Not to sound like a Luddite, but these AI data centers have gotten out of control. I live in Coweta County, Georgia. I've lived here for decades. In all that time, we've had zero data centers. At the current moment, there are plans to build five. I'm no statistics major, but that seems like a big increase.

The locals are not particularly happy about this sudden spurt of this particular kind of development. To be honest, the locals are rarely happy about any development that doesn't bring them a new restaurant, but they are very not particularly happy about this. Last weekend, people stood in line for hours at the park up the street from my house (on Jefferson Davis Parkway, if that gives you any idea of my county's usual politics) to sign a petition they hope will force their suddenly development-friendly elected officials to quit ignoring our torches and pitchforks and finally have a public referendum on the matter.

It's noteworthy that most of the land those data centers want was until recently zoned "Rural Conservation." For refence, the Coweta County Georgia Code of Ordinances Appendix A Article 7 defines a "rural conservation district" as... oh, hell, just read it:

The rural conservation district is intended to provide for agricultural land use, and low density single-family residential land use in an area of Coweta County shown on the future development map as the rural conservation area. Agricultural land uses include farming, forestry, horticulture, wholesale plant propagation, dairying, ranching, and equestrian activities. Rural residential land uses include rural homestead lots, and low density rural residential developments designed to preserve woodland and open land along Coweta's roadways, to preserve primary conservation land: river or stream corridor, areas of vulnerable groundwater recharge, floodplain, steep slopes, habitat of endangered species, archeological sites, cemeteries, and burial grounds, and to provide neighborhoods with their own private, yet common, recreation areas.

Does any of that sound like the place anyone was ever planning to put a resource-intensive information warehouse? But who doesn't want a shiny new water-guzzling, 800-acre data center next door to their low density single-family residence? And as for preserving river or stream corridors and areas of vulnerable groundwater, the developers themselves have asked for 1,010,000 gallons of water per day. If that sounds like a lot, that's because it is. It's 13% of the Coweta County Water & Sewerage Authority's current production ability for only five new businesses, which is the equivalent of all the existing CCWSA customers donating 33 of our gallons of water per day to our thirsty new AI overlords.

In defense of the Board of Commissioners, the data centers are promising that once they are up to speed, they'll pay an astonishing $176 million in property taxes. Considering that the county took in less than $76 million in property taxes in 2024, that also seems like a pretty big increase. Assuming the data centers are telling the truth — AI would never lie to us — that's a lot of money to turn down. Who needs equestrian activities when you can ask a computer to turn you into a cartoon character for a social media post? With all that money, at the very least the county will be able to afford to pay the CCWSA to find us some extra water somewhere. I hear the arctic is melting.*

*Superman Month Sidebar: Speaking of "our national water crisis," Eric Brockovich (heard of her?) has lately been crusading against data centers like these in large part because of their "substantial" water usage. Her 2020 book on the subject of is titled Superman's Not Coming, which is both disheartening and, I hate to say it, accurate.

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I was much an enemy to monarchy before I came to Europe. I am ten thousand times more so since I have seen what they are. There is scarcely an evil known in these countries which may not be traced to their king as it’s source, nor a good which is not derived from the small fibres of republicanism existing among them. I can further say with safety there is not a crowned head in Europe whose talents or merit would entitle him to be elected a vestryman by the people of any parish in America. However I shall hope that before there is danger of this change taking place in the office of President, the good sense and free spirit of our countrymen will make the changes necessary to prevent it.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway Renamed

March 2025 — United States Highway 29 Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway will no longer be named in honor of the former president of the Confederate States of America.

Under the urging of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the highway was formally established in Virginia in 1922 as the South's response to the prior creation of the transcontinental Lincoln Highway running from New York to San Francisco in 1913.

Though the highway was never fully completed across the country, stretches of the road under its original name can still be found in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.

The new name of the highway will be the Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway, named in honor of the United States' 23rd Secretary of War. Jefferson Davis, a Mississippi native and West Point graduate, served from 1853 to 1857, during which time he championed the creation of America's first transcontinental railroad and was instrumental in the Gadsden Purchase, acquiring land from Mexico for his preferred route.

Now shut up about how racist government is.

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To whom it may concern:

On Tuesday, I wrote

The lady who answered the phone, who I'll call Uma, seemed new at her job.

Doug wrote in to say that I should have written

The lady who answered the phone, whom I'll call Uma, seemed new at her job.

Doug is usually right about such things. This case, I thought, was the rare exception. The second who modifies the same lady as the first who, and since lady is the subject of the sentence, I determined that both should be who and neither whom.

But, as I said, Doug is usually right about such things, so I decided I would consult some other sources to be sure. I simplified the sentence a little to make it easier to describe because Doug and I agree that the first who is correct and I didn't want to confuse our Artificial Intelligence overlords.

1. Microsoft Copilot confidently told me I was right:

2. ChatGPT seemed to want to appease us both before obsequiously declaring me to be perfect:

3. Google Gemini decides to ignore the parts of speech that it doesn't like on the road to ruling in my favor:

That's three of the most widely used AI's on the planet telling me that I'm right. Which can only mean that I was wrong. Who is not the subject of that relative clause; I is. (Boy, that was a fun sentence to type!)

After a little old-school Googling, I found the best explanation of this situation was provided by the Writing Resources Center at William & Mary (which taught Thomas Jefferson how to write English so they must be pretty good at it):

Introducing a Dependent Clause:

Within the clause alone (not the whole sentence), if the pronoun is a subject, then who is correct; if the pronoun is an object, then whom is proper. For example:

Many people dislike the new chairman whom we have elected.
[In the clause "whom we have elected," the pronoun whom is the object of the compound verb have elected. One would say, "We have elected him."]

I am scared of the old woman who lives on Main Street.
[In the clause "who lives on Main Street," the pronoun who is the subject. One would say, "She lives on Main Street."]

Someone should tell AI the same thing my high school English teacher would have told me: go open a dictionary. In this case, I recommend specifically Merriam-Webster, whose detangling of who and whom at merriam-webster.com/grammar/who-vs-whom-grammar-usage tells the story of a sandwich, the dog who apologized for eating it, and the lying cat who set him up. Must read. 5 out of 5. And, as expected, in total agreement with Thomas Jefferson and Doug.

Sorry I doubted you, Doug.

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Want to know why Louisiana would willingly violate federal law to require the 10 Commandments in all kindergartens? The 1991 Chick tract Sin Busters has the answer:

Declaration of Independence writer and third president Thomas Jefferson may have written that Congress should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," but that's just because he was part of the evil world system!

God bless the real America!

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I'm running out of time to finish reviewing movies I've seen in 2021 before the end of the year, so I better hurry it up.

142. (2001.) Tennessee Johnson (1942)
You know Andrew Johnson, right? The first president to be impeached? The president who pardoned Jefferson Davis and opposed giving citizenship to freed slaves? Well, this movie says sure he had a nasty temper, but he did all those other things to make America better! It... hasn't aged well.

143. (2002.) She Freak (1967)
This B-movie remake of Freaks is not particularly good or entertaining, but it does have the rarest of things: Coke and Pepsi logos on screen at the same time!

144. (2003.) Paddington 2 (2017)
Watching this delightful film I found myself wondering if it wasn't actually better than the original. I still don't know, so I guess I'll just have to watch them both again to find out.

145. (2004.) A Clusterfunke Christmas (2021)
This parody of Hallmark Christmas films soon reveals the true fact that it is impossible to parody a genre film without actually succumbing to the trappings of the genre. I still found a lot to laugh at (and with).

More to come.

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Sunday was just winding down when I got a call at 7:10 PM from the Newnan Police Department. Someone, it seems, had driven into the front of the commercial building my family owns downtown.

The building sits facing a traffic light (at a t-junction), and someone ran straight through the light into the steps. The officer tells me that the driver was unharmed. I'm really only surprised that in the roughly 3/4-century that the building has been there, this hasn't happened before.

It's been a rough 2021 for the building. A tree that was knocked down in a recent storm last month. (It actually was toppled in a windstorm the week *after* the tornado.) The tree fell away from the building, but its roots tore up the asphalt and tore up the fence and the neighbor's awning. For the record, no one was harmed in that accident, either.

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Four days before Christmas, while the nation was busy with other, bigger problems, the Virginia-sponsored statue of Robert E. Lee was quietly removed from the U.S. Capitol.

Each state has two statues in the Capitol, most in the National Statuary Hall. But the hall isn't large enough for 100 statues, so some had been moved to other locations, including the Crypt below the Rotunda. It's called the Crypt because it was originally intended to be the final resting place of the mortal remains of America's patron saint: George Washington. That made it a fitting place for a statue of Washington's great-grandson-in-law.

The statue is being moved to a history museum, which is frankly a far more suitable location for the man famous as leader of the slave-owning armies in the War Between the States. It'd be nice to say that Lee's statue was the last Civil War remnant in the Capitol. However, Statuary Hall still includes monuments to Confederate Colonel Zebulon Vance (sponsored by North Carolina), Lieutenant General Wade Hampton (South Carolina), General Joseph Wheeler (Alabama), Vice President Alexander Stephens (Georgia), and Jefferson Davis (Mississippi). Maybe you can see a theme there.

Prior to this year, I believed we should preserve all works of art, even those that could serve as political propaganda for causes of hatred. While I never thought such pieces belonged in the same building as the working seat of government, the current political climate has me thinking that maybe museums are also too public. There are very clearly too many in this country willing to use the imagery of the past for their own political purposes without regard to the damage they inflict on others. That's just plain wrong.

The ancient Olmecs, like us, used to make giant statues of their leaders. Then, when the leaders fell from power, the statues were disfigured and buried so that the people could move on without being encumbered by old grudges and failed ideologies. I'm increasingly of the opinion that might not be such a bad idea.

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2020 killed my dog.

July beat cancer for the first time in 2016 after having her toe amputated. She beat it a second time when she had a portion of her ear removed in 2019. This past July, she had a mammary tumor removed. Three times seems to be the limit.

In late October, she got wobbly in the legs. We crossed our fingers that it was a spinal problem. She initially responded to treatment, but she took a turn for the worse about two weeks ago when she lost even the ability to stand with assistance. It was downhill from there.

So long as she was lucid and had an appetite, I felt it was my duty to support her however I could — I couldn't justify killing my dog simply because she had become inconvenient. But I realized late last night that we had probably reached the end of the line. (I'll save the gory details except to say that cancer can be a real bitch.) I had her euthanized this afternoon, and she died in my arms.

For the better part of the past decade, July had been my shadow. Her sister, Victoria, wanted to be near me; July *needed* to be near me. She followed me everywhere and complained to whoever would listen when she couldn't see me. I can't blame her. Who else was she going to get to take her for walkies or hand her a slice of pizza?

I already feel like I'm missing something when I walk into a room and don't hear the tappa-tappa of toenails trailing behind me. I keep looking for baby, and she's not there anymore and never will be again. That will take some getting used to.

Thanks to Kelley for bringing her into my life and thanks to Mom for being a substitute Walter when necessary over the years. Thanks to her vet, Jeff, for helping me keep her around as long as we did. (Fourteen years is a good, long life for a standard poodle!) And especially thanks to July for doing your best to make 2020 bearable for as long as you could.

I loved my girls.

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I should be working. Instead, I'm writing movie reivews.

107. (1761.) Strike Up the Band (1940)
Poor Mickey Rooney. He's so focused on becoming a famous bandleader, he doesn't realize that Judy Garland has the hots for him. Lot of good musical numbers in this, none better than the animated band of fruits and nuts created by George Pal (aka, the director of The Time Machine).

And although Mr. Morgan is initially presented as a bad guy, you know he really means well when he offers Mickey a Coke from his bar.

108. (1762.) Kagemusha (1980)
Akira Kurosawa's Shakespearean history of a particularly unusual era in Japan. The movie looks great, but I'm sorry to report that I found it very dull. I've never had much patience for tragedy in slow motion.

109. (1763.) The Underworld Story (1950)
This was more my speed. An ethically unmoored newspaperman champions the cause of a wrongly accused black woman to line his own coffers. The movie is black and white, but only the audience seems to know it.

110. (1764.) Hopscotch (1980)
This spy comedy of misadventures is notable only because it features Walter Matthau's typical curmudgeonry.

111. (1765.) Little Women (2019)
I've seen the 1933 (Katharine Hepburn) and 1949 (Elizabeth Taylor) versions, and I'd judge the 2019 (Soairse Ronan) to be the best Little Women yet. I haven't seen it, but I can't imagine the 1994 [Winona Ryder] version could possibly be better. Forget the fact that it's a chick flick, it's just a darn good movie.

112. (1766.) Vibes (1988)
Jeff Goldblum and Cyndi Lauper are psychics who travel to South America to help Peter Faulk find a lost city of gold. It's the sort of thing you used to see filling up Saturday afternoon television. (That sounds dismissive, but I have to admit that Goldblum always delivers.)

This is NOT Jeff Goldblum.

113. (1767.) Torrid Zone (1940)
The title promises more than the film actually delivers. Gangster-in-all-but-name Jimmy Cagney courts con woman Ann Sheridan on a banana plantation during an overdue political revolution. It's the worst of colonial capitalism played for laughs. Hollywood has never been quite as progressive as Tailgunner Joe would have us believe.

More to come.

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