Happy Thanksgiving!

Hey! I know that it's really just Thanksgiving Eve, but I thought I'd go ahead and post today because I wasn't sure how busy I would be tomorrow.
Once again, I'm thankful for a lot of stuff this year. I'm thankful to not only have a job, but to have one that I actually find some meaning in. I'm thankful for being pretty healthy. I'm thankful for friends and bandmates (and bandmates who are friends) who, despite being pretty busy, still find the time and willingness to hang out and share their company on a pretty regular basis. I'm thankful for family members who are willing to continually open their lives and share them with me. I'm thankful for having a good dog. I'm also simply thankful to be living in a country which has presented me the resources, freedoms, and opportunities to enjoy a high standard of living and to generally live my life in the way that I choose. (I know I complain about the American political system and American cultural trends a great deal, but Mom has just returned from her mission trip to Kenya, and once again she has stories of the people who live there in conditions of poverty, but who are very thankful for every meal that they eat, every possession that they own, and every opportunity that presents itself. Those kinds of stories sort of put things in perspective.)
Anyway, I hope that everyone has a great Thanksgiving! Eat lots, be safe, and enjoy the time off work!

Steanso Finally Gains an Interest in Hunting;

Hey! Only a few more days 'til turkey day. Still trying to be thankful...

A good, lifelong friend of mine, Larry Lee Thweatt, has recently made me aware of a wildlife protection group that is desperately in need of our respect, admiration, and support. The Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy is an organization established "To investigate and conduct research regarding the existence of the unlisted primate species known as the sasquatch or bigfoot; to facilitate scientific, official and governmental recognition, conservation, and protection of the species and its habitat; and to help further factual education and understanding to the public regarding the species, with a focus mainly in, but not necessarily limited to, the states of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana." Believe it or not, "The Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit scientific-research organization, as recognized by the Internal Revenue Service, comprised of volunteer investigators, scientists and naturalists." The group is dedicated to carrying out investigations and field research relating to the existence of the sasquatch in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, as well as carrying out informational meetings on the subject. Investigational techniques include the study of tracks, the use of trap cameras, hair traps (designed to snag bits of hair for testing), and the collection of observation reports (apparently with some effort put into trying to corroborate the observations).
Man, I gotta believe that this is an organization that is more than worthy of our time, effort, and hard earned dollars, Adventurers! The web site for the conservancy is very professional looking (shockingly professional, actually), and it seems like these people are dedicating themselves to the sasquatch hunt with a high degree of earnestness, thoroughness, industriousness, and enthusiasm. I'm not sure that I ever could or ever would find a sasquatch, but I'm already sold on the idea of tromping around in the woods with my friends while looking for one! (not sure about the guidelines in terms of whiskey consumption while on a sasquatch hunt. Hoping there's some flexibility on that...)
Anyway, the whole thing seems like as good a reason as any for a shopping trip in the camping section at Academy, followed by an adventurous foray into the wilderness. Also, I'm fortunate enough to have a big, tall brother who we can dress up in a sasquatch suit. That way we can lure in sasquatches who are looking to mate (and Roundball already comes with his own musky, sasquatch-like smell which probably already contains sasquatch mating pheremones! Plus, in the wee hours of the morning, toward the end of one or two of his parties, I'm pretty sure I've seen him do some sort of sasquatch mating dance. So we got that going for us).
Imagine the glamour, adoration, and fame that we'll undoubtedly experiece when we emerge from the wilderness with a sasquatch in tow! (we're gonna need tasers if we're going to bring in a live sasquatch. Also, giving my friends tasers to shoot at each other will just liven things up). I'll have to get my hair cut before my photo shoots for Scientific American and Discover magazines....
So just think about it. You don't have to make a decision right now, but just mull it over. I think that the people who really put some thought into it will eventually feel the need to be a part of Steanso's Sasquatch Hunters...
Thanks for the link, Lee. You know me too well.

That's not much, but it's all I have time for today! Have a good one!

Weekend Update; Article on Mental Health in Criminal Justice; Catholics in Politics

Hey! Hope everybody had a good weekend! I'm going to work on trying to be appreciative and thankful this week. Seems like a good time for it...

As you can probably tell from the pictures, I did some pretty fun stuff over the weekend. The photos are from the UT-Kansas game on Saturday night. The picture on the left is of Colt McCoy and all of the Longhorn seniors as they made a sort of victory lap around the field to celebrate their last home game. It was pretty cool to watch. Those guys have given the UT fans an awful lot of wins over their college careers, and they've got a lot to be proud of. The other picture is of Dad, Ryan, and Jamie at the game. This was my first time to go to a UT game with Jamie, and I think we all had a pretty good time.
Sunday I ran some errands with Ryan, and had a band practice in the evening. Jim Gillespie's mother passed away this week, so my thoughts are with him (and, obviously, he didn't make practice). That would be a rough thing to go through at any time, but I feel especially bad for Jim and his family, given the timing right before the holidays.
Eric was sick, so he didn't make practice, either. So it was just Reed, Frank, and I, but we played a Wilco song (Misunderstood), worked on an Amy Mann song (High on Sunday), and played a new song that I wrote that doesn't really have a name. That doesn't sound like a whole lot, in retrospect, but we probably played for about an hour and 20 minutes (and I guess we just did some jamming in there, too). We also spent time talking about the dangers of heroine addiction and whether or not little kids should watch scary movies.

What else? I was glad to see the health care reform bill at least move to debate in the Senate. I know that this by no means guarantees a final bill, but it's one more hurdle crossed, and it's nice to know that at least the thing managed to avoid a GOP fillibuster in order to reach this stage.

A friend and coworker sent me this Yahoo News article about mental health cases in the criminal justice system, and it's pretty much directly relevant to what I do in my current job. The article discusses the financial costs and personnel costs that are associated with the handling of mental health cases by police officers, jails, and courts, as well as a few of the solutions that are being implemented in order to try to divert some of these people away from the jails (the article specifically mentions some of the mental health crisis teams that are now being used to respond to incidents involving mentally ill people, and here in Travis County both the Sherriff's department and APD now have such units). Anyway, the article sort of alludes to the fact that there's just a big gap in the system in terms of dealing with people who have significant mental health problems. We no longer really have long term mental health institutions (our mental health hospitals these days are pretty much stabilization centers, designed to get people stabilized and out of crisis, but then to return them as quickly as possible back into the community- often creating a revolving door sort of effect), and the few mental health hospitals that we have are extremely underfunded and overburdened. They have far more patients than they can handle, and they typically operate with long waiting lists. Patients who are in crisis get picked up after becoming involved in incidents, but when the mental hospitals can't take them these people are rerouted to other hospitals, which are typically poorly equipped to handle the problem. Many of these people end up simply being booked into the jail on charges related to whatever caught the attention of the police in the first place (the cases I see are misdemeanors), and then these people are treated by the jail staff (jails in many places having now become the primary, de facto, mental health care providers for their communities).
Many of these people don't really belong in jail, but at the same time the primary job of police and law enforcement is to protect the members of the community, so we end up with a situation where the mentally ill have to be treated and stabilized somewhere so they won't continue to be a danger or a disruption to the community.
Anyway, it's kind of strange for me, knowing that if we had a better system, the workload connected with my job would fall away to a lot less cases (I mean, if we could actually provide appropriate long term care for a lot of these people, they wouldn't be getting arrested and I would only be dealing with a much smaller percentage of the mentally ill population).
But this article is good, and most of the issues in it are things that I deal with pretty directly on a day to day basis here in Austin.

And there was a story this week in the news in which Patrick Kennedy revealed that a leading Bishop in the Rhode Island Catholic community, Thomas Tobin, had asked Kennedy in 2007 to stop taking communion if he intended to continue supporting abortion rights in the political arena.
I find that pretty offensive. I find it intolerant, and frankly, pretty archaic (does the Catholic church really think that this is the best direction to take in order to remain viable?). I understand the importance of religious doctrine within the church, but 1) I think the role of the church is to persuade and exhort its members in terms of the importance of adherence to doctrine- not to bully, strongarm, and extort, and 2) while I think it's fine for the church to preach its religious doctrine to its members, I find that direct engagement in political action by the church violates the boundaries of the social contract that we've established for such institutions within our culture. If Catholic bishops are going to start lobbying and leaning on people in terms of their political beliefs (and apparently they are- we already have the Catholic Church mounting what are, effectively, lobbying efforts to keep abortion funding out of the health care reform bill), then I think it only fair that we revoke any tax exemption that they receive for being a strictly religious institution and that we start categorizing as we would any other organiztion that was trying to push a poltical agenda (and asking them to comply with the same fund raising, taxation, and other guidelines that other political organizations follow).
Anyway, I've read that not all Catholic bishops are in agreement with some of the more politically acive clergy who have recently been getting so much attention, so I'm guessing that this is actually even a somewhat divisive issue within the Catholic church.
I'm not very impressed by what I've been seeing lately from them, though (wasn't it just last week when I was talking about how I find religion a lot more attractive when it involves helping other people as opposed to when it involves being judgemental?).

Well, I think that's it for now. Hope your day is going okay!

Peruvian Fat Gang

Hola, amigos!

Well... I had dinner last night with Jamie and Ryan. Jamie made some kind of chicken pasta thing that I thought was pretty good, but I'm not sure how much Jamie loved it herself, so not sure when we'll see it again.

And here's a something that you just don't hear about all that often: police in Peru have made four arrests thus far after uncovering a gang that has been killing dozens of people and selling off their fat tissue, presumably for cosmetic uses in Europe. Suddenly, for the first time in my life, I've realized that there are people in the world who might want to abduct and kill me (I'd be a goldmine to these people!).
Apparently the gang has been carrying out these murders for decades, using fake job offers to lure people (apparently up to 60 of them) to their deaths in remote parts of Peru. The human fat tissue apparently can fetch as much as $15,000 a liter, and members of the gang have supposedly provided detailed accounts of how the fat was removed before being sold to European cosmetics companies through intemediaries in Lima.
So there's something to think about. Next time you look at one of these actresses with the big, puffy, cosmetically enhanced lips, you can take a moment out to wonder if they were made from the butt of some overweight, dead Peruvian who's lying on the floor of a jungle somewhere. This is one of those weird deals that just makes me amazed at the bizzarre worldwide web of cause and effect relationships that we live in. Some rich person in Europe decides they need to get a cosmetic enhancement, and next thing you know some sad peasant in the wilds of South America ends up on the nasty end of a machete.
Crazy world.

Well, as you can probably tell by this random post, I don't have a whole lot today.
Maybe more later. Hope everyone has a good weekend!
Go Horns!!

Mom in Kenya; Continuing Changes in Iran; U.S. and Karzai- BFF?

Howdy. Hope stuff is ok.
Not too much to report. Ate some Mexican food with Ryan and Jamie last night. Talked to my dad, who has been in touch with my mom, and it sounds like she's doing well on her mission trip over in Africa. Apparently the Kenyans remembered her from her last visit out there and greeted her very warmly, so she was sort of touched by that. Hope she stays safe and keeps up the good work.
I'm sure I've said this before, but it's nice to see people going out and doing service work to help people as part of their Christian belief system. It seems like a lot of the stuff related to religion in the media these days is pretty negative (recent examples that spring to mind range from the violent Islamic fundamentalism of Nidal Malik Hasan to Catholic bishops who have questioned the religious faith of church members and political leaders who support pro choice positions). So, anyway, my point is that it's just nice to see some people out there who are helping other people as part of their religious beliefs (and yes, I'm sure the volunteers are pretty happy to talk to the people about their church and their religion while helping them at the clinic, but it sounds like the help offered is just meant to be good outreach- aid is in no way contingent upon participation in religious activities. On her last trip they worked with a significant number of Muslim people, for instance). Anyway, I hope the trip is a happy, successful one.

In the news, there's an interesting story in Newsweek about potential changes in the Iranian religious/political leadership structure. Apparently there is some conjecture that Iran's current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, may be the last Supreme Leader to rule the country. The Supreme Leader of Iran is the country's most powerful political figure and cleric, a figure presumed to be endorsed by God who serves as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the leader of the country's intelligence network, and the figure who holds the power to declare war and peace. He also plays a key role in selecting and confirming presidential candidates (Iran's current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is pretty much considered to be Khamenei's boy).
Apparently the violent suppression of peaceful protests after the last election has left left a large number of Iraqi clerics deeply troubled about the corrupting effect of the absolute power inherent to the role of a Supreme Leader (the office being more formally referred to as the velayat-e faqih), and there are rumors and suggestions among clerics that the office itself should be dismantled and abandoned following the passing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
It'll be interesting to see how these sort of sentiments continue to develop and take shape, and even more interesting to see what sort of new power structure might arise if the position of the Supreme Leader is removed. It seems like Iran is moving toward something that looks more like a real democracy, albeit at a pace which is far slower and more gradual than many might like. It might sound a little crazy right now, but I can actually imagine a future in which Iran might actually be something of an ally, with an interesting government that does a better job of genuinely representing the will of its people while still incorporating aspects of the Islamic religious heritage which are so deeply ingrained within the country's culture and heritage.
But maybe I'm just nuts.

And following an election which was riddled with fraud (the opponent eventually withdrew) and in the face of numerous charges of high level corruption within the top levels of his government and administration, Afghanistanian President Hamid Karzai was sworn in today for a second term. I can't believe that in the entire country of Afghanistan a better man can't be found to fill the office of president than this clown. Karzai's own brother has been accused of being heavily involved in drug trafficking, one of Karzai's anti-corruption task forces has already been disbanded because it turned out that it was being led by a man who had previously been imprisoned on drug charges in the U.S., and only yesterday Karzai's minister of mines was shown to have accepted $30 million in bribes relating to a deal with a Chinese state firm and copper mining. And these things are surely only the tip of the iceberg.
Nonetheless, the U.S. sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Karzai's inauguration as a show of support. Arrrrgh....
Once again the good ol' U.S.A. is aligning itself with questionable, shady people in order to consolidate our own power so we can wage a highly questionable war in someone else's country (note: I don't question the moral underpinnings of this war the same way that I've questioned Iraq, but I do have serious doubts about whether we can really turn Afganistan into a safe, stable place, as well as questions about whether the enemy that we initially went there to fight- namely, Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network- is even still in the country). Does this alliance with Karzai bother anyone else? I just have these visions of us helping to solidify Karzai's power base, and then later having him, in turn, ally himself with some of our enemies. Other exciting possibilities include the chance that he might become despotic and ruthless toward his own people, or that he will merely continue to cynically exploit the people of his country, making himself and his personal allies wealthy and powerful while exploiting the resources of his country and leaving it in terrible shape (and given the allegations of drug smuggling, bribery, and corruption by those around Karzai, one could argue that he's probably well on his way toward fulfilling this last hypothetical already).
Anyway, there's no one else who could run for president? Afghanistan is a decent sized country. I find it hard to believe that they have no one better suited for the job than Karzai.

Well, that's it for now.
Peace!!

Sarah Palin's Book Tour; Newsweek Grows More Political

Hey, guys! Hope everyone is doing okay. Last night I mostly just hung out, but Eric stopped by (he was in my 'hood), and we talked about Venus Fixer and music and stuff.

Well, it's no big secret that Sarah Palin has a new book out (called Going Rogue), and she's launching into a supporting book tour filled with speaking engagements. Anyone who ever glanced at this blog during our past presidential elections knows that I'm not a big Sarah Palin fan. I don't buy her folksy, woman-of-the-people schtick, and in addition to disagreeing with her ideologically on a number of issues, I really just don't feel that she has the intellect, education, or the judgement to be president (I think these are concerns about Palin that many Americans have, but which Palin tries to ward off as being solely the criticisms of nerdy, ivory tower intellectuals and east coast elitists).
Anyway, despite my concerns about Palin, or oddly, perhaps because of my concerns about Palin, I think it's probably a good thing for the Democrats that Palin seems interested in a candidacy for the 2012 election. I think Palin is too radical and anti-intelllectual for many mainstream, moderate Republicans, and I think there's a strong possibility that we might end up seeing her running as a third party conservative before this whole thing is over. This, of course, could end up splitting the conservative vote and weakening the GOP, which in turn would be good for the Democrats. And the Democrats, frankly, could use some infighting on the conservative side, especially given how much of our own infighting goes on within the Democratic ranks (the block, lockstep solidarity of the GOP is often what gives it a strategic advantage over the Democrats, who rarely seem to be able to achieve a rapid consensus in order to get things done).
The other reason I think it might be a good thing if Palin ran is that people on the left really hate her. When a president is trying to win a second term, there's always a danger that the voters who initially supported him won't feel as energized and supportive the second time around. There's a worry that 4 years with a Democrat in office may make left leaning voters lackadaisical and disinterested. Meanwhile, the opposition on the right will have spent four years whipping its voters into a frenzy- mobilizing them to go out and remove the great, Satanic Democrat from office.
Palin, however, provides a great Satan on the right. Leaders on the left don't even seem to need to whip up opposition to her candidacy. Palin's speeches and interviews, all on their own, seem to be enough to rile up and annoy many people. A wide range of voters, from moderate centrists to voters on the far left, seem to really have a passionate dislike for Palin, and I honestly feel like the anti-Palin sentiment might be strong enough to get some people off their sofas to go vote against her when they otherwise might just stay at home and sit the election out.
So I hope Palin's book sells well and that she continues to receive encouraging support from her base. You go, Sarah!
In a side note, I've been feeling that over the last couple of years Newsweek (which I receive at home) has been becoming more overtly liberal in both its reporting and its op ed pieces. I'm obviously a liberal/progressive or whatever you want to call it (I like to refer to myself as a civil liberties defending, social contract supporting rationalist, but I guess that's too cumbersome for most), but I still get annoyed when I feel like news sources are trying to tell me what to think. Newsweek makes pretty clear delineations between its opinion pieces and its news stories, but it just seems like the magazine increasingly has less news and more and more opinion. Even when I may eventually reach the same conclusions as their writers, I would like to see more of an in depth exploration of the facts- not news presented as argument with a thesis to prove. This sentiment might be part of why I'd make a poor Repbulican. Aside from my general dislike of Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, etc., I'm not a big fan of having my news delivered along with snide comments that tell me how I should be viewing the accompanying facts. Personally, I think a lot of progressives feel this way, and I think this probably accounts for a lot of the ratings discrepancy between MSNBC and Air America's progressive talk radio format versus the much higher rated Fox News and conservative talk radio shows.
I'm guessing that Newsweek's increasingly overt political tone is a result of the magazine's attempts to redefine itself in the internet age. In a time when we have 24 hour cable news channels and internet news feeds which can instantly deliver some pretty detailed news stories directly to your iPhone or laptop, it's got to be difficult to justify the existence of a news magazine that covers news sotries in a once-a-week format.
Still, I'd rather see more investigative journalism or more in depth coverage and analysis as compared to the new trend toward focusing on opinion and analysis. It's probably a lot cheaper, though, to pay a guy to sit at a desk and type up his opinions than it is to pay a guy to fly around the world to Afghanistan and Iraq and other places in order to carry out the time consuming process of running down leads, carrying out interviews, and doing the other hard work that's required for true investigative journalism. In a world where competition is increasingly stiff, revenues are down, and where magazines are in competition with free news outlets on the web, I can see why magazines might tend to opt for opinion pieces as a way of keeping readers engaged.
But I don't really love that idea.
Anyway, that's it for now. Maybe more later.

Norah Jones

Hey!
So last night Ryan and Jamie came over for dinner, and I made a kind of tortilla soup for them. I'm not sure that what I did qualifies as genuine cooking, but it was a hot meal, and we stayed in for it, so I'm counting it, anyway.
What else?
On my drive in this morning on NPR I heard an interview with Norah Jones about her new album, The Fall. I like Norah Jones's voice, but I would never really claim to be the world's biggest Norah Jones fan (her songs are almost a little too soft and soothing for me on most days). Anyhoo, I was pretty surprised to hear Jones talking about the fact that she's always been a big Tom Waits fan. Apparently she loves the rough, spartan, growl-infused music of Waits, and she went on to say that she actively sought out some of the people who had been involved in the engineering and production of Waits's 1999 album, Mule Variations, which she considers a classic (as do I).
I was impressed to hear that Jones was impressed by Tom Waits. Now I'm actually much more interested to hear her new album (although I'm pretty sure that Jones isn't going to sound like Waits. Her soft, smooth voice is pretty great, but it's just miles and miles away from the coarse vocal sounds that apparently helped to inspire her).
Anyway, I just found the story interesting.

Man, I just don't have much today. I've tried- I really have. I've read the news sites and wracked my brain, but I don't think I have much else today. I'm also feeling strangely warn down and tired.
So have a good day! I hope you Austinites are enjoying the cooler temperautres and brilliant, blue skies!