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For Veterans’ Day, here’s a Denver Post piece detailing a young man’s struggles with the military and his own life as a reporter and photographer followed him for 27 months during basic training, advanced infantry training, and a tour in Iraq. It’s really spectacularly done, and the photography is revealing and often heartbreaking.

Saw this quote today:

Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is: “Because the animals are like us.” Ask the experimenters why it is morally OK to experiment on animals, and the answer is: “Because the animals are not like us.” Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction. – Charles R. Magel, professor of philosophy

I can’t say he’s wrong, but here’s my question: what would Professor Magel have scientists experiment on? Hobos? I guess you could say “paid volunteers,” but if you have to test, say, a pediatric cancer treatment, is there a large pool of children whose parents are willing to try a completely untested-on-any-living-creature treatment? I’m not saying we need to scoop the eyeballs out of a chimpanzee and rub lipstick and rouge into the sockets, but I have no problem with medical tests on mice and pigs. Partly because I hate mice (and have been waging a one man, two cat war against them in my new home [the cats are next to useless]) and because perhaps after the tests are done I might be permitted to eat parts of the pigs.

In two posts (one, two), Bruce Buschel outlines the 100 things that restaurant staffers should never do, some of which are obvious:

1. Do not let anyone enter the restaurant without a warm greeting.

8. Do not interrupt a conversation. For any reason. Especially not to recite specials. Wait for the right moment.

And some of which I’d never think of, but which are still crazy important:

12. Do not touch the rim of a water glass. Or any other glass.

13. Handle wine glasses by their stems and silverware by the handles.

I’d add a few more of my own:

101: Write down my order. I am not in the least bit impressed that you can remember the entire order of a table for four, and will not be adding a few dollars to the tip for it. I will, with absolute certainty, subtract a few dollars from your tip when I asked for a medium-rare steak and get it well-done, or if you forget to tell the cooks that my wife doesn’t like onions on her burger.

102: This is one for the restaurant owner: if your establishment is BYOB, don’t charge me money to open my bottle of wine. I can do it myself, with the corkscrew on my pocketknife. If you want to make money off of alcohol, then get a fricking liquor license, you skinflint.

(We had dinner at Butterfish, in West Chester, on Friday, and while the food was fantastic and the service superb, being taxed $3 a bottle infuriated me.)

Rehearsal for a concert I’m singing in on Saturday got a nice write-up in a local arts blog. As usual, my advertising is late and largely useless, but if you’ve no plans for Saturday night, I invite you to come to First and Central Presbyterian to hear the Mastersingers of Wilmington. We’re doing some old stuff (Bach, Schütz, John Sheppard), and some newish stuff (Desenclos Requiem, written in the early 60s but awfully modern in harmony and style). It really will be some of the finest choral singing you’ll hear anywhere in the Delaware Valley.

Warning: everybody tears up while watching this video. EVERY. BODY. (If you don’t, you are a zombie, and I’d prefer you go elsewhere and not eat my sweetbreads.)

Tricked On Halloween – Watch more Funny Videos

My day has been improved markedly by Ana Marie Cox and Jason Linkins “live-blogging” the White House flickr feed. All the best stuff is actually just for the first picture:

JASON: Also back there is Arne Duncan, who I thought was a baller? He played in Australia though, where there’s trapezoids on the court and they wear hot pants and you have to account for the Coriolis Effect when you run your backdoor cuts.
ANA MARIE: But the star of this picture is, of course, Reggie Love.
JASON: This is what a real athlete looks like. Look at his face! Calm like a bomb. That vertical leap is what scares Glenn Beck the most about the Obama administration.
ANA MARIE: If I could make a related point about Reggie Love?
JASON: Please do.
ANA MARIE: Basically? YUM.
JASON: Ha! Who is that underneath Reggie Love, looking on in terror?
ANA MARIE: That’s Pennsylvania Representative and Iraq War vet Patrick Murphy, who’s spearheading the Congressional effort to end the ban on gays in the military.
JASON: Well, don’t ask and don’t tell anyone about that time he got cold postered by Reggie Love!

You know why everyone hates the Yankees? Here’s an example, a text message I received from my buddy Courtney at midnight last night:

YANKS 4 LIFE BIATCH!!! THE CHAMPS ARE HERE!!!

That’s why. Dammit I’m depressed.

Keith “Large Head” Olbermann compiled a great post he calls The Nine Smartest Plays In World Series History. Absotively worth a read, even if I do disagree with number 1. Number 3 struck me, for some reason:

The story is well-known to this day; Gibson, aching, knees swollen, limping, somehow creeps to the batter’s box and then takes a 3-2 pitch from another hall of fame Oakland reliever, Dennis Eckersley, and turns it into the most improbable of game-winning home runs.

But the backstory involves a Dodger special assignment scout named Mel Didier. When the count reached 3-and-2, Gibson says he stepped out of the batter’s box and could hear the scouting report on Eckersley that Didier had recited to the Dodgers, in his distinctive Mississippi accent, before the Series began. On a 3-2 count, against a left-handed power hitter, you could be absolutely certain that Eckersley would throw a backdoor slider. He always did it. And as Gibson once joked, “I was a left-handed power hitter.”

Baseball is the best sport ever. Also: Go Phils!

Stupid baseball, making me and the Phanatic all depressed.

(Photo: Melody Kramer.)

I, for one, fully support this type of exercise.