A day at the beach

Okay, I'm a big loser. I didn't get to work on my Salon/blog essay. Yesterday, I went to Bainbridge Island with wifey to visit friends of ours. All of us wandered down to the beach, searching for cool shells but only ending up bothering geoducks (pronounced: gooey-ducks), little slug-like creatures that live just under the sand, clinging to rocks and occassionally spit up fluids of some kind. Walking under the ferry bridge, colonies of the clams were spitting up little streams in an alien water-fountain ballet. When you stand still, you can see the little streams jet up, making the unenlightened viewer think this was some form of mating ritual, a kind of fertilizing or some water-borne method of communication. I'm still not sure why geoducks spit the fluid, but I learned people eat these things. These geoducks here look a lot different from the ones I found (which accurately can be described as mutant snot).

In other beach news, I got into a rock throwing contest with one of our friends. From a distance, both of us tried to hit a large rock on the beach using small, hand-held stones. I won two out of three, but was routed when she, for a follow-up, nailed a Coke can that was washing up on the beach due to the incoming tide. With that, and hanging my head in shame, we all left for a short rest and then Thai food.

Oh, yeah. We also found a water-logged bell pepper on the beach which, thanks to an slow, underhanded pitch and a sturdy tree branch, I obilerated it with a swing, that if I was hitting a baseball, would have easily scored me a triple. A grand day, indeed.

So, wifey and I got home late, late last night because we got caught in the remnants of the annual Seafair downtown parade. Traffic was a nightmare and crushed any hope of updating the dear ol' blog. Tonight, wifey and I are going to hear one of her old students give a literary reading in the Seattle neighborhood of Belltown. The reader, Meghan, is going to be one of those genius authors that will take the country be storm in a couple years and will be someone your grandkids will have to read in high school, mark my words.

Creepy moment of yesterday: Coming home on the ferry, I spied a Coast Guard boat escorting us from Bainbridge Island to Seattle. The vessel ran along side us the whole ride until we were about to dock. You could barely make out the ship as night covered Seattle; the only give-aways were its wake and the safely light on its side. When the ferry dock, I asked one of the workers why we were being followed. Apparently, the Coast Guard got this new boat and wanted to take it for a spin, showing off to the fine taxpayers in the Seattle region that the military agency got a boat. I'm sorry, but when I see an armed crew in a military boat running along side a passenger ferry all I think is: "Oh shit, terrorists."

It didn't help that the major Seattle Seafair parade was that night. It's a sign of times, I suppose, to think about public events and the threat of some lunatics looking to make a last will and testament. It put a damper on the day filled with a wonderful walk on the beach, time with friends (and their achingly precious new kittens) and all the terrorizing we did to the Seattle-area maritime wildlife, namely, the aforementioned geoducks and tiny crabs.

I read the news today, oh boy

I usually skip the news on Sunday, but while I was on the Web, I hopped over to Tom Tomorrow's blog only to find a couple unnerving news items.

First, a Secret Service agent admits that he scrawled anti-Muslim sentiments on a prayer calendar belonging to a man charged with smuggling bogus checks.

Second, being a terrorist is now a numbers game. Get the wrong number rating (based on information supplied by businesses who have no qualms about snitching you out) and you're a terrorist. Forget arrest records and having the FBI infiltrate domestic groups. When you want to read the tea leaves, it's consumer records you need.

Factor this in with the Justice Department's eagerness to snatch and effectively vanish anyone who is suspected of terrorist links and you get a new kind of witch hunt emerging: People not sought out for the political affiliations, but what they buy or even how long they stare at an item in a supermarket.

But that vision aside, I found this one bit interesting.


[Christy Joiner-Congleton, CEO of Stone Analytics] even conceives of developing algorithms so advanced that society might intervene, to get people liable to be recruited into cells back on track before they can be seduced by elements like Al Qaeda. "There is a possibility that with sufficient information about known terrorists we could evolve to the point where we could spot terrorists in the making," she argues. "We believe that individuals can be at risk of becoming drug addicts, or joining gangs, or having affairs, or any number of things at certain times and under certain conditions in their lives. . . . Thorough and continued algorithmic investigation of terrorist behavior is very likely to shed light on their origins, and possibly lead to proactive efforts."


Um, folks, the future depicted in the short story and film "Minority Report" wasn't something to emulate. It was a warning of technofascism, not a blueprint for a World of Tomorrow.

French Word of the Day

De pis en pis (duh pee zah pee): From bad to worse.