper's copyrights. However, Google won a case in which the U.S. court found that Google's choice of ads to display constituted protected speech and that Google could therefore choose not to run certain ads.

Incidentally, some of the Slashdot comments on Google cases were like these:

Oil Innovations Pump New Life Into Old Wells:

Within the last decade, technology advances have made it possible to unlock more oil from old fields, and, at the same time, higher oil prices have made it economical for companies to go after reserves that are harder to reach. With plenty of oil still left in familiar locations, forecasts that the world’s reserves are drying out have given way to predictions that more oil can be found than ever before.

“It’s the fifth time to my count that we’ve gone through a period when it seemed the end of oil was near and people were talking about the exhaustion of resources,” said Daniel Yergin, the chairman of Cambridge Energy and author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of oil, who cited similar concerns in the 1880s, after both world wars and in the 1970s. “Back then we were going to fly off the oil mountain. Instead we had a boom and oil went to $10 instead of $100.”

How Waffle House cooks track orders without writing them down, using condiments arranged on a plate.

The latest from John Edwards is starting to tie things together, as he tells us what Jesus thinks:

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards says Jesus would be appalled at how the United States has ignored the plight of the suffering, and that he believes children should have private time to pray at school."

This is a vignette of Edwards in his days as a trial lawyer who spoke in tongues:

"She speaks to you through me," the lawyer went on in his closing argument. "And I have to tell you right now — I didn't plan to talk about this — right now I feel her. I feel her presence. She's inside me, and she's talking to you."

And like Oral Roberts, during the 2004 elections John Edwards promised he can heal you:

"We will do stem cell research," he vowed. "We will stop juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other debilitating diseases. America just lost a great champion for this cause in Christopher Reeve. People like Chris Reeve will get out of their wheelchairs and walk again with stem cell research."

John Edwards, TV preacher.

Alan Smithee - a pseudonym used by directors who don't want their name associated with a movie that has been altered beyond their control.

From Ask Cecil Adams:

Alan Smithee (along with several variant spellings) was an official pseudonym of the Directors Guild of America, for use by members who believed (and succeeded in persuading the Guild) that their work on a particular film had been so damaged or altered by others that it no longer resembled the director's vision. Permission to use the pseudonym was not granted casually, and was not intended simply to disown poor work. The practice began in 1968 when Robert Totten and his replacement Don Siegel both believed their work on the film Death of a Gunfighter had been so distorted by those controlling the film that neither wanted credit for the result. The Directors Guild agreed and decided to create a standard pseudonym. Naturally, such a pseudonym needed to be unique so that it would never be confused with the name of an actual director. The name Smithee was chosen, the thinking being that no one actually named Smithee was likely to surface. In 1999, a film called An Alan Smithee Film: Burn, Hollywood, Burn was released, telling the fictional story of a director who wanted to remove his name from the credits of his film, but couldn't because his name actually was Alan Smithee. (Coincidentally, director Arthur Hiller removed his name from the credits of Alan Smithee and thus it actually is an Alan Smithee film.) The Directors Guild determined that the name had gotten too familiar to the public as a result of this movie, and ceased using it as an official pseudonym. Now pseudonyms are determined on a case-by-case basis, and different names applied to the films in question.

• Internet Movie Database search results for "alan smithee"

• Alan Smithee Wikipedia entry

Previous WOTD - Portmanteau

From Urban Dictionary:

Gong Xi Fa Chai

Happy New Year (Chinese)

Taken from the porch of a restaurant in Muddy Pond, Tennessee.

Via Brittney, Nathan Moore asks:

So, I return to my query … why does one little human being require so much space? I have several friends with one toddler who have purchased the minivan/SUV. Is it a safety issue … more structure between a child and a crash impact? Are they anticipating the need to fully stock a bake sale every weekend? Are they always going to be in charge of driving the entire soccer team to away games? Do their kids just have that much crap? Or, is this an important stamp of motherhood that I have overlooked? I like my little stickshift Civic and Catherine’s carseat fits just fine in the back.

We didn't change cars after the first kid. We did OK with a Honda Civic and a Mercury Sable. Putting Katie in the car seat in the back seat of a two door Civic was somewhat less than fun, though. One part of the increasing popularity of SUVs and mini-vans is undoubtedly due to the increasing requirements to use car seats and booster seats, and the advice to put kids in the back seat for maximum safety. Tennessee, for instance, requires booster seats for children as old as eight and up to a height of 4'9".

Then my mom (who can no longer drive) moved in with us. Then we had a second child. We knew something had to give.

Knox County Commissioner Greg "Lumpy" Lambert is offering his wedding officiation services free of charge for any couples that want to get hitched on Valentine's Day, which is this Wednesday the 14th. The "shotgun wedding" ceremonies will be held at the Coal Creek Armory gun store and shooting range in West Knoxville. linkity

A piebald horse

While reading Phrases.org.uk I ran across an explanation for the phrase "bald as a coot." I knew enough about birds to know that a coot was a bird, as in the American Coot which Andy Axel was nice enough to post pictures of.

I had always assumed the phrase meant something like "as smooth-headed as a coot," but the site offered a different explanation: "Coots are water birds whose heads have the appearance of baldness. This doesn't refer to the lack of feathers on the bird's head, but to their white markings. Bald has several meanings, one of which is 'streaked or marked with white'. That's the meaning here, as in pie-bald."

Backtracking from Phrases.org.uk, I looked up "bald" in Webster's:

1 a: lacking a natural or usual covering (as of hair, vegetation, or nap) b: having little or no tread (bald tires)
2: marked with white
3: lacking adornment or amplification (a bald assertion)
4: undisguised, palpable (bald arrogance)

One of those last two definitions may have given rise to "bald-faced lie." The second definition for bald is related to piebald:

1 : composed of incongruous parts
2 : of different colors; especially : spotted or blotched with black and white

Coots aren't anymore hairless than any other bird, and are less so than some. They do, however, have a white beak on their black heads, and some species have a white forehead. Bald, in the coot sense, means piebald, though it strikes me that "bald as a coot" may have been a clever turn of phrase that conflated two meanings of bald.

I'm not sure I had ever heard of piebald before, and I'm certain I didn't know what it meant, but I like it. Related words, normally used to describe a horse, are skewbald (brown and white) and oddbald (bay and white, with bay being a reddish-brown color).

These wonderful old words don't seem to be in use anymore. Nowadays pinto is used to describe horses with patches of white and another color. There is also a specific breed called a paint horse.

Previous WOTD - Heterochromia Iridium

Heterochromia iridium is a difference in eye color, with causes ranging from genetics to disease to injury.

Heterochromia generally refers to two eyes of different color, but there are variations. Altered areas of coloration within one eye is secular heterochromia. An individual's eyes can become darker (hyperchromia) or lighter (hypochromia).

Some famous people with heterochromia include Alexander the Great and actors Dan Akroyd, Christopher Walken, and Kate Bosworth, who has both heterochromia and secular heterochromia. David Bowie has one eye with an enlarged pupil due to a fistfight as a schoolboy, though it's arguable whether or not that constitutes heterochromia, which usually affects the iris.

Heterochromia is fairly common in dogs. It's particularly common in certain breeds, such as dalmations, border collies, and huskies.

More info:
- Ask Uncle Cecil on heterochromia
- Google image search for "heterochromia"

Previous WOTD - Shoot Me First Vest

Some of the more common topics I cover are quotes, the word of the day, guns, and Star Wars. Consider this a 4-in-1.

Definition from Wikipedia and used under the GNU Free Documentation License:

A Pigovian tax (also spelled Pigouvian tax) is a tax levied to correct the negative externalities of a market activity. For instance, a Pigovian tax may be levied on producers who pollute the environment to encourage them to reduce pollution, and to provide revenue which may be used to counteract the negative effects of the pollution. Certain types of Pigovian taxes are sometimes referred to as sin taxes, for example taxes on alcohol and cigarettes.

Pigovian taxes are named after economist Arthur Pigou (1877-1959) who also developed the concept of economic externalities.

Previous WOTD - Front-strikers and Back-strikers

In matchbook-collecting circles, front-strikers have the striking surface on the front next to the exposed matches. Back-strikers have the striking surface on the back, away from the matches. The front-to-back migration is to comply with a 1973 federal safety regulation.

Via Eric Scheie, who tested old and new matches to confirm his suspicion that newer matches don't burn as well as the old ones. In his test they didn't. That's also likely due to a federal regulation, this time from 1976, that requires "the flame must self-extinguish within 12.7 mm (0.5 inches) down from the top of the match and within a 15-second period."

Iffy lube - One of those quickie shops where you get your oil changed. It's usually a little iffy as to whether they actually put oil back in your engine or replace the oil cap or drain plug.

Previous WOTD - Updation

A word is born:

In a meeting today, one of the programmers mentioned “insertion, deletion, or updation of records in the table.”

Sheeesh.

407,000 results on Google. Including, of course, Dictionary of Indian English.

Via Politburo Diktat.

Not everyone likes the new word, but I do. Then again, I think faxer should be a word, as in printer/copier/faxer.

Previous WOTD - Junctural Metanalysis

(And now for something completely different. This week and next I'll be posting a word of the day feature.)

From the Phrases.org definition for humble pie:

In the 14th century, the numbles (or noumbles, nomblys, noubles) was the name given to the heart, liver, entrails etc. of animals, especially of deer - what we now call offal or lights. By the 15th century this had migrated to umbles, although the words co-existed for some time. There are many references to both words in Old English and Middle English texts from 1330 onward. Umbles were used as an ingredient in pies, although the first record of 'umble pie' in print is as late as the 17th century.

It is possible that it was the pies that caused the move from numbles to umbles. 'A numble pie' could easily have become an umble pie', in the same way that 'a napron' became 'an apron' and 'an ewt' became 'a newt'. This changing of the boundaries between words is called metanalysis and is commonplace in English.

Wikipedia makes a more careful distinction between metanalysis ("the act of breaking down a word or phrase into segments or meanings not original to it") and junctural metanalysis:

John Kerry was in Davos, Switzerland last week speaking to an international audience, and took the opportunity to fire a few shots at Bush.

"When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don't advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy," Kerry said.

Captain Ed counters:

Once again, we have the spectre of Kyoto haunting the Bush administration, when it was the Clinton administration that refused to submit the treaty to the Senate -- and the Senate that unanimously passed a resolution saying they'd never ratify it. The Byrd-Hagel Resolution in 1997 made it clear that the US would not allow itself to be bound by the treaty as long as it exempted India, China, and other developing nations. That's the same position as the Bush Administration has taken -- and the same position that John Kerry himself took in 1997 when he voted in favor of the Byrd-Hagel Resolution.

That's yet another example of the hypocrisy of John Kerry -- but there's more.

He took the time to scold the Bush administration for its lack of effort on AIDS and other diseases in Africa. However, Bush has already spent more on these issues than the last Democratic administration did in eight years. Humanitarian aid to Africa comprised $1.4 billion a year at the end of the Clinton administration, but Bush has tripled that to $4 billion per year -- and wants to more than double it over the next two years:

Not only is Kerry hypocritical here, he's frankly incompetent. There are plenty of legitimate criticisms of Bush. He has eroded civil liberties even beyond what might be considered necessary in wartime. He used gay marriage and the promise of a marriage amendment to the Constitution to win votes (and then dropped the amendment once the election was over). His habit of picking political cronies for appointments gave us the incompetent Michael Brown at FEMA during one of the worst civil disasters in history. He fumbled badly in nominating the unqualified but sycophantic Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

Even conservatives have legitimate beefs with Bush.

There's an episode of "Friends" when Ross Geller (David Schwimmer) is talking to a pretty girl, gets nervous, and has to think of something to say. What comes out of his mouth is something to the effect of "So... you know that natural gas smell? That's not really the gas. Natural gas is odorless. The gas company puts that smell in the gas so you can smell it if it leaks."

This story will probably be about as exciting as that. Tonight I was outside playing with Katie. Melissa comes out and we talk a little, and after a few minutes we both notice a funny smell. Like rotten eggs. We decide we should call the gas company, just in case there's a gas leak in the neighborhood.

The Blount County Fire Department comes out shortly. I show them where the gas meter is and they check it with an electronic sniffer. They check the furnace and water heater. They check the LP gas BBQ grill. They check in the spot where Melissa and I were standing when we smelled the natural gas odor. Nothing.

Remember what Ross taught us all about natural gas? It's odorless. The gas company adds that smell.

The fireman told me something interesting, and the Atmos Energy person who came out later confirmed it. There's an 18 inch Duke Energy gas main going through Blount County. The gas in the main line is odorless. The odor is added at local Atmos natural gas pumping stations, and there's a pumping station at the far end of the next street. Sometimes the odor that's injected into the gas escapes. A few weeks ago four houses on that street reported natural gas odor. That's what we smelled earlier, and as the wind shifted we couldn't smell it anymore. Fascinating, huh?

Local singer/songwriter Jodie Manross is moving to New York. To finance the move and pay for Laith's cancer treatment she's having a yard sale and auctioning off one of her guitars. This message is from her mailing list.

Thanks to everyone who came to the World Grotto Farewell Show last Friday in Knoxville! We all had such a great time performing! It was an amazing turnout, and you all are just so wonderful to me. I am in the process of packing to move and have decided to have a yard sale and wanted to spread the word!

BIG YARD SALE TO RAISE MONEY FOR MOVE AND FOR LAITH!

I am moving to New York City next week. Andre Hayter, who played bass in the Jodie Manross Band, is moving with his wife to Sydney, Australia! So we are having a big yard sale this Saturday, Jan. 13. They have to get rid of most of everything they own. I am getting rid of much stuff too, so come by if you can! Here's our ad---

Last night we met some friends at Mirage, a new Middle Eastern restaurant on Gay Street (cattycorner from the Bijou). Good stuff. Very interesting décor, with a bar, tables, and floor seating.

They're apparently still in their pre-opening stage and haven't advertised yet, so it wouldn't be fair to review them. I thought that the food was very good, though, and would gladly go back. If they're this good now, they should be terrific in six months.

Entrees were around $14. Ours included vegetables, rice, and a salad. They have beer now and have applied for a liquor license. I saw other tables brown-bagging wine. The menu features appetizer and dessert samplers which are nice for couples and groups who want to experiment.

My favorite Christmas present this year was Snapshots of Blount County History, Volume II from my brother. Edited by Dean Stone, it's a collection of annotated photographs from the archives of the Maryville-Alcoa, Tennessee Daily Times.

Read more after the jump