Monthly Archives: October 2006


Friday Ark #110

We’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals (photoshops at our discretion and humans only in supporting roles). Watch the Exception category for rocks, beer, coffee cups, and….?

We add boarders all day Friday plus intermittently on Saturday and Sunday so visit frequently.

Do link to the Ark every week!

You can find out how to board the Friday Ark at the Arkive page.


Update (10/28 4:30 PM GMT):
The Ark Staff is traveling. No more boardings until late tonight or tomorrow.

Cats

Dogs

  • Val’s Bien: Casey Has a New Toy
  • Duck Pond: Friday Night Dog Blog – Heads or Tails: Sasha and Dexter do not seem to mind
  • Burning Silo: a nice design: Sabrina checks it out…
  • Dog Blog: Dogs 280-286
  • Echidne Of The Snakes: Friday Cat and Dog Blogging: Spinoza’s cat and Barry’s dogs
  • WoodSong: Dogsand Those Who Love Them
  • Ironicus Maximus: Friday Hound Blogging: Al is reserved
  • Good Nonsense: Friday, uh, Kayle Blogging
  • Maggie’s Meanderings: Roxie
  • Grits for Breakfast: Prison Pups
  • Old Controller: Seymour’s Heartworms Are Persistant
  • Pop Culture Gadabout: Weekend Pet Pic: Kyan Pup celebrated his 11 month birthday; boarded 10/28
  • Athenamama: Happy Birthday Papa boarded 2006-10-29

Other Vertebrates

Invertebrates

Birds

In Memoriam

  • x

Didn’t Make It

Exceptions (inclusion not guaranteed)

Extra, Extra: All Ark boarders are invited to shout out at the Friday Ark Frapper Map. (73 shouts as of 10/19)

Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey’s Musings. Also, there are more doggies at Weekend Dog Blogging hosted this weekend by Sweetnicks.

Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and the 135th edition, 10/22, is up at Catcall. The 136th edition will be hosted by Watermark on 10/29. There are more weekly cats at Weekend Cat Blogging hosted on 10/28 by KAYAKSOUP . Do go shout out at The Catbloggers Frappr Map.

Bird folks: I and the Bird: A Blog Carnival for Bird Lovers is published every 2 weeks. The 35th edition is up and hosted by Migrations. The 36th edition will be hosted on 11/9 by Words & Pictures.

For the spineless: Circus of the Spineless. A monthly celebration of Insects, Arachnids, Molluscs, Crustaceans, Worms and most anything else that wiggles. The 13th edition is up at Deep Sea News. The 14th edition will be hosted at the end of October by The Neurophilosopher’s Blog.

For other current carnivals check out The Conservative Cat’s Carnival Page, The Blog Carnival and The TTLB Uber Carnival

Note for Haloscan Users:

Over the past month or so Haloscan started (the end of July) handling of trackbacks has improved though it is still pretty broken for carnival type posts. Now, instead of rejecting every attempt to ping it accepts single pings for a while and then will start rejecting them. I will keep trying to track back to Haloscan boarders but can make no guarantees for any particular week.

Note for Typepad Users:

Typepad continues to behave similar to Haloscan for trackbacks. I have, though, for the past month been able to get trackbacks to most, if not all, Typepad based boarders. I have to do it one at a time and wait a while in between pings but Typepad does not go into semi-permanent rejection mode like Haloscan.


Give Us Some Congressional Accountability

Accountability?
This is not something that our congress critters seem to want. Not accountability, not the transparency provided by public debate of the legislation they choose to enact.
If a given piece of legislation or a specific appropriation is important enough that federal congressional action is appropriate then it seems it should be important enough to be debated and voted upon as a single issue, as a single appropriation.
Congress should eliminate earmarks and eliminate amendments unrelated to a primary bill. Any piece of legislation should address one and only one issue. For example, the recently enacted and signed internet gambling legislation should not have been part of the port security legislation. As Declan McCullagh notes:

If this happened only rarely, perhaps we could forgive our elected representatives for gluing unrelated amendments onto a proposal that’s destined to become law. (With a tight election just weeks away, how many politicians have the mettle to vote against “port security”?)
But the problem is that the technique has become commonplace, meaning that even the sniping sessions that have come to define debate in the U.S. Congress are bypassed. Voters also lose a chance to learn how our supposed public servants vote on specific topics, rather than on a 300-page bill with scores of unrelated components.
Which, of course, is precisely the point. Because politicians dislike being held accountable for their actions–specific votes can be compiled into embarrassing scorecards and inconvenient voting records–they prefer to lump everything together. The U.S. Senate Web site offers an official definition of the practice: a “Christmas tree bill,” meaning unrelated amendments that adorn legislation.

For more examples of Christmas tree bills see the rest of Declan’s post.

If congress is unwilling to hold their debates, to pass legislation in the light of public scrutiny then we must ask who congress represents and whether congress should be allowed to continue to exist as it currently operates.


w the Symptom

Arthur Silber on bush:

And all this is not because of George W. Bush, although he has hastened events. How could it be remotely conceivable that such an utterly ridiculous figure would bring down the most powerful nation in the world, even with the aid of his corrupt cabal? He, and they, could not; he, too, is a symptom of the rot that has been eroding the country’s foundations for at least a century. Do you think so little of the United States that you truly believe the country you imagine still exists could be destroyed by this?

The rest just gets better!