Vengeance, Ledyard football, and other junk

So I'm back early from Thanksgiving with the family so I can take care of my other pets, the mouse stem cells. It ain't easily having 20 million little mouths to feed. The holiday was wonderful, despite some sadness in the wedding planning department (a nice venue was not nice enough and got the axe). While home I managed to check out the local paper "The Day" which is a really great paper in a number of respects. (One downside is links are only good for 8 days at The Day, so if you want to check these stories out, browse at the above link soon. I'm not going to bother permalinking.)

Two stories jumped out from the front page, due to their common theme of revenge. In one, Shias have started burning Sunnis alive. Death squads are dousing people with kerosene and incinerating them. That's a bad way to go (debate later whether that's worse than being tortured and killed by power drills) . In another article, a former KGB agent and Russian dissenter has accused Putin from his deathbed. The man was looking into the suspicious death of another Russian critic when he came down with a rare case of radioactive polonium-210 poisoning. Hairless, weak, and suffering from multiple organ failure (ie another bad way to go) he dennounced the Russian president Vladimir Putin who had this to say:

A death of a man is always a tragedy and I deplore this. it's extremely regrettable that such a tragic event as death is being used for political provocation.

Another non-denial denial? Somebody's sending a pretty clear message. It's somebody with better access to rare chemical reagents than I have...and mine's pretty good. Barring some official at the KGB (or whatever it's successor is called) taking care of this without Putin's knowledge (ie plausible deniability), I worry about the convergence of motive and capability.

Recently Bill Maher came out against the 22nd ammendment (that prevents presidents from running 3x). When I see tryanny like this, I'm glad we have it.

In other news: on top of people killing each other in new nasty ways, Iraq's gone to hell and Lebanon may soon follow. Happy Thanksgiving from the big Lanky Black Cloud of Bad News!

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In local hometown blogging, Mignault is still in charge of Ledyard football, and they're going to the playoffs this year. Unfortunately, their loss to Fitch this weekend cost them 2 starters to injury and has them playing the top seed in class M. I wish the 2 players a speedy and full recovery. Go Colonels!

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And in personal blogging, I'd like to point out how much I hate travelling with a suitcase in Philly. Worse, I'd brought a pillow. Nothing says "easy target" like a guy carrying a pillow. I had to come back Saturday night for lab work. My train dropped me off at 9:20PM and I began the walk to UPenn. Now this isn't ordinarily a bad walk (not compared to the route from Penn to my house), but I've been avoiding the subway since a shooting incident, and I was going to walk the 6 blocks. So I'm walking down Market street, which has just enough traffic to make it "safe", and I pass this guy idly sitting on a rail under an overpass. A sketchy fucker hanging out alone under a dark overpass, but whatever, no biggie. Then, after I passed, the guy decided to get up, cross the street, and began following me some distance behind. Alarms go off. Ordinarily this would not be a big deal, he was a ways back, I was aware of him, and I was wearing sneakers. However, trailing a suitcase limits my mobility and makes me a target, so now I'm concerned. 2 blocks down Market, still following, still concerned. I'd planned to cut across Drexel and Penn to get to lab, which would have meant crossing to his side of the street, and treking through some secluded areas (which are usually safer due to campus police...unless you're followed in). Long story short, I felt stalked and vulnerable. After 5 years my urban survival skills are instinctive enough that I trust them. So I took a cab for 4 blocks. I'll be second-guessing that all night, but I'm pretty confident I made the right decision.

Then I get to lab, and this state-of-the-art 1990's reasearch building has had another water-damage incident (you could see missing ceiling tiles and splotches on the floor). A sign says the elevator's down (presumably from the water damage) so I had to carry the suitcase up 4 flights of stairs. I'm leaving the suitcase here tonight.