See this movie NOW!!!

Went to see the Ron Howard-produced documentary In the Shadow of the Moon last night with the Songbird (still visiting from Nairobi; she goes back Friday). Filled me with renewed awe and admiration for the intellects, courage, ingenuity and coolness of the handful of now-elderly men who are (still, dammit!) the only human beings to have viewed the Earth from the surface of her moon and returned alive to tell the tale.

If you care at all about getting the human race off this mudball once and for all, see this film if you haven't already. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will make you angry...but above all, it will make you proud.

Mac OS X Leopard: Coming out Real Soon Now

Months ago, Apple Inc. announced its next major upgrade to the Mac OS, code-named Leopard, would be out in October 2007. We are now one full week into that month, and still Apple has not revealed precisely when in the month this long-awaited upgrade will be released. The consensus among the trade press seems to be that they will do it late in the month, around the 26th or so (see MacRumors report here), but no official word has yet come from Cupertino.

Am I the only one who finds it astonishing that this close to the announced time, we still have no actual date? I know Steve Jobs likes to build anticipation, but jeezam crickets, they're cutting it awful damn close...especially with the retail-crucial holiday season coming up.

More fannish spawning, YAY!

I was told the happy news a few days ago, but kept my hat on it in deference to the proud parents-to-be and their right to be the first on LJ to announce it: joyeuse13 and her husband are in the early weeks of expecting their first child, projected due date March 28th. Many warm congratulations to Joyce and Aaron, and heartiest wishes for a trouble-free pregnancy and birth.

Is the firefighters' union out to snuff out volunteer fire departments?

Funny this should come around not only at the start of National Fire Prevention Week, but also on the 136th anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire: Longtime readers of this journal will know I come from a family of firefighters; both my father and younger brother have held the rank of Captain in the Lafayette Fire Dept., back in my Louisiana hometown. Little bro also started out as a volunteer before turning pro, and Lafayette has a lot of fairly small towns around it that depend on volunteer firefighters, being too small to afford paid forces.

This op-ed column appearing in the local paper here today (not posted to its website, alas) alleges that the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) is pushing federal legislation through Congress that would make it even more difficult for volunteer departments to find the one or two career smoke-eaters they need to run them and train the volunteers. A quick Google scan of firefighter message boards confirms what the column states, that the IAFF's constitution specifically prohibits paid firefighters from working on vollie fire departments, even in their off-duty hours.

Some caveats: 1) My dad and brother are both members of IAFF, and the union pays my dad a pension; 2) the union has been one of the longest-serving and staunchest supporters of my favorite charity, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and its annual fund-raising efforts around Labor Day; 3) being a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, I have a tough time seeing any labor union as "the bad guy" in a political debate; and 4) this columnist happens to work for the Heritage Foundation, a well-known right-wing think tank with a bias against unions.

But I also come from a state with "right-to-work" laws in force, and am all too aware of some of the excesses to which some unions have resorted in the name of protecting their and their members' interests. So this troubles me a bit. I will have to think about it some more before coming down on one side or the other...but my initial inclination is to support the right of any city's Bravest, who already give far more of themselves than most, to give still more to help smaller towns stay safe.