The Rage Diaries

Find Hannah's uncle

If you're not already reading Hannah Meehan's food weblog, Hannah Cooks, you should be. But if you know anything about where her New Orleans-based uncle David Meehan is, please let her know on NOLA.com's Missing Persons entry.

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On a related note: as you are all aware, I am a big zoo booster, and as Hurrricane Katrina unfolded, I was trying to see what was going to happen to the animals at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans and the Marine Life Oceanarium in Gulfport, Mississippi.

Happily, the Oceanium dolphins rode out the hurricane in hotel pools (photos here: here, here, here, here and here). Today, they were moved to the Gulfarium in Gainesville, FL. ("Dolphins Moved From Hotel Swimming Pool to Panhandle Marine Park," Gainesville Sun, Aug 31, 05). Unhappily, it's probably a permanent move: the Oceanarium was destroyed. ("Lordstown Grad Helps Save Dolphins," Tribune-Chronicle, Aug 30, 05)

And it looks like the Houston Zoo is going to be helping the Audubon Zoo if need be; I couldn't find a more recent cite confirming any zoo rescue teams. ("Houston's Raining Cats and Dogs in Katrina's Wake," Houston Chronicle, Aug 30, 05). Although Aug 30 stories had the zoo mostly unscathed, there's nothing reporting how it's faring in the flooding. ("City Is Damaged, Damp -- And Lucky," Baltimore Sun, Aug 30, 05).

So: although there's no diminishing Hurricane Katrina's impact on humans, let's not forget that other species got hit too. And if you're in a donating mood, the Houston Zoo could use your support. They're also offering free admission to anyone displaced by Hurricane Katrina, which is pretty solid. And although Florida's Gulfarium -- which was also hit by Katrina, for its second weather whammy in two years -- doesn't take donations, locals can always volunteer.

And if you really want to be optimistic, donate to the Audubon Zoo. I have faith that New Orleans will be habitable again; give the residents a zoo, to help them return to daily, civilized life.

Zaba-daba-don't

So there's this site, Zabasearch, which is moderately creepy in that it offers -- free! for anyone! -- a pretty accurate history of where you've lived and what your phone numbers have been.

Yes, it obtained the data through legal means. The really interesting thing, I think, is in how it manages to associate all the data from disparate sources and create a profile of you. But the chances of learning how it does that are only slightly larger than the chances of finding a straightforward explanation for how you get your data off the site.

And now you'll have new reason to want your data off the site: Zabasearch is offering a blog feature that allows other people to make comments about you -- and you have no control over all the items that will be associated with your name. Also, they're mulling adding the ability to add satellite map data to your listing, so people can get maps to your house without the bother of going to another site. ("Search Site to Add Free Blogs," SFChron, Aug 26, 05)

So would you like to know how to get off Zabasearch? I bet you would!

Just because you haven't heard of them doesn't mean they aren't covered

So I read Alternet's piece today, "Women on the List" and the author has this to say of the women at the top of Forbes' "The World's 100 Most Powerful Women" list:

It's not that they're not important people--they certainly are--it's just that the media have not made them household names.

For the record, those women are: Condoleezza Rice, Wu Yi, Yulia Tymoshenko, Gloria Arroyo, Margaret Whitman, Anne Mulcahy, Sallie Krawcheck, Brenda Barnes, Oprah Winfrey and Melinda Gates.

Go exercise that franchise

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Eighty-five years ago today, the 19th Amendment was formally adopted into the Constitution by Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby.

It is mind-boggling to me that there are people alive today who were born into an America where you could be denied the right to vote based on your gender. But it is equally mind-boggling to consider that the movement for women's suffrage more or less began 72 years prior to actually getting the vote, with the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. The Declaration of Sentiments signed there includes the following:

[I]n view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation, - in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States.

In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the State and national Legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country.

The gap between this declaration and the right to vote spanned 72 years -- not what's called "immediate" in any but the geological sense of the word. Yet I'm somewhat heartened: think of all the people working toward that goal, working through a Civil War, political schisms and institutional oppositions. And it eventually happened. For any would-be world-changers, I think there's a lesson to be learned here.

Now, if you haven't registered to go vote yet -- what are you waiting for?

Well, then I apologize for the accountability slam

This just in ...

Conservative religious broadcaster Pat Robertson apologized Wednesday for calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez during Monday's broadcast of his "700 Club" program.

"Is it right to call for assassination? No, and I apologize for that statement," he said in a written statement. Earlier,

Robertson said that his remarks about Chavez were taken out of context and that he never called for the killing of the Latin American leader

"Robertson Apologizes." (CNN)

No word on whether he apologized for attempting to bullshit on the "AP got it wrong!" angle.

Will this campaign work?

So Target was the sole advertiser in an issue of the New Yorker recently. Pesky questions about blowing big, bullseye-shaped holes in the wall separating editorial from advertising aside, it's a pretty good demographic meetup between shopper and reader. True, you can't even GET the New Yorker at Target, and true, it's a little jarring to walk into a Starbucks based out of Target and realize you could pay for a shaken-tea lemonade what you just dropped on drawer pulls. But there's a general demographic affinity between the two entities.

I am wondering whether the demographic affinity between Wal-Mart shoppers and Vogue readers will work as well. Wal-Mart is running an 8-page ad insert in the doorstopper fashion insiders like to call "the September issue of Vogue." Here's why:

John Fleming, Wal-Mart's chief marketing officer, said Tuesday that the company's Vogue campaign was intended to highlight the chain's continuing effort to improve its apparel. Fleming said he hoped the ads would prompt more of the 120 million customers the chain averages per week to visit its clothing aisles. That assumes, of course, that Wal-Mart's current customers read Vogue, which sounds like a stretch until Fleming says that 93% of all households include a person who visits a Wal-Mart at least once a year.

Fleming acknowledged, however, that "there would be some customers who read Vogue who have never been in a Wal-Mart store."

The median annual household income of Vogue's nearly 1.2 million readers is more than $59,000.

-- "Wal-Mart Takes a Page from Vogue," LAT, Aug 25, 05

Sadly, I will have  to leave the claim that 93% of American households contain a Wal-Mart visitor for another time. (Although, it's an eye-popping one.)

We know that Wal-Mart's been hankering to expand their customer base to include more affluent shoppers. Will a spread in Vogue be what it takes to give it the same you-don't-have-to-sacrifice-style-for-savings vibe that Target consistently emits? Or are the discount chains' public images too different to ever woo the affluent?

"Take him out" could also mean dinner and a movie, I guess

"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."

-- Pat Robertson on the 700 Club, via CNN's "Robertson: Chavez Remarks Misinterpreted" (Aug 24, 05)

To be fair, here's what Robertson originally said:

"If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... 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 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."

Let's see where the semantic confusion could have arisen:

Won't you take me to/ Forth & Towne?

So we had covered the announcement of this new chain aimed at all those 35-year-old baby boomers, and I figured everyone would enjoy a little follow-up on the Gap's newest store model, Forth & Towne:

I'd rather be anti-poverty

Maybe, just maybe, abortion rates would drop if we had stronger social safety nets in place and workplaces that didn't penalize women for being mothers. I say this after looking at Russia's abortion rates for last year:

"Risky" is my middle name

First of all, a big thank you to everyone who's taken the time to comment on the previous post. I appreciate the feedback, and will certainly be weighing it as I keep gazing upon my navel and murmuring, "Whither the blog? And should I lay off the Ben & Jerry's for a while?"

Anyhow, the subject of real estate bubbles assumed a new and vital interest as we househunted ...