If you check in here regularly, you’ve probably noticed that a few posts have appeared, then disappeared, and appeared again before finally being vaporized. If you haven’t noticed, you haven’t missed much.

What it comes down to is that I’m having boundary issues, questions of just what is and isn’t ok to talk about publically. I’m hyper-sensitive to anything that could be interpreted as whining right now, so if I look at something later and think it might swing that direction, poof, it’s gone. It would be better if I could figure that out before posting at all, of course.

I’m leery of what my kids call “overshare,” or To Much Information. I try not to let this place be a confessional on anything other than mental health issues - I’m comfortable with that because I’ve been told specifically that it’s helpful to other people. For that reason, I’m ok with it. The other stuff … well, that’s different. Maybe just because I feel the need to write something, it doesn’t mean anyone actually needs to read it. Yet I feel the urge to reach out on other levels. Hence my conflict.

The stuff I pulled was nothing earth-shattering; my fears of the dentist and my difficulty in dealing with competition. But there was enough personal history in them to make me cautious. They ran up against my boundary rules that say it’s ok to be educational, but not ok to ask for emotional support. That’s the same reason I turned off comments to my post about Shadow’s death. I’m a lot more comfortable with intellectual discussion than I am with emotional intimacy. Yet I still feel the need to communicate on emotional issues. A quandary. Some of that is the awareness that my kids and others who know me well read this; nothing is ever truly anonymous, yet I long for that illusion.

In the meantime, things may come and go as I wrestle with this. Sorry for the inconvenience.

He’s baaaack. Roger “The Rocket” Clemens has reportedly agreed to a 22 million dollar deal to return to the Houston Astro at mid-season. No contract has yet been signed, but an official announcement is expected later this week.

After a melt down in the Game One of the World Series last year, Clements retired for the 2nd time in his career, aided by the fact that the Astros chose not to go to salary arbitration with him. That action prevented them from resigning him before May 1. Bidders this time around included the Yankees, Red Sox and Rangers. Part of his contract requirements included more time with his family, something no other player could get away with.

A younger Clements was notorious for both his velocity and his temper. He wasn’t above aiming a 95 mph fastball at a batter’s head, inspiring as much fear as respect over his career. He seems to have mellowed with age on both counts.

I’ve never been a fan, but I’ve got to respect a guy who can still get it done at 43. Here’s wishing him a calm, successful season.

UPDATE: Clemens made it official this morning. He’ll start with Class A minor league in Lexington, KY, the same team his son plays for, with a move up to Double A Corpus Christi and AAA Round Rock, TX before an anticipated return to the majors on June 22.

Coal prices are at a record high. So are mining accident deaths, with 33 miners dead in the first 5 months of 2006 compared to 22 in all of 2005, according the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Coincidence? Maybe not.

With prices running at $64 a ton, a 3 fold increase in the last 3 years, companies are pushing to raise production to answer the demand. Some say this is being done without the additional laborers necessary to do it safely. Mines are adding overnight and weekend shifts and generating more overtime hours for miners, some of whom may be working 6 or 7 days a week. It is theorized that fatigue could be a factor in the number of recent fatal events.

The industry has gotten some bad press for it’s push to increase worker productivity. From the Jacksonville, NC Daily News:

In a memo to employees last fall, Massey Energy Chief Executive Officer Don Blankenship roused controversy by saying production is the top priority.

“If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other than run coal … you need to ignore them and run coal. This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that the coal pays the bills,” Blankenship wrote.

A week later, Blankenship sent employees another memo, saying safety is the company’s top priority.

It took them a week of public relations nightmares to get that point. I wonder how much of the change in attitude trickled down to local management.

Carlos Cracraft, a labor market analyst in the Kentucky Department for Workforce Development, says that the average workload for miners in that state is currently 49.5 hours a week. That’s a 6 day week right there and that’s only an average. If some are working a standard 40 hour week, that means that some others are putting in 60.

Overtime pay is great, but only if you’re alive to spend it. The trucking industry has a maximum legal length of driving day followed by mandatory off time for adequate rest. Miners need to be protected by a similar regulation. The death of labor unions has resulted in fewer and fewer protections for workers and in that void, the law of supply and demand is king. Right now something is going horribly wrong.

In a moment of political opportunism, the Washington State Republican Party came up with a proposal to stem the flow of immigration - strip their native born children of American citizenship. The party, meeting in Yakima, added a plank proposing such a thing to the formal platform with little debate and few dissenting votes. Proponents cite the cost to public hospitals and the expense of welfare for the children of indigent or deported illegal immigrants.

“I think voters realize immigration is a problem and we are trying to grapple with solutions to the illegal-immigration problem,” Diane Tebelious, state GOP chair said in an article published in the Seattle PI.

State Democratic Party Chairman Dwight Pelz called the GOP resolution “a punitive and inhumane response to the immigration issue America is confronting” and said it would prove to be an “embarrassment” to Republican candidates. “Abraham Lincoln is turning over in his grave,” he added.

Indeed.

There’s just one pesky little problem with this proposal: the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Section One says “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. ”

Since other sections of the 14th Amendment are under fire–due process and equal protection of the law–I can understand why they would consider this a mere technicality. But I refuse to believe that the citizens of this country would agree. I would like to think we’re more educated and enlightened than that. I’ll be watching to see how quickly Washington state Republican candidates jump to disavow this plank when word gets out.

Or maybe not. And that frightens me.

This weekend, Barry Bonds passed Babe Ruth on the career home runs list, hitting number 715 in a losing effort against the Colorado Rockies. If he lasts another year in the majors, he stands a good chance of setting the record by breaking Hank Aaron’s 755 mark.

Much has been made of Bond’s alleged use of steroids, evidenced by the popularity of the book Game of Shadows by San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams. Bonds has filed a lawsuit alleging they used “illegally obtained grand jury transcripts.” The suit is believed to be a losing cause, but Bonds stands by his denial.

All season, Bonds’ pending accomplishment has been fodder for sports media commentators everywhere. Should any record he set be separated in the stats sheets by an asterisk denoting the suspicion surrounding performance-enhancing drugs? Should his numbers be invalidated completely?

For all the rumors that have floated around the public consciousness the last few years, no steroids test has confirmed the hypothesis and I haven’t seen any effort to require such a test. The most recent round of collective bargaining allows for random drug tests but to the best of my knowledge, not for targeted investigations. So innuendo is all anyone has to go on.

Major League Baseball has no incentive to change that. Record breakers pack the stands with paying fans. Home run hitters provide public relations for a sport still recovering from the 1994 strike/lockout. After all, we love a winner. While players put their bodies on the line by taking steroids, it’s ownership that profits by it, and controversy surrounding it only stirs up the public’s juices as it did when Bonds set the one season record of 73 in 2001. Ironically, the record he broke was held by Mark McGuire, who was also under suspicion of steroids. But no one seems to remember that.

Outside of San Francisco, Bonds draws boos rather than cheers. That was true even before he started setting records. For most people, Bonds is just not Joe Average enough. He’s got a superstar’s ego and the skills to back it up. His perceived lack of humility and respect for the press is reminiscent of the buzz surrounding Roger Maris in 1961. (If you haven’t seen the movie 61* , you should.) They managed to get an asterisk affixed to Maris’ single season tally. The Babe was safe.

Historically it’s been the threat to icon “The Babe” which galvanized the opposition as much as personality. I remember the same negativity surrounding self-effacing Hank Aaron in 1974. In that case, race was as much a factor in public sentiment as was his pursuit of Ruth. I wonder if that’s a factor with Bonds.

I find it very hard to get worked up over steroid use. Professional baseball has never been a level playing field and never will be, as long as the New York Yankees have a payroll 7 times higher than the most financially strapped Tampa Bay Devilrays, and as much as the 6 lowest paying teams combined. If you want something approaching parity, watch college sports.

In the end, it’s all about the image, not about the health of players or the fairness of the competition. If Bonds had the temperament of Mark McGuire, everyone would be cheering, not booing.

The accusation of steroids is an excuse. We just don’t like him.

Since one of the most common search phrases that brings wanderers into I See Invisible People is “make me invisible” (along with “see invisible people have sex” - I’ll leave you to ponder that one), I found this story interesting.

From News.com.au:

The concept begins with refraction - a quality of light in which the electromagnetic waves take the quickest, but not necessarily the shortest, route. This accounts for the illusion that a pencil immersed in a glass of water appears broken, for instance.

“Imagine a situation where a medium guides light around a hole in it,” physicist Ulf Leonhardt of Britain’s University of St Andrews, wrote in one of the reports, published in tomorrow’s issue of the journal Science.

The light rays end up behind the object as if they had travelled in a straight line.

“Any object placed in the hole would be hidden from sight. The medium would create the ultimate optical illusion: invisibility,” Mr Leonhardt wrote.

“Such devices may be possible. The method developed here can be also applied to escape detection by other electromagnetic waves or sound.”

You can read the abstract of Leonhardt’s article entitled Optical Conformal Mapping on the Science Magazine website.

Making oneself invisible is probably not in the cards, however. The “Hollow Man” scenario is out because this theory depends upon a dense, heavy shell of the hypothesized metamaterials. This probably rules out invisible sex, as well. At a minimum, metamaterials would make one hell of an intrusive condom.

Via Digg.

Spinach Quiche Lorraine

9 inch deep dish pie shell
8 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
1 cup chopped fresh spinach
1 cup shredded swiss cheese
1/4 cup chopped onion
10 oz. evaporated milk (2 small cans)
4 eggs
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

Preheat oven to 425. In pie shell, combine bacon, spinach, cheese and onion. Mix together eggs and milk, add salt and pepper. Pour into pie shell. Place quiche on baking sheet and put in the oven. Bake 15 minutes at 425, then reduce heat to 350 and bake 30 minutes more. It’s done when a knife inserted comes out clean.

Reheats in the microwave just fine.

Be sure to check out Steve Leigh’s place for an excellent discussion of the constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press. Steve doesn’t get political often, but I love it when he does.

I quote:

You want scary? Here’s scary. Apparently Attorney General Alberto Gonzales believes that the government should be prosecuting journalists for publishing classified information, because after all, national security is far more important than the right to a free press. A free press is, after all, nothing more than “criminal activity.” When asked by the ABC program This Week if, say, the NY Times should be prosecuted for its reporting on the NSA surveillance, Gonzales said this: “We have an obligation to enforce the law and to prosecute those who engage in criminal activity.”

Be sure to read through the comments for additional enlightenment.

It’s time for the weekly Seattle PI news quiz. What have you learned this week?

I got only 7 out of 10 this week. I’m slipping.

Presented for your edification.

From Physorg.com:

Controversial rhythm method study revealed
A British study suggests the Roman Catholic Church-approved “rhythm method” may kill more embryos than other methods of contraception.

The “rhythm method” relies on abstinence during the most fertile period of a woman’s menstrual cycle. For women who have regular 28-day cycles, that occurs around days 10 to 17 of the cycle.

It’s believed the method works by preventing conception from occurring. But Professor Luc Bovens of the London School of Economics says it may owe much of its success to the fact that embryos conceived on the fringes of the fertile period are less viable than those conceived toward the middle.

Bovens says it can be calculated that two to three embryos will have died every time the rhythm method results in a pregnancy.

Bovens cites anti-abortion rights activists who equate global oral contraceptive use to chemical abortion that is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths of embryos, or unborn children, every year.

But, says Bovens, if all oral contraceptive users converted to the rhythm method, they would be effectively causing the deaths of millions of embryos.

The study appears in the Journal of Medical Ethics.

His website gives this additional job title: “Professor London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method.” Also “Coordinator of the MSc, Philosophy and Public Policy.”

His article is entitled The Rhythm Method and Embryonic Death.

Found via Digg.