David Ernst Chats with the World

Hadn’t noticed this before, but somewhere quasi-recently, google added a feature to its “Personalized Home” page (which for any other web site would have been called “My Google”).  Now you can have Tabs!  Such a simple concept, but it basically means have mutliple My Googles…  This is great for me, because I was being very picky about what to put on there because I was running out of room.  Now I have a page just for blogs, another just for news, and then other stuff like weather and recent searches and stuff.  I like it.

I’m quite sure this is the first time I’ve started writing a blog post
at 6:52AM. Or, any time before 7AM. Certainly the first time after
I’ve already been up for two hours.

I’m on my way to Portland, OR, to spend a month with Sue and Michael
and to help them with things related to the birth of their baby. I’ll
also see my brother Steven and his family and other friends that I
have in Portland.

Things got off to a smooth start. I get a very good price on the
ticket. I didn’t know how I’d get to the airport (not wanting to pay
for parking for a month). I thought I might take the shuttle, but
Renee convinced me to take a limousine. It was not that much more
expensive, and… I mean, they pick me up at my door! They monitor my
flights so that they’ll be ready for me when I land! Especially after
getting the cheap ticket, this seemed like the way to go.

And, it was nice. At 5am, it’s nice to have someone more awake that
you putting your bags into a car and driving. I shared the limo with
one other rider (this keeps the price way down). My driver was very
talkative, and after I mentioned that I’d be visiting friends who were
having a baby, he proceeded to tell stories about the births of his
three children, as well as various surgeries he and his wife had had.
That may sound weird, but it was a very nice conversation. The other
woman in the car was mostly sleeping, I hope it wasn’t too weird for
her to awake from a drowsy state to a conversation about a burst gall
bladder.

I got to the airport plenty early, so I could take my time carting my
excessive luggage to the terminal. Good advice from the limo driver
about managing two rolling suitcases: “push one, pull one”. I’ll
remember that. But anyway, the only thing that made this really tough
was the banjo… such an odd shape. I’m glad to have it, though… a
month without any musical instrument seems like a Bad Idea.

Check in was smooth and I had lots of time. I was unexpectedly hungry
(??) so I ate a 6″ Subway, and now I still had time to type this
entry. Boarding will begin shortly, though… They just made the
announcement about the new and immediately infamous “no liquids” rule.
I should probably start packing up.

I’ve been out of my normal NPR listening routine recently, but this morning I woke up unexpectedly early and turned on Morning Edition. I was glad that the latest war in the middle east had simmered down enough that it was no longer dominating the news, since it seemed to be the only thing I heard about in the snippets of national/international news that I’d been catching since mid-July. So, there was time to hear about what the House of Representatives did yesterday, which was to pass (263 votes to 146) H.R. 503: the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act. Apparently there are three slaughter houses in the US that focus on horse slaughter, and together they slaughter some 90,000 horses a year.

The Washington Post has an excellent editorial about this being a poor use of Congress’s time, even if we “stipulate […] that horses should not be slaughtered for human consumption.” I, however, want to take issue with that stipulation.

I’ve been a vegetarian for over 15 years now, if people don’t want to eat horses, I wholeheartedly support them. But, that’s not what the law is about, it’s about making sure that no one else eats horses. Apparently, no one in the US does anyway, the taboo is too strong. But the slaughterhouses ship the meat to Europe and Asia. And apparently Bo Derek led a pack of horselovers to move to ban this practice.

What drives me nuts about this is the make-believe attitude about meat, that is, that it’s just meat, and not an animal, and certainly not one that anyone might have ever thought might have been cute, smart, or helpful to humans. I’ve never worked on a farm, but I’d like to think that traditional farmers have a less make-believe attitude about this. They care for animals, name them, get to know them, and eventually slaughter them and eat them. However they get there, somehow they have a sense of peace about this. After all, that’s why they raise the animals.

Most city-folks, though, just buy their meat in packages. They know that they were once animals, but they probably prefer not to think about that. And apparently there’s a really strong sense that if they might feel something for an animal, they not only don’t want to eat it, but they don’t want anyone else to eat it either.

And so (to take just one of countless examples of arguably inhumane practices in the meat industry), it’s apparently ok that chickens continue to get their beaks burnt off by hot irons so that they can’t peck at anything while they’re being raised in cages so that we can get eggs cheaper. But the House has voted that it’s inhumane to take horses, including many who led long happy (even pampered) lives, and let them be slaughtered for meat. And this is a House controlled by the party who claims to represent freedom and free markets. Embarrassing. Everyone I’ve ever talked with who worked on a farm says that pigs are the smartest animal in the barnyard, but needless to say, no similar bill about pigs would ever get a hearing in congress, much less pass the House. And, I don’t think it should. If no one wants to eat horse meat, then no one will slaughter horses. There’s no rational reason that horses should be granted this exemption. It’s just the “cute factor.” And it’s embarrassing…

PHEW!

Well I mean, I thought that last hiatus was bad, huh? This one was even longer, I think. But, wow, the reason was big. On July 20, one week after my previous post, I wrote [an email](http://www.bloomington.in.us/~drernst/emailfarewell.txt) to everyone with an account on [HoosierNet](http://www.bloomington.in.us/) explaining that we were ceasing to offer Internet services effective September 1, 2006. This has been brewing for quite a while, and it was covered in the local news media. I wondered if I should write in my blog about it, but I figured it’d be better to speak about work through my work channels, and not mix my personal blog up in that. It sounded messy.

So I didn’t. But, that was so much of what was going on with me, and i wasn’t driven to spend much extra time in front of the computer, and… ok, look, I certainly could have kept blogging, but I just didn’t.

Anyway, with HoosierNet going away, the old URL for this blog will be going with it, so I’ve got it set up with a new provider at http://davidernst.net/blog. If you somehow got here using the old address and didn’t realize it’d changed, you should probably change any bookmarks/RSS feeds/etc. that you might have.

Thanks for checking in! I’m excited to have the blog up and running on a new site, maybe it will give me a new boost of energy to write in it. I should have more time on my hands in the near future…