Ron's Log

Iraqi Voting

For those who are young or forgetful:

U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote
Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror

by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 [1967]-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

....A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam. The election was the culmination of a constitutional development that began in January, 1966, to which President Johnson gave his personal commitment when he met Premier Ky and General Thieu, the chief of state, in Honolulu in February.

The purpose of the voting was to give legitimacy to the Saigon Government, which has been founded only on coups and power plays since November, 1963, when President Ngo Dinh Deim was overthrown by a military junta.

Nick McDonald, 1928-2005

The police officer who arrested Lee Harvey Oswald after Kennedy's assassination in 1963 has died at age 76 in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Kodachrome & Volleyball

He says it was a Kodachrome moment, but when Brent Mullins photographed the Manhattan Beach and Huntington Beach AVP Volleyball Championships, I don't know if he was really thinking about his medium.

Panoramas?

Here's a site that says it has 4000 Quicktime panoramas. They seem to all be in western North America and Hawaii. As a test, I selected Hawaii, narrowed it down to Kauai, and was disappointed to see he has NONE of Waimea Canyon, but has 6 of Waimea. Once I got there, it looked fairly boring (I wanted Waimea Canyon, dammit!) so I quit looking. If you poke through it and find something nice, do let us all know.

4 Guys

Another Thing About Firefox...

...that I don't like.

I get a message like this when a site fails to load. It seems to be trying to protect me from the sometimes informative 404 (or other) message from the website. The main trouble with this message is that the URL I requested is buried in the muck. I can keep clicking idiotically on the "Try again" link, but sometimes I like to grab the URL and try it in another browser, or save it in a text file to try later. I can do that from Firefox only by copying the "Try again" link and then editing it in a text file to cut off the muck surrounding it. Why do I need this? It does me no good and feels so very AOL-ish.

Here's what the "Try again" link contains in this instance (I've inserted a break so that it will wrap): "chrome://global/content/netError.xhtml?e=connectionFailure&u=http%3A//www.daypop.com/top.htm &d=The%20connection%20was%20refused%20when%20attempting%20to%20contact%20www.daypop.com.#"

George Soros Has Something To Say

I don't know if Soros never got the word that Democrats were supposed to kind of tone down their standard infighting, or if he thinks that dropping $26 million on the campaign entitles him to a bit more bitching than other Americans. Basically he blames Kerry...and Greenspan.

VMI Boys

The Washington Post has an article indicating some concern about costumes that appeared at the Halloween party last October at Virginia Military Institute. There were mock-Nazi uniforms, fairies, and US Navy uniforms modified so as to suggest the practice of sodomy was part of naval routine.

While the mock-Nazi costumes were clearly wrong, the fairy outfits and sailors uniforms would have been totally appropriate at most parties I would attend, so how could I criticize?

You can see some photos of the outfits here. But it seems the actual photos have been rapidly disappearing from the web as VMI cadets pull them down, and as traffic overwhelms some sites. In order to facilitate your understanding of the issues, I've preserved 2 of the images that I don't find objectionable on my Flickr site.

"greg's so-called life" has preserved more images.

An article in Roanoke.com has no photos.

Some of the articles will point you to the Webshots site, but most of the photos have been pulled from there. Still I found some from VMI that might be of interest. Here is what looks like a hazing scene. Probably NSFW. Here a cadet shows us how he holds his saber. A cadet in drag at the Halloween party.

Right There In Chelsea, Massachusetts

In a remarkable display of an inability to perceive reality, The Rev. Jerome Gillespie, [former] pastor at St. John the Evangelist Church [a Roman Catholic establishment] in Swampscott, Massachusetts, propositioned a 12-year-old girl and her mother for sex while dining at Floramo's in Chelsea. The mother and daughter were seated near, but not dining with the priest. Apparently money was offered, as he has been charged with "solicitation of sex for a fee" as well as enticement of a child under age 16 and accosting a person of the opposite sex. The, uh, incident occurred last Tuesday. The priest resigned on Friday, the same day Chelsea police issued the summons.

As is usual policy in these situations, a church higher-up (Auxiliary Bishop Francis X. Irwin this time) came out to the parish to say good things about the accused.

"Here is a man whose brother just had heart problems. He took no days off, he worked under tremendous pressure to be a good and available pastor. I know he is the same good man after as he was before this terrible incident," Irwin said.

Coachella Valley Music Festival

The line-up for the 2005 festival has finally been announced, and David Bowie isn't on the list.