never have i ever

Bowled a strike in my socks. Oh wait, I just did!

maybe i should commit bank fraud too

(P) Remember how we never went to Iraq to control the oil? Well looky at which CIA asset funded by the US government got put in charge of the oil ministry? It's none other than the guy who should still be in prison in Jordan for his various financial crimes, Ahmed Chalabi. I mean, geeze, he only disappeared about $300 million. And it's not like the guy was a wealthy, highly educated, well-connected MIT grad with a U Chi PhD or anything.

this is somewhat bizarre

Maybe these quizzes are more accurate than I give them credit for. (They're certainly addictive; you can never just take one).

I took a kissing quiz that I have never taken before, and with completely different questions and answer choices to a previous one I have taken, and I ended up with the exact same character at the end.

Me tonight:

You're a Playful Kisser

Kissing is a huge game for you, a way to flirt and play You're the first one to suggest playing spin the bottle at a party Or you'll go for the wild kiss during a game of truth or dare And you're up for kissing any sexy stranger if the mood is right!

What Kind of Kisser Are You?

And me this summer. Obviously it originated from the same quiz, even though the particulars were different, because the actors in the picture are the same.

This is my last quiz of the night; I swear.

blogger is fun and useful

Maybe they'll give me a prominent location if I say something nice.

Probably not. But what Blogger does is make it much easier for idiots like me who can never remember names to recall them at a later date. Watch this.

Tod, Lindsey, Tim, Mary. Voila. I can now look them up two months from now so that, instead of saying who were those SMS peeps I met through a friend of Holly's two months ago, I can say, hmmm...we had fun seeing the lights at the zoo on a cold night, that must have been around Christmas time; let me check my blog at that time. Which one is engaged to Chris, a guy in Mike's band, The Ladykillers? Oh yeah, Mary. When did he ask her? Christmas Eve (in front of the fam - an interesting choice).

I love computers.

Of course, I don't know whether Tod has one d or two. Does Lindsey spell it with an a instead of an e? What if Mary didn't want people knowing she just got engaged?

Too bad; it's my blog. Only one person gets to spell her name Lindsay, and she has quite the interesting baby picture.

By the way, thanks to Emily for this fun quiz. I'll let you decide whether I liked it due to its truth or due to its complete and utter failure.

Your 2005 Song Is

Since You've Been Gone by Kelly Clarkson "But since you've been gone I can breathe for the first time I'm so moving on" In 2005, you moved on.

What Hit Song of 2005 Are You?

A little bit of both is certainly an acceptable answer.

busy busy busy

I have forgotten how hectic the holidays get. When you go from a month off to a week, that sure doesn't help any. Here it is Monday night, and I've only slept in my bed at home once this week, while two nights have been at the Plaza! Friday night at the Hampton, then Sunday at the Jefferson. (Can I call it that, Andy?). I sure haven't ever spent Christmas Eve eating breakfast in a hotel lobby in my own home town. It was fun, though: hey, we're from Michigan, we're the Virginia side of the family...yeah, I'm from Liberty [just down the road].

As much as I would love to actually be sleeping a little, there's just too much to do...family during the day, friends at night, even a great Chiefs game. By the way, Detroit, can you please decide to play a game? Next week is really important.

Not to mention presents. Really, what would Christmas be without those? It appears that I will be able to replace my laptop this winter...yay! I love it, but sadly, it is starting to show its age.

Here's to legos and home cooking and games and O'Dowd's and lounging around with family and sleeping in and trying to find a place to hang out at night on Christmas Eve and eating way too much and sleeping way too little and scraping ice off your car and seeing high school friends and engagement rings and lights on the Plaza and birthdays and driving in a city where I don't get annoyed by every other car and watching skyscrapers disappear into the mist and having to use your brights to drive around town and Lord of the Rings Risk and all the other good stuff that is Christmas.

christmas 1914

I heard a wonderful dramatic reading of the story about British and German soldiers socializing on Christmas day during World War I this morning on my drive to work. I love the holidays! Almost here...just have to get through today. The over/under on me getting to KC looks like about 10:00 PM.

all i want for christmas

(P) Let's see; instead of humming the song "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth, my two front teeth, my two front teeth..." try humming "All I want for Christmas is an impeachment, an impeachment, an impeachment...".

Actually, more than one impeachment would be good. It's not every day the perpetrators of a serious crime admit to the crime, even going so far as to brag about continuing to do it in the future.

So it's come to this; apart from all of the impeachable offenses of the Administration, it really comes down to one simple question (which is a legitimate choice, by the way):

Do we want a president bound by the rule of law through the Constitution which he swore to preserve, protect, and defend?

Or, do we want a president whose authority as Commander in Chief elevates him (or her, eventually) beyond the law to act unhindered by the law?

My odds for impeachment have now surpassed the 50/50 mark.

a billion

The People of Lazy days have surpassed a key milestone in our relatively young nation's history. We have one billion citizens.

Yay.

ooh, pay me for that

You can tell I've had a lazy day at home wrapping presents (all but two are bought and wrapped!) and watching movies (and that frustrating Chiefs game) when I make my fifth post of the day. It's a new record.

But that's not what I just found out about that is important enough to report (not to mention the whole cause/effect relationship of setting a personal record). When I was in 9th grade, one of the first people Brian and I gathered research from for debate was a Senior Fellow at the CATO Institute named Doug Bandow. Apparently, he somehow got involved with the now infamous lobbyist Jack Abramoff to the tune of $2,000 per friendly and topical article about such key economic policy areas as markets in the Marianas. I don't know the details outside of this article, but what an idiot to jeopardize a gig at CATO by not disclosing the cash! He's finished with CATO.

It's so sad. And dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb, Mr. Bandow. It's not that being paid to write is particularly bad; but you have to disclose it. Especially when you work for an organization that wants to be taken seriously for its ideas rather than its PR value or connections.

It makes you wonder if there are any people who haven't taken cash from an Abramoff associate. I had assumed this was just a political scandal, but if he was paying off academics/think tankers, particularly if it's even remotely related to the Administration's own covert pay offs, there might not be any safe establishment figure in Washington. It also makes you wonder if this particular decision making process was sought by President Reagan in all of his assistants.

now i have to root for minnesota

Actually, that's not too tough now that Randy Moss is gone. Fortunately, we've lost to the right teams, so if Pittsburgh also loses we can still make it. Gee, all we have to do is beat last year's AFC West champion and this year's AFC North champion.

The schedulers next year better give us the freakin' easiest one in the league.

those darn conspiracy theories

(P) For those of you that still believe the Reagan Administration stood for values like human rights, political self-determination, and opposing the use of drugs, the scandal in Nicaragua is of course one of the hugest most massive policies you have to completely ignore. For those of you who think the New York Times, Washington Post, and LA Times are remotely close to liberal (or at least anti-Republican), the reporting of the scandal is of course one of the hugest most massive stories you have to completely ignore.

Last week marked an interesting anniversary in the story. A man at the confluence of investigating the policy and being victimized by the mainstream news media committed suicide in December of 2004. If you want to live in the fantasy world where the Reagan Administration, the CIA, cocaine and other drug traficking (ever heard of the Medellin Cartel?), the Nicaraguan Contras, the Afghani Islamic freedom fighters/terrorists, and the failures of the mainstream media are not all related, then you really shouldn't read this wonderful summary of the history of this scandal, its coverup, and its eventual coming to light (sort of).

Whatever happened to that brave, thorough Senator who investigated so much of the serious problems in the 1980's in Central America related to the financial activities of terrorists and drug traffickers?

Oh yeah, he turned into a coward who didn't fight for his country thousands of miles from home. And a sandal.

my cause

I've decided what my cause needs to be for 2006. I don't really have any power to do anything about it, but no matter.

I really really hate ties. I don't say that as some scrub who is always wearing sneakers and holy jeans. I've been wearing suits for ten years. My tie collection could feed a small village in Africa. I've gotten dress clothes for Christmas.

But ties are the most annoying, expensive, elitist, uncomfortable, useless parasite ever invented by man. Except maybe this. But at least heels look good and accentuate the female body. Ties are butt ugly, and you can't kick them off in the middle of a meeting.

Yes, yes I know all about "dressing for success" and the importance of superficial first impressions others make of you and all that crap. If you can show me one iota of productivity gained from tieland, I'll wear one every day for the rest of my life. It's one giant delusion; we all agree to be impressed by somebody in a tie, and more impressed by somebody in an expensive tie, so we're all stuck in this prisoner's dilemma of being forced to wear ties. We just need to all agree that ties grant not the tiniest bit of social stature or utilitarian usefulness, and voila--they wil disappear overnight.

finally out of my funk

If you didn't see the Chiefs-Cowboys game this past Sunday, you'll just have to take my word that it totally took the energy out of my week.

Tonight, we went to see King Kong, and I'm all good. Yay! Quite good. Go see it. You really should. Come on, dinosaurs and unkempt blondes.

I know you will.

On a separate note, I've been getting comment spamming from time to time and have been deleting them. Well today I got one from a reputable company:

"Hey N haniel, alot if information about IDSL on rambling. I have a great resource I can offer your blog readers on IDSL. Stop by yourself sometime too if yah like!"

The link from IDSL, and the title of the post, reference SBC, in particular a promotional effort for their pro DSL. Anybody hear about this? SBC/Cingular have already done several things that make me rather upset. This would be the tasty icing on the cake. If this really is SBC, they need to understand this is completely unacceptable.

you can't shank that

You just can't do it! Dallas sucks so bad.

wash u jargon 101

After much too much shopping fun and parking lots and going from one end of the store to the other and such, I made it to the last stop at the grocery store. There are a couple people waiting outside, so I ask them if they'd like a ride. Well, the guy says he actually goes to SLU, so he isn't headed my way. Interesting, by the way; I must not be the only one to have had bad things happen at the Schnucks near his school.

The other girl could be described as indecisive (yeah, I don't know anybody else like that), but after a second, said that would be nice. Between this and the fact that she is waiting on the shuttle to take her back to campus, I make the reasonable sounding assumption that she must be a freshman. So I start asking things like what dorm does she live in and whether she is headed to the South 40 or main campus and whatnot and each question gets that incredibly fun response of completely not understanding. I literally was talking a foreign language to her, and I kept using different phrases and it kept not helping. At all. She would respond back with statements and questions that I now see made sense, but didn't make any sense in the context of the conversation I was having at the time.

I finally got that she was a grad student in the law school and that she didn't have a whole lot of exposure to the wider Wash U campus. So, my instinct that she was new wasn't entirely off-base, she is a 1L, but it makes perfect sense now how she was not following what I figured everybody at Wash U knew.

So, I think within the Wash U Bubble, we need to add a subcategory for undergrads. Those poor law students are helpless (uh, no offense...I meant that affectionately...please don't sue me for libel or slander or whatever satisfies your whininess).

Barbara, good luck with your finals. The place where I dropped you off is referred to as main campus, also known as the hilltop campus. That is as opposed to West Campus, the South 40, Small Group Housing (errr...the Village), the Loop, Kayak's, the Med School, BJC, and so forth. I'll explain Givens, Bixby, and the Lewis Center later...those people are their own bubbles.

Uh, maybe I should also define Wash U Bubble. This post is sort of dependant upon that. It's like the bubble boy from Seinfeld, where every once in a while we see strangers come into our world, but in day to day life the several thousand people who make up the Wash U community are an island that might as well be surrounded by the ocean as by Clayton, Fontbonne, and the city. Explaining Fontbonne would be a post in itself. As would explaining how a majority of Washington University in Saint Louis really isn't in Saint Louis. As would explaining why Wash U calls itself Washington University in Saint Louis.

Ok, enough of this, I'm going to make dinner. If only I still had some flexes for Center Court.

exercise...sort of

My jog this morning was very pretty through all the snow. It was also shorter than my shower afterward.

But it was for good reason. It's hard to wake up in the morning full 'o energy when you've spent all night loading yourself with sugar and carbs with friends going off to new places. Nice try on the whole attempt to leave at 8:00 this morning.

The Soda Fountain in Lafayette Square, our middle stop of the night (the rather sugary one), was a new place that will definitely require more visits in the future. It doesn't take much really; the breakfast all day is a good enough reason.

snowy goodness

It's perrty.

our plan for victory

(P) It's pretty clear. Expropriate natural resources for the benefit of large corporations.

And honestly, this might be necessary; if we're really in a military fight against extremism and our key resources can only be entrusted to Fortune 100 companies, then by all means we should be using our unparalleled, taxpayer-financed military supremacy in Risk-like fashion to occupy strategically important parts of the world and turn them over to the Western world's largest companies. To paraphrase one of my favorite naval quotes (and apologies to my otherwise PG rating), damn the financial and human costs, full speed ahead! If the mission is clear and important, you don't half-ass it, and you accept the loss of a ship along the way.

But that doesn't happen, in our country, by imperial decree. The occupant of the Office of the President is sworn to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. That does not grant kingly powers of war; rather, it requires input from legislators, the courts, and, indirectly, the general populace. in other words, a democratic process premised upon accountability and transparency. In the case of Iraq, either one supports self-determination and free markets, or one doesn't. There are good arguments both for and against. But when the President, the VP, and their advisors say they support these goals but spend their time acting to the contrary, then they forfeit their authority and legitimacy as the head of our nation and should be held accountable for the tremendous costs which they have inflicted upon us.

a four figure milestone

It hit a thousand! No no no, not the number of people executed. Who cares about the death penalty, anyway? I'm talking about my Roth. Now if only I had a dollar for every person killed by the government...

dude, audits are not cool

My phone's clock says 5:44pm, and I'm stuck at work. Based on the phat file folder that says AP checks that got stuck on my desk not long ago (not long ago at all) we have a few bills that need to be paid.

Now.

Actually, yesterday for a couple.

Crap, my phone says 5:46pm. Where does the time go? This little audit thingy better be important...

it's christmastime

I'm driving home past the Children's hospital, and they've got christmas trees up now! And both of my roommies have put up lights and decorations and stuff.

And it's cold. When I get out of my car, I can tell I'm going to be shocked, so instead of closing the door with my hand I do it with my arm.

And still get shocked, through my coat.

But I'm not done...I go up stairs and stick my key in the door.

And I see the spark fly from the key to the lock. Fun times.

Speaking of the holidays, here's a holiday-themed look at the interesting problem of how much more time we spend working these days with so little to show for it.

apparently my high schoolers can read

That's very good news! Some of them even read my blog.

Yes, you know who you are.

zio's, come to st louis

I can now go back with my fill of the plaza, wandering around and seeing the shops and the people and the lights. The best view this year was from the top of the parking garage by the Cheesecake Factory looking back west. One of the hotels had lights up the side and around the top to make it look like a construction crane from a distance, and right next to it is an actual crane! Very cool.

Sarah and I grabbed dinner at Zio's, which for all the Italian restaurants in the Hill south of where I live, is still sorely missed on the other side of the state. Then back to Andy and Carrie's to wish them and their parents a happy Thanksgiving. All in all, a wonderful relaxing holiday.

Now it's time for some more good food...çiao.

my family's awesome

And by that I mean weird, dorky, silly, crazy, ridiculous, and a bunch of other things.

In other words, awesome.

my hood is gone

Man, after driving that Charger for a week, my little Escort is tiny; I can hardly even see the hood sticking out when I'm behind the wheel.

Yay!

But it will be missed; that was one of the few rentals (of the many I have driven) that I actually was more interested in buying after having driven it than before. No offense to that mainstay of Enterprise rentals for the trial team, the Chevy Impala, but the more we got those, the less I wanted one.

On a totally unrelated note, thanks to the Jew in the apt, we have Christmas lights!

i survived hogwords

Yes, that's Hogwords, not Hogwarts. This past weekend was the time for the debate and forensics kids I work with at Clayton to host their annual tournament, and between them being high school kids and the movie opening that weekend, there was really no talking them out of the Harry Potter theme. The kids pulled off a great weekend, by the way, and I even judged a very fun final round. Also, I should apologize to a certain blonde I thought was 15. Happy 18th birthday! It's also good to see SDI still churns out good card players. You know who you are.

look at #2

There are lots of good things about working in a diverse environment. Here are a couple:

1) You get to see different cultural perspectives.

2) You get loads of fried chicken for lunch!

duh

"With some exceptions, the wrong people are running U.S. companies...members of the boards are cronies appointed by the very CEOs they're supposed to be watching...They run companies the way totalitarian regimes run their governments. They use the corporate treasury funds to keep themselves in power in the rare instances that they are challenged in a proxy fight."

Don't worry, it's not some crazy hippy whose ideas should automatically be dismissed because he has wierd hair. It's an interview with a rich guy from Wall Street, so you know it's true.

i'm lovin' it

For my sesquicentennial post, I share my car fun.

For about a week I have a new Dodge Charger.

It's red, and it accelerates quickly.

This is very dangerous.

about time

Man, it was like Congress would never get around to completing investigations. At least they've followed through on reassuring kids that drugs aren't cool.

Any bets on who the first player to get kicked out of baseball will be?

Actually, we probably shouldn't bet on that particular game. We wouldn't want the love of the game destroyed by money and greed.

this is so cool

I could watch the National Geographic Channel talk about space all night long!

ooh, back to the show

the cincy post said it best

"It's not easy to make an interesting movie about men who are bored"

We went to see Jarhead, and it was a yawner. At least, for 20% of the party. The other 80% enjoyed it, so it's quite possible it actually is a good movie and just didn't work for me.

But my goodness, the journey was boring and there wasn't a destination. A documentary on me fixing breakfast tomorrow morning would be more entertaining.

It's a shame, because somebody told me the book was good. The movie came off as the clichéd stories about what you have to do to get people psyched up for killing while time goes by in the real world. Yes, I get that the movie is psychological; that's probably why it was so boring. It was like reading stereo instructions for the whole break 'em down/train 'em/pump 'em up/send 'em off to war process. It wasn't an enjoyable remake of a classic, and it didn't add anything new to the genre or have any points to make. Of course, it did happen to be a movie commercially released just before Veteran's Day. Hmmm...

...or maybe the couches at the Moolah Temple are just too comfy and most people will enjoy it.

what have you done for veterans today?

I slept in!

But seriously, unlike my work, most people's day job doesn't directly affect veterans. So today is a good day to think about how we honor them, both remembering those who have passed and serving those still alive. It is really disturbing the myriad of ways our government turns its back on the personnel who defend our country once they're discharged.

It's also the perfect time to remember that supporting the people who comprise the armed forces and opposing pursuits of civilian leaders to enter into unnecessary military conflicts are not mutually exclusive. Rather, the former requires the latter.

an ode to global warming

and middle school poetry

Lo, November comes
and yet, too hot remain my
dear pajama pants

don't be under the influence

This irony was too great not to mention. I'm watching TV and see an ad telling young people they have two choices: to be under the influence, or to be above the influence.

In other words, be your own person; don't follow others.

Now then, follow what we say.

----

There's nothing like mass consumer advertising to influence kids to uninfluence themselves. Of course, it's not to create an absence of influence, merely to replace one influence with another.

When did we get to be such sissies? Maybe I'm just a superhuman warrior or something, but why don't we just teach kids to grow some...spine? All this psychobabble about peer pressure and nobody being perfect and all, it misses the whole point. If you don't want to do drugs, Nancy Reagan was right; just freakin' say no. People don't hassle you about it, they don't cause you trouble, and it's the best way to tell your friends where you stand. That's how you develop the confidence to live your life rather than the life of your friends, family, classmates, or anybody else.

Of course, the ads aren't really aimed at kids; they're aimed at parents worried about kids. It's based on fearmongering, this attempt to make drug users this "other" group of quasi-human, no good evildoers. And that's the inherent failure of the ridiculous "just say no" campaign and its various descendants. The vast majority of drug users don't use drugs against their will; they choose to do so. Ad campaigns like this seem to confuse human relations (which almost always involve some level of attempt to influence others) with more specific problems of coercion and the protection of miners. My goodness, if the problem really is being "under the influence" of others, imagine the destruction that must be wrought by such despicable events as asking a girl (or guy) to a school dance. We must ban them at once!

For the children.

i could have bought another iPod

Instead, I decided to make up for the fact I haven't bought any clothes in like three years. To my utter horror, the Gap totally let me down today. I'm not sure I've ever walked out of there not really wanting anything. But no matter, Aeropostale and Famous Barr made up for it, so all tis right again.

(P) Speaking of things being right, if you know anything at all about me you could have guessed I loved this article about the catastrophic effects of our ruling Republicans on the state of American capitalism. If anything, the President and Congress have made liberal ideas more ingrained in the American consciousness, not less (do we need to rehash the Social Security debacle, for example, or the fact that almost all of the millions of responses the FCC got to loosening the media consolidation rules opposed the rule changes?). Or how about the outcry over torture practices in the prison system, the widespread support for raising the minimum wage, or the huge disconnect between how the average American would spend the federal budget and how Congress actually spends the federal budget? I didn't think so.

No, the real casualty of being ruled by the party of Big Business® and the MBA president has been moderate conservative perspectives on things like the benefits of free markets (not to mention non-economic positions like the positive role of spirituality for individuals and communities). A functioning market economy requires healthy competition and easy access to information, not the corrupt, no-bid, secretive, corporate welfare approach loved by so many Republicans (not to mention quite a few Democrats) in Washington and state capitals. It's almost like they're trying to prove the anti-globalization movement correct that the whole system is broken and needs to be replaced. Of course, given the pathetic business record of Bush and Cheney when they were in the private sector, it's no wonder they're so bad at promoting policies that help American business now that they're in the White House.

Dictionary.com defines fascism as "government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism." Now, we're obviously not there, but it's somewhat amazing how close we are and how much the Bush Administration fights to get there. What's really amazing is that they do it in the name of democracy and free markets.

kid in a candy store

A rather lovable violent store! Doom was everything I hoped it would be and more.

God bless irrational attachments to happy childhood memories.

yeah bluejays

I love iTunes :) No Chiefs game, but I could get live coverage of my high school tonight.

Not that I listened to it; I was off at my St Louis high school, but it was fun to come back and hear that they won.

As if I needed anything else to remind me how old I am.

tax time's half-way

I guess you have to be hardcore to get excited about a major revamp of the Internal Revenue Code...yippee :)

Currently, it's littered with inefficient handouts to special interests. Why do we have so many real estate agents in this country? Oh yeah, because the products they sell for shelter happen to be tax deductable. Red cars would become a lot more popular if the color red was tax deductable.

Of course, it seems pretty clear the ultimate goal of the Bush team is to transfer the tax burden even more from large companies and high net worth individuals to middle and lower class families, but at least it will be another exciting thing to talk about over the coming years (as if there weren't enough already!).

impeachment update

Haven't mentioned this in a while, but there is a really good article from the perspective of a former prosecutor in The Nation.

grrrr

(R) Again, the Chiefs game is not viewable here in St. Louis. Bad bad bad! (But this isn't the local TV's fault; it's due to the NFL's bizarre blackout rules where I can't watch the AFC game on CBS because even though the Rams are in the NFC, this game happened to be the noon game on CBS.)

And to make matters worse, the programming I caught as filler on CBS was something called Sunday conversation within the CBS evening news. The segment I saw was two follow-up interviews to Bush being elected a year ago. Perhaps this was part of a larger series, in which case the following complaint I have doesn't apply and the only problem is that they didn't explain it was part of a series.

But I seriously doubt it. You see, they interviewed two couples before the election and now a year later and asked variously useless questions like, give the president a grade. Why two? Well, the obvious answer would be the artificial yet oh-so-loved game of "us vs them". [Sorry, I've been told the correct terminology is blue staters and red staters]

Except, even that bad game wasn't in play. Nope, instead, both interviews were with die-hard Bush supporters from St. Petersburg, FL. It was two couples, both married, both oldish middle-age, both white, both homeowners...wtf? Even Fox usually has someone they at least pretend represents "liberal" interests.

Don't get me wrong, the interviews were revealing, particularly the incredible belief that some conservatives still hold that the invasion of Iraq was related to Islamic extremism and the fact that one of the married couples now only give Bush a C+. But basically, this was essentially propaganda not only unrepresentative of substantive issues but unrepresentative of anything in American politics right now.

In other words, it's exactly what those of us who know which way the media is really biased expect from the corporate media.

mmm, that's convenient

It's nice that DST tends to happen the weekend of Halloween. Very handy!

congrats scareic

bonne chance tomorrow

2,000

For what, exactly?

not just a drug war post

Sure, this is yet another reasoned argument by people in the know (a police chief, in this case) of the horrible disaster that is the war on drugs.

But read carefully, and this is also an Apple product tie-in! You know you're back at the cool kids' table when you get mentioned in the same sentence with a Lexus. Once I saw that, I had no choice but to link to the article :)

uh, we have a fourth amendment?

(and 1st, 3rd, 9th, 10th...)

(R) Stuff like this really pisses me off. What a great use of my tax dollars (and tuition dollars). ISPs already monitor all kinds of things for the government, not to mention the government itself. If you send an email even remotely threatening the life of the President (or POTUS, or the leader of the free world, or Bush, or that anti-Christ in Washington, or a bunch of other key words) not only will the Secret Service know about it, but they'll be at your house in a very unhappy, menacing, and, ironically, threatening mood in a matter of hours.

Why don't we just build a system that sends every key anyone types on a computer automatically to a secret government database that only certain secretive bureaucrats get to look at? Wait a sec, maybe it would be a good idea to spend that money on things like roads and healthcare, instead?

Nah, that's dumb. It's much more important for the government to be able to track my EXTREME DISPLEASURE with them, even when my expression is COMPLETELY LEGAL and PROTECTED BY THE CONSTITUTION!!!!

And by the way, the Executive Director of The Center for Technology and Democracy, one of the non-profit groups fighting the FCC decision, is a Dempsey. I should write him and see if we're related :)

doom is almost here!

(P) In the meantime, it's good to see this kind of analysis being talked about. Duh liberal policies are popular. The Democratic leadership's unwillingness to stand up for liberal ideas is why they keep losing elections.

not to alarm anyone

but I was in my first accident last night. Somebody plowed right into me. Fortunately, it was in a parking lot, so neither of us were driving very fast, and they hit the passenger side, which was empty, but there's still a lot of damage around the door, wheel, and fender. It is obviously their fault and they are not contesting that. So now I get to learn about the insurance world.

The thing is, there's something fishy about her insurance, so this may be a continuing saga. Who knows.

i moved a ton of stuff today

No, really.

The shredding company came today, and they charge by the pound. We loaded about 2,000 pounds of paper onto the truck.

(P) I said a while ago that I was intrigued by a conversation about cloning I had with Adrian, Lauren, Eric, and Brad after seeing The Island and that I would learn more about it. Well, in the process of trying to become more learned about human cloning, I'm really not sure what the fuss is about. I understand there are several reasons to be hesitant or concerned. But none of them seem to have any particular uniqueness to cloning. They are essentially problems with medical research and human reproduction in general. Either overpopulation is a concern, or it's not. Either medical research that could be used for immoral ends should be banned, or it shouldn't (which is a completely separate issue from regulating the immoral act itself). Either parents have the right to bring a human being into existence under less than ideal circumstances, or they don't. Either people with identical DNA are completely independent, fully moral equivalents of a human being, or they aren't.

This last point is where Adrian had a really intriguing perspective I had never encountered; namely, that somehow the definition of a person is their genetic code. In other words, you cheapen their humanity by copying their DNA. I can see how an English major could be troubled by that lack of originality, but I don't see either 1) why it's a valid criteria (as opposed to other "arbitrary" criteria, like having two arms or being able to read music or whatever), or 2) how it fits with the real world (namely, the fact that identical twins are genetic doubles). To be crude, the point of two humans procreating is to pass on the best DNA possible; wouldn't cloning be the pinnacle of human development?

The only explanations I can really find for widespread uneasiness surrounding human cloning is cultural conditioning and unfamiliarity with the processes (after all, people take time to adapt to new devices and ideas). Of course there are alarmists, the same people who would ban cars, fission, meat, and/or globalization and think that SARS/bird flu/killer bees/asteroids/gay pride/etc will kill all mankind in 3 to 6 months. But short of a sci-fi worst-case scenario, it doesn't seem like there's much more to cloning than any other previous topic of contemporary controversy settled by the passage of time.

The sure outcome of US bans on research into human cloning is simply likely to be the further erosion of US leadership and its associated prosperity. Just like with stem cell research and atomic research and countless others, the top scientists will study where they're welcomed, to the detriment of the unwelcoming country.

Meanwhile, if you are concerned about philosophical ideas of fairness or practical concerns about human suffering, try worrying about slightly bigger issues like access to basic food, shelter, and medical care or the wrongs of the drug war, military occupations, torture, corruption, bribery, uggs and mini skirts......

classy

The fam was in town, so that was most of my weekend. It's always interesting, because family is good and all, but you still feel different when you go out in public with them than with less abnormal and otherwise not embarrassing people.

Sunday night, I tried to show them a couple restaurants in Clayton, but of course the whole city shuts down that night, so we ended up at Houlihan's in the Galleria. My mother is wearing her (cheesy/embarrassing/insert your own favorite parental adjective here) Wash U mom shirt. This despite the fact that, currently, she actually isn't a Wash U mom. But that's not important. The important point is that even if the waiter didn't notice that these were obviously parents, he still should have noticed that my little sister is obviously a tad underage. Nonetheless, the first words out of his mouth after what would you like to drink was an alcoholic joke, specifically about jagermeister. Heck, just to visit the site, you have to promise you are 21.

oh dear, i'm drooling

Maybe it's finally time to replace my 'ole iBook--or at least get it a nice companion. It's been three years now since I bought this laptop, and I didn't even buy it new. The hard drive is full, it doesn't have the newest operating system on it, it has the slower USB connections for my mini, and it's not even a G4, let alone a G5. Plus the IR remote is way cool. And that would let me use my laptop as a dedicated OS 9 gaming machine; I still have a special place in my heart for Master of Orion and WarCraft and X-Wing and a few others.

Of course, that would require cleaning off my desk. There's a reason my laptop lives in the living room.

my new favorite physics quote

Voltaire on du Châtelet: He was a great man except for being a woman.

old people

Haha, check this out. Listen up all you irresponsible, drug using, hobo, lazy, drug addicted old people. Start being more responsible and listening to your youngers for a change. Think of the children!

denial is the first step

Read this.

amerisports...be there

Let's take advantage of the late game tomorrow where the Cards will sweep the Padres. Late dinner and chillin' in front of the big screens?

UPDATE: Ah, the sweep...

drug dealin' with the po po

So I'm driving down my street, which is kind of narrow anyway, to get to my apartment. There are a couple cars stopped in front of me completely blocking the road. I then notice that one of them is a cop car. Hmm, I think, does someone need help, is there something going on? After waiting patiently for a minute, and impatiently for a couple more, they finally parted. They parted by a cop getting out of one car, extended bear hugging the officer in the police car, and then going back to the passenger side of the car in front of me. Then the cop car pulled out and the other car drove down the street.

Note to meetups: our street is handy because it has that nice roundabout with the sign, but the fact that you have to turn around makes a cul-de-sac a very poor choice for a getaway road!

This whole annoyance lasted long enough to memorize the license plate in front of me.

Oh Mr. 439 BMG, what were you doing on my street at 12:45am on Friday, October 7, 2005??

yay, finally we're going to militarize everything!

This is absolutely amazing. President Bush is openly discussing militarizing domestic emergency response capabilities. One of the key fundamentals to our way of life is that the active duty armed forces do not operate on domestic soil, and that the guard absent a declared state of war answer to their respective governors, not to the President. As lethal as the other US paramilitary groups are (and as long as the list is: CIA, NSA, DEA, ATF, IRS, FBI, border patrol, TSA, customs, Secret Service, US Marshalls, SWAT teams and other police groups, and so on) these activities are still kept purposefully distinct from the active duty armed forces controlled by POTUS.

Long live King George.

playoff baseball!

Even have a radio in the office. Too bad it's not the royals...

facebook phase day 8

So I took an informal survey of people I've added to my friends list over the last week. Now, I don't do anything to seek out liberal friends. I went to more CLA and CR meetings in college than College Dems. I'm pro free trade, an unabashed Baptist, am sick of hearing about gay rights like it's the most pressing national issue of our time, happen to know many East coast liberals that are elitist, have no problem with hunters and sportsmen, and if I had to make a choice, I'd rather be a southern gentleman than a yankee 9 days out of 10.

Nonetheless, fewer than 13% of my friends admit to being conservative, which is about the same as admit to being very liberal. Not a single one, even a former president of CR, listed their profile as very conservative.

Interesting, eh?

my favorite physics quote ever

"Since the day we discovered Xena, the big question has been whether or not it has a moon. Having a moon is just inherently cool -- and it is something that most self-respecting planets have, so it is good to see that this one does too."

--Michael Brown, California Institute of Technology, regarding Xena and its potential moon Gabrielle.

accountability for propaganda?

(P) Remember Armstrong Williams and using PR firms paid for with taxpayer dollars? It's pretty hard to argue with the GAO's straightforward report. Well, apparently the President hasn't been able to classify everything damaging to the Administration. I guess they'll have to retract that whole "legitimate dissemination of information" crap.

Actually, what am I saying? They'll just ignore this like everything else.

it's fall!

Woohoo, perfect moving weather. It will be soooo nice when we are all settled in the new building at work.

I bet this guy was wishing it was still summer.

This one, meanwhile, is glad that summer is safely over.

It really is kind of amazing. By a 78-22 vote, we secured an incredibly conservative court for decades (barring some bizarre development) without much public discussion at all. Judge Roberts' best qualities confirmation-wise were his lack of judging experience and his lack of providing answers to questions. Oh yeah, and that he's a gentleman. Fabulous qualities indeed for someone who will hold such a powerful position for such an incredibly long period of time.

a little word fun

So at work today somebody left a UHaul truck we rented for moving stuff out in the parking lot. This person was supposed to put it away, but didn't, so my boss and I did. Well, I wrote a higher up boss the following sentence:

Sarah and I backed the truck into the garage.

Ha

I quickly changed that to:

Sarah and I backed the truck inside the garage.

Also, check out the results to this quiz I took. I'm such a flake.

those dangerous canadians

This is just too funny not to read. I had no idea the Canadians were such a huge threat. It's like the feds have nothing better to do with our tax dollars.

video games drive movies

Video games and associated merchandise sales have been driving a lot of movie development in Hollywood. Special effects teams will throw in totally pointless and cheesy shots just to try to keep up with what gamers expect from the newest consoles. Well I am glad to see that this has been taken to its logical extreme: turning one of the classic games into a real movie (Final Fantasy was a little different).

I hope they do a good job with Doom! That could be a really good movie. Yes, I will admit to reading the (first) Doom book, and it was really enjoyable. If it turns out to just be a crappy movie to capitalize on the groundbreaking success of the Doom franchise, that will be really sad.

ok, this is more accurate

Hmm, I must have just been in a weird mood yesterday, or maybe I misread a question. But I went back and did it again (without any effort to change the outcome) and came up with this:




That's me, sandwiched between MLK and Adam Sandler.

i've been living a lie

Ha, check this out



Apparently OKCupid thinks I'm a socialist. I am going to have to go back and retake it and see how I can modify the result.

excitement is over

alas, the guy was arrested without incident yesterday

what you have to do to make the news

Sure enough, get a guy with a gun to run into a house and have tons of cops show up and shut down a street and voila-your neighborhood gets on the local news! We're a "developing story" right now :)

(This reminds me of the gunshot we heard when we went to Colorado and got the phone call and everything!)

Completely unrelated, I worked with my high school kiddies this evening, and at first I was really pessimistic about this year's resolution. However, after an hour and a half of Aff discussion, I am now fixated on a really intriguing question. The federal government obviously detains some people without charges. Well, the question is, what is the source of that authority? Politically, the President says things like they're terrorists or they're enemy combatants or they have valuable information or other such explanations that don't actually give a legal justification for holding people. Is there legislation? Executive orders? Presidential directives that no one challenges? I am definitely going to have to look into this more.

oh, the sadness

I was getting a glass of water this evening and reached into the cabinet only to pull out one of my mardi gras cups from New Orleans.

Which reminds me...

For some time I have had this thought and keep forgetting when I go to post. It is never too early this year to start planning for Mardi Gras!

Either New Orleans will be resettled and there will be the most enormous celebration ever in the history of the world OR it won't, in which case St. Louis will all of a sudden have the biggest mardi gras party. Andrew, you can attest to the fun that is Soulard in early February. And that's before the huge numbers of people that will try desperately to fill the void of a French Quarter-less Ash Wednesday Eve by coming here. We've got to make sure we are good hosts. Vive la fête!

changing seasons

So I'm driving home from work and it is dark. Not dusk, setting sun blinding in your windshield, getting darker; pitch black. It used to be bright and sunny as I would drive down Lindell past all the joggers (not the worst part of the day, by the way...). But now, the long days of summer have decided to go on break for a while.

I must be feeling better because I, like, noticed. I'm only partially oblivious to the world around me now. Assuming this condition is temporary, of course, it is actually quite interesting having a little hearing loss. It really alters the sensations from the world around you that permeate your self-absorbed world.

almost here

Gotta love it when Raider's week culminates in a nationally televised game. The over/under for this game has got to be about 100.

Go Chiefs!

balloon bonanza

There was perfect weather this afternoon for the Forest Park balloon race. And, even better, the wind was blowing just right to send them northward right over the apartment. That's pretty cool to stand on your deck and look straight up into a hot air balloon.

christian exodus

Guess what? The Daily Show's doing Christian Exodus tonight. They must have read my blog :)

hatred is not too strong a word

I really hate taking drugs. A lot. The doctors didn't seem to care, though. I have one prescription antibiotic ear drop and one prescription antibiotic pill. 500mg, no less. And the actual taking the drugs is only half the issue. There are all kinds of restrictions for several hours around taking the pills. My favorite side effect, given that it's for an ear infection, is it might cause dizziness. Hmm, isn't the point to make the ear better...

At any rate, some free advice. Don't get a sunburn, an ear infection, and a sore throat at the same time. Not fun.

And on the subject of free advice, make sure your affairs are in order if something should happen to you. We had a relatively young staff member get sick and pass away at work, and among other fun issues, a relative was unhappy he got taken off her life insurance. Telling people what medical care you want and how your assets should be divided up is something you should do now. Don't procrastinate, justifying it with once you're finally married or get a house or have a kid or a grandkid or retire or turn 100.

Actually, I lied. That last paragraph will cost you $150. You can mail me a check at your first convenience.

so, are ya?

I am:
47%
Republican.

Congratulations, you're a swing voter. When they say 'Soccer Mom', they mean you. Every Democratic ad on the TV set was made just for your viewing enjoyment. Don't you feel special?

Are You A Republican?

neat little factoid of the day

If Wal-Mart were a country, it would be China's sixth largest trading partner.

where's an atheist doctor when you need one

I don't have much direct experience with our medical system as I am generally a relatively healthy, young male. I went to the doctor when my mother said hey, you have to go do the doctor this afternoon. However, this week was a tad long and as the body is great at doing, it stayed sufficiently healthy while I needed it and then crashed last night. So this morning I looked up the ten closest doctors to my apartment accepting my health insurance. Well, this was news to me, but apparently doctors are as bad as banks. It is simply impossible to even talk to, let alone actually see, a doctor between about 4pm Friday and 8 am Monday. For people with schedules like me, taking Saturday and Sunday off is most convenient. But if I wasn't of the Judeo-Christian mold, I would love to work Saturday and Sunday and take a couple days in the middle of the week off. Malls are much more pleasant on Tuesdays, for example, and it would be a heck of a lot easier scheduling the dumb Laclede gas people to get out here and do there nothingness. Wouldn't at least a few doctors realize that people are bound to get sick in the two and a half day period known as the weekend? If it really was that hard getting some doctors to work on Saturday or Sunday, then surely some enterprising doctor could come along and charge a slightly higher copay for weekend service. There's always the emergency room, but that costs a lot more money and would require me waiting for hours and hours as it would be obvious I'm at the bottom of the priority list. Not to mention that defeats the whole point of having family doctors and emergency rooms.

At least there was plenty to watch as I lay comatosed on the couch today. It's hardly September, and the Big Ten has already been decimated...hehe. It's rough when you can't even score a touchdown against Iowa State. And Georgia didn't look so tough today. Also proved once again that announcers shouldn't announce things before they actually happen. After a somewhat involved story about how Oklahoma had blown out so many teams in a row at home by more than ten points and how that streak was going to end, Oklahoma scored enough points to beat Tulsa by more than ten.

Go Fighting Irish! Oh wait, maybe that's one of those offensive names that should be changed.

darn cubbies

Sunburns suck too. So do mosquito bites.

too full of chicken and brownies

and ice cream! I learned a very sad fact about Mrs. Lee this weekend; namely, that she thinks ice cream and brownies don't go together.

But aside from that, a very good Labor Day indeed. Some old friends, and some even older friends, and some very new ones. Air shows and barbecue and the Cheesecake Factory. Getting whooped at monkey baseball and Mario Kart.

Pigging out on homemade snickerdoodles and having Ted Drewe's for lunch.

A monumental game of Risk and a cat that survived under my care.

Washed the sheets, did the laundry, made the bed, and put all the clothes away. In the same weekend, no less.

Every weekend should be three days long!

what a waste

What a fantabulously glorious waste. Air shows, especialliy military aircraft, in particular fighter jets, are awesome, awesome, awesome. We saw some F15s, F/A 18s, Harriers, and less exciting aircraft. Now, I think the Top Gun, Tom Clancy, height of the Cold War era was the most exciting in US military history (and you would too if you were anything like me, as in, even having the board game; those Civil War reenactors ain't got nothin')

I say all that because military tech is awesome (and so is the board game I linked above, by the way).

But I also say it because it's such a waste. Not just the gas and staff time and maintenance that went into the actual air show. But also the engineers and financial resources that went into the planes and their bombs rather than, say, bridges and schools. It is not at all contradictory to love the technology and support the personnel while also suggesting we should shift massive resources (but not all) away from blowing stuff up and to building stuff. It's a pretty direct tradeoff.

The fair is also an interesting cultural experience. This was just St. Louis County, not the even more fun extremes of a state fair, but it's still noticable that virtually everyone is white and there is a positive love-fest for all things military (even though, of course, minorities are overrepresented in the armed forces). The announcers' scripts for some parts of the air show were essentially PR and ads for the military, and perhaps out of everything I found it most interesting that there were clear attempts to change impressions about Vietnam. Why, might you wonder, would the military have an interest in cleansing the image of that excursion a tad?

chiefs fans are all about

too bad tonight counts for jack squat

my new orleans rant

(R) Alright, I'm only going to do this once, and then I'll resist the urge. We have yet another unassailable case study in governance of modern society. By now, no one is laughing at the idea that the United States isn't in some invulnerable supernatural state; natural disasters can still strike our 21st century perfection of a nation.

There has been enough coverage that people can see the scale of devastation and total breakdown of civil order, but not enough yakking by the talking heads who love personal tragedy-driven ratings to make people numb or sick of the story. Putting resources in long-term planning, civil engineering, infrastructure, disaster preparedness, and so forth is boring work, concerned primarily with the tedium and minutea that makes for poor infotainment and even poorer soundbite-driven politics. Yet, that's what is required.

The alternative, which many people are now experiencing, is anarchy. Anarchy is not abstract. It is real, and it is personal. It is starving, unable to get medical help, at the mercy of criminal gangs, trying not to get raped, desperately seeking a loved one, a child, a grandparent. And that's just in the short term. Then there's the property destruction and economic disruptions. Some historic things will be lost forever.

The power and fury of Katrina stems from God's Creation, but lack of governance creates the scale of human tragedy. This isn't a detailed policy analysis, a rundown of what the Army Corps of Engineers or FEMA or somebody else should or shouldn't have been given money to do; there is plenty of publicly available information by experts regarding that.

But it is a direct refutation of that most-loved phrase in the aftermath of catastrophe, no one could have seen it coming. The hard truth that ideologues, like those over the past five years in the Bush Administration who have been dismantling our real homeland security in the name of tax relief for the wealthiest of the wealthy, corporate welfare, and, more recently, terrorism, must deal with and be held accountable for is that things could be better. Much better. We have the experts and professionals in place, but it requires policy makers to use science based in the real world, not platitudes from some fantasy one. It requires real leadership concerned with representing Americans, rather than corrupt aristocrats willing to trade their constituents' best interests to enhance their personal fortunes. It also requires the people harmed by a lack of good policy to demand no less from their leaders. To me, that is significant; it's why I have the same, if not more, frustration and fury with supposedly Democratic leaders. They should be out there selling this vision of government, how people really can be better off, rather than selling out to the same people as their Republican counterparts...just not selling out quite as well.

On September 10, 2001, flying a plane into the World Trade Center complex in New York City was one of the classic examples of how to do mass damage easily. Heck, we had already deployed military anti-aircraft equipment to protect important meetings of state, while the Trade Center complex itself, aside from the academic attraction of it being both a densely populated area and the global symbol of American financial dominance, was actually attacked by Islamic terrorists less than ten years prior to 9/11. Go to a library and look at books on risk assessment from the 1970s; you'll see people writing about hypothetical attacks at what is now referred to as Ground Zero. Yes, of course the details of 9/11 were a tactical surprise, but it is a bald-faced lie by the political appointees that the professionals in government and academia had no idea something like what happened on 9/11 would occur.

Likewise, no one knew the particulars of 2005's hurricane Katrina. But similarly, New Orleans is (was?) one of the classic examples of potential US environmental disasters. It sits below sea level, surrounded by water, with few evacuation routes. Its protective coastal wetlands have been handed over to rampant development. It is arguably the historical, cultural, and energy crown jewel of the South. Millions of people live along the Gulf Coast region through Louisianna and Mississippi. Human, animal, petroleum, and chemical wastes will fester in stagnant water creating terrible disease conditions. Civil governance breaks down, particularly with national guard personnel killing Iraqis rather than stopping looting, repairing Army Corps of Engineering projects, performing search and rescue, and delivering critical food, water, and medicinal supplies.

Becoming involved in unnecessary foreign entanglements is a textbook example of how hawkish Republicans (and hawkish Democrats), not liberal Democrats, are undermining national security. There are literally armed gangs wandering the streets of New Orleans committing various acts of violence right now. In Baghdad, we allowed priceless cultural artifacts to be ransacked, but of course we at least protected the oil ministries because we knew looting is as natural as apple pie, if you'll let me mix metaphors there. I mean, think about this for a second. There are parts of New Orleans that are so lawless it is literally dangerous to be there.

But, I also want to point out that my concerns, at least in the three defining disasters of the Bush Administration, don't really affect me that much; they are of compassion, not self-interest. I don't have very many friends who have served in the armed forces overseas (and if I ever got drafted, I have the right interests and abilities to remain stateside doing financial work at the Pentagon or playing war games at Fort Leavenworth or being a liason with defense contractors doing advanced research like Boeing's Integrated Defense Systems here in St. Louis), I've never even been to NYC, and my only real attachment to the Gulf Coast is fun memories of Mardi Gras. I say that because what we have been doing (or more accurately, not doing) is a legitimate course of action. We could say that organizing society through government to provide services essential to keep society functioning isn't worth the tax dollars. But the New Yorkers saved by first responders and the people of New Orleans still awaiting a response speak loudly for a different conclusion. My position isn't based simply on a desire to free ride off of society; it is a legitimate desire to save lives and property.

What is so universal, from which I draw a lot of truth, is that in times of crisis, people beg for and celebrate governmental leadership. 9/11 rescued, in a very literal sense, both the Guiliani and Bush Administrations. You have desperate people in the Gulf Coast calling news outlets talking about running for their lives from their own neighborhoods and wondering when they are going to be rescued. You have people broaching otherwise un-American topics like price ceilings (which are completely the wrong solution, by the way; Stalingrad would have starved in World War II and probably fallen to the Germans if "price gouging" hadn't been allowed).

Sometimes it is frustrating having a vision for how the world could be better off, but usually I'm optimistic. It would be more efficient if we would decide to deal with problems before they become crises, but at least Americans seem pretty darn good at operating in crisis mode. Interestingly, even among supposedly the most hardcore small government conservatives, when disaster strikes, all of a sudden the government's supposed to do something. Imagine if Al Gore had campaigned in 2000 that he was going to massively reorganize the federal government, making it much bigger and giving it sweeping new powers. The Weekly Standard would have had a field day, and yet, we ended up with a global war, the Department of Homeland Security, the USA Patriot Act, and the systematic subversion of science by government authorities.

To this day, however, we still haven't gotten true leadership on some of the most pressing dangers we face.

so far, roomie's aok

Let me count the ways...
1) packs like I do; cram everything in the car, as a last resort, use trash bags
2) I pick up the laptop and hear "you're taking the good stuff in"
3) has about the same amount of bath stuff as Adrian
4) didn't know arrival time until essentially arrived
5) hmm, I had more stuff, but now I'm tired and seem to have forgotten them...oh well, I'll probably wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it

Speaking of housing, we're not that much farther from the Gulf Coast than Houston or Atlanta, and we do happen to have a loft that we just use for storage and games, so if you, or someone you know (or even someone you don't know) needs some transitional housing (as in, transitioning from a house that used to be there to a house that actually is there) let me know.

For the record, I had this idea before this website.

le poisson

Brad and I went to see Augusta Bottoms Consort at the Sheldon last night. I now consider my quota of artsy local musiciany goodness filled for the year. (I like a wide variety of music, but I tend to get it from a narrow group of mainstream commercial sources rather than artists less influenced by money and fame)

In the first part, my favorite song was definitely Cosmic Love, and two of the best were encore songs, Le Poisson (fish) and Holy War. They were folksy, yet surprisingly catchy, as well.

Oh, and on another note, no, I don't think I can dance. However, my roommate loves that show, and I unfortunately saw some of it tonight. Well, on nothing more substantial than a split-second impression of seeing the couples (not even dancing, I might add) I correctly identified the two couples whom the judges would rank lowest. Sometimes rash judgments based on first impressions are all you need!

unbalanced

My posts have obviously been a tad unbalanced along the political spectrum the last couple weeks (but not because Democrats don't do dumb things; the real explanatory variable is not party affiliation but that I mainly make fun of people in power, and well, the Repubs control everything from the Federal Appellate Courts to the Ways and Means Committee to the ONDCP to Centcom.) So, I thought I would pass on a link I got from a friend about somebody on the right who I actually like a fair amount because he talks about important issues and frequently sticks up for principles. For example, this gentleman seemed to be the only one concerned in 2000 about this picture and this picture of vote spreads in Palm Beach County.

Now I may disagree with a position or two, but check it out, an article on the right that tries to put things in perspective.

whaddaya know

Those nutty liberals actually weren't so wacky after all.

Hmm, maybe environmental issues really do affect society. By golly, maybe it's not crazy to talk about what causes catastrophic weather events and responses we might take.

Nah, who am I kidding. It's only people, property, and historic places all over America we're talking about. Nothin' worth taxing people to protect.

too bad it's not Texas

I applaud this group for making their aims crystal clear. I propose a compromise. Instead of South Carolina, let's have Texas create a constitutional crisis and just let 'em secede :)

Christian Exodus

Of course, the likelihood that they could actually get a significant number of people to up and move just to recreate Puritan Massachusetts is about as likely as me becoming an Astros fan. Heck, even Baylor University now let's you dance and play cards. But don't let me rain on the parade just because of a few practical problems.

almost falling in love

No, no, not a new woman or a new laptop. It was an absolutely gorgeous morning; sunny, but not too hot, with a slight breeze, cooling but not enough to wrinkle the reflections of rocks and trees and bridges and clouds in the streams. I went for a nice walk through the park today, and I did more exploration on the eastern half. I'm usually over on the western half by the golf course and history museum and fountains in front the of the art museum, but this morning was a longer excursion so I went elsewhere.

It's not home, yet, but today was one of the days that certainly makes it feel more and more like a home.

(Is that a better sales pitch for you, Andrew?)

money in pictures

Courtesy of http://www.inequality.org.

they must be trained this way

(R) So, over lunch, I tried to do the simple task of changing the name on our gas bill. I seriously think the people who answer the phone at Laclede Gas are told to be as unfriendly as possible. Here I am, trying to set up a way so that I can pay them money, and the whole process was either making me feel dumb for things I'm somehow supposed to know or being frustrated at having to answer what were obviously dumb questions of mine. Not to mention ridiculous charges involved. The person in whose name the gas bill currently resides called saying I would be taking over the account, then I called saying it's me, put my name on the account, and still I have to make time to be there (somewhere between "7:30 and noon") with a picture ID and signed copy of the lease to meet some guy who isn't doing anything because the gas is already on. Oh yeah, and $36 for them to do this non-installation, and $244 I will get back assuming I don't ever have my service interrupted. And on a side note, the earliest they could send someone was the 30th. Imagine if I didn't have gas, and having to go a whole week without being able to cook or heat water? That's good customer service.

The whole point of computers is that you can open the database, click on the line that says first name, and type n-a-t-h-a-n-i-e-l. And then last name, and so on. Imagine if on the cover of credit card offers it said, pay us $36, and we'll send you a card!

That would be a great sales pitch.

it's not paranoia if...

There are some really cooky theories floating around. I think our ability to tell and believe in outrageous stories is a very interesting feature of the human brain. For example, the idea that the US government is hiding evidence of intelligent extra-terrestrial life is pretty silly, for a variety of reasons tangential to where I am going in giving my answer to your question Charles. There is certainly no shortage of paranoid conspiracy theorists regarding all sorts of things the Bush Administration or conservatives in general may or may not have done. Key to these kinds of stories is that the accused denies the charges (for example, the idea that some people due to CIA and German banking connections and unlikely futures trading in days prior to 9/11/01 had foreknowledge of the planes flying into the Twin Towers, or the idea that President Bush is the anti-Christ). Just today, someone at work forwarded the urban legend email about the needle under the gas pump giving someone some wierd disease.

But it's not paranoia or silly conspiratorial thinking when the groups themselves are the ones advocating their radical positions. The push for control of economic and spiritual activities in the pursuit of power is nothing new or unique to America. I would argue that our Founding Fathers did an incredible thing in recognizing the twin dangers of the Western world: religious wars and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. That's why they purposefully crafted a document that separated religion from the state and vested power in the masses (land, which was cheap) rather than wealth (which was concentrated). This second point is rather widely debated, with many people saying they were just rich people who protected their wealth. I think it's pretty convincing, though, between their having to do everything behind closed doors to notes taken during the preceedings that they were selling out the rich for the benefit of the new nation. Jefferson and Washington, among others, actually died bankrupt.

It's only natural that there are some people who want to undo that vision; the very fact that our basic Constitutional structure has lasted this long is a testament to the groundwork laid by our 18th century ancestors. We have done horrible things to ourselves and others, but we've recovered every time, and generally speaking, I'm an optimist about progress.

In the religious realm, it's a little easier to track motives and goals due to the necessity of attracting followers and the donations they bring, and the lack of necessity to make popular statements since the Religious Right isn't powerful enough to outright destroy the separation between church and state and simply govern as a theocracy. The plutocrats in business and government hide their language much more subtlely precisely because our current Constitutional arrangement makes their wealth and power dependent upon consumers and voters, although they have been increasingly successful at limiting this unwanted intrusion. In extreme cases, wealthy people still go to jail and lose elections.

So for information about the movement to get religious leaders more involved in government and running society, here are some good websites:

Theocracy Watch
About.com
Americans United

And in their own words:

Christian Broadcasting Network
Christian Coalition
Discovery Institute
Family Research Council
Focus on the Family
Jerry Falwell
Moral Majority
Sun Myung Moon
Tim Lahaye

The fundamental question to ask about leaders of the Religious Right is why they spend so much time accumulating material wealth and exercising dominion over the way that other people live their lives. That's a very secular, Macheavelian pursuit, especially when organizations try to use the state for those ends.

Class warfare is alive and well; it's just that the rich have been the only people fighting it for the last 25 years. There is a group of think tanks and wealthy individuals in government and business that want to transform our republic into a cross between fascism and feudalism. Instead of religion, they cloak their ideology in the language of economics. But they don't advocate policies that secure an efficient market economy, which requires things like clearly defined property rights, perfect information, and competition. Instead, they advocate giving a blank check to large corporations, whose boards of directors are actually comprised of an amazingly small number of wealthy people, to do whatever they want. And significantly, to do it in secrecy with no public debate or accountability. From particular policy areas like repealing the estate tax, minimum wage, and environmental legislation, to general approaches like eliminating social insurance while expanding government subsidies to large corporations and changing the tax code to tax consumption rather than wealth, the idea is to quite literally create a ruling aristocracy that controls the economic resources of the country.

The fundamental question to ask laissez-faire capitalists is why they are so secretive and inconsistent in applying economic analysis to policymaking. They're not anarchists; they want very large government expenditures on things like the military and the prison system and police forces and corporate welfare. But at the same time, they oppose government intervention that promotes competition, protects consumers, strengthens education, supports an independent media, and increases accountability. Why, exactly, did wealthy executives of energy firms get to meet secretly with the Vice President, a man currently being paid by Halliburton, who to this day has fought to keep the public from knowing the details of the meetings? Why did the government explicitly prevent itself from negotiating volume discounts with drug companies? The reason this isn't consistent with either a small government or a market economy is because the real desire isn't ideological; it's the simple desire to accumulate wealth and power. The trouble with that is it's slightly incompatible with democracy. Already, the amount of corruption in our government is incredible, as is the unresponsiveness of political and business leaders to demands by voters, consumers, and employees. For example, most people would spend the federal budget radically differently than the last several budget appropriations, while a clean environment and living wages are popular demands.

Some good websites about the concentration of wealth and power:

Endgame.org
Fair Economy
Inequality.org
Marshallbrain
American Way

In their own words:

American Enterprise Institute
Club for Growth
Heritage Foundation
National Taxpayers Union
Americans for Tax Reform

None of this is to say that a Christian state or a plutocracy would necessarily be bad; that's a different discussion (although I'm sure you can tell my answer is yes and yes). My point here is to show that these really are movements and not disparate groups like many of the progressive issue-based organizations.

darn rap culture

(R) What's with all these fellas glorifying violence and killing and bling bling and all that? Don't they understand the message they're sending to the children? The children!

Oh, wait, it was a wealthy white ruler of the Christian right. I guess it's alright that he was openly advocating the assassination of a democratically elected president and reassuring us it's ok because it won't interrupt the supply of oil and that it's a lot cheaper than a war.

Seriously, if we expect Islamic leaders to voice public opposition to extremists who advocate senseless violence based on real objections, we have every obligation to do the same when people who are totally off their rocker advocate senseless violence. And not only is it terribly un-Christian, assassinating the leader of a major trading partner in a region of the world already trending anti-American is just dumb policy.

Dumb dumb dumb morally wrong dumb dumb. Dumb.

2 down

We've had our second tree casualty of the summer. At this rate, it makes you wonder how our street remains lined with trees like it does. First, a tree just decided to keel over on Jodi's car in perfectly clear weather. After the chain saws, there's just a stump.




Then, a tree down the street lost it during the bad storms we had last weekend. Stump #2.

Hopefully there won't be storms this coming weekend because our new roommate is moving in. Drop by to say hello or stay to help.

I leave you with this:

authoritarian christianity

"We need to tell both parties, 'It's our way or the highway'...You and I can bring the ruling reign of the cross to America." -- Bishop Harry Jackson at the recent Justice Sunday II in Nashville, TN.

How's that for a view of bringing the Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth?

i respectfully disagree

That's right, Patrick, I'm talking about you. Broken Flowers was a boring yawner, a terrible horrible no good very bad movie. I hope this sets the record straight.

As I was leaving DR tonight, I got the most random call; I didn't get to it, I didn't recognize the number, and there was no message. But it had a Columbia area code and, well, you never know...so I called back. And it turned out to be Bridgette's phone. Bizarre. I mean, she's cool and all, but what a wierd way to get her number. Somehow she had mine in her phone and accidentally called? It's not like it was a Saturday night and she was out drunk. Alas, I may never know the full story. At least she and Bobby are settled in. Three cheers for the randomness that is life.

my good deed of the day

I found a cricket and trapped it in a glass and took it outside rather than squashing it. Yay for me.

Oh, I also fed Cookie again and played with her and brushed her yada yada yada. It's always good to build up extra good ones in case Thursday rolls around and I forget.

I reached an interesting milestone this weekend. My iPhoto library now has a thousand photos in it. I know a lot of people have many thousands of pictures, but I don't take a lot so it was an exciting development.

And speaking of milestones, fortunately the Royals decided not to set the losing streak record.

it's a success...crap

(P) Well the American Jobs Creation Act is doing exactly what the lobbyists hoped it would do. Nope, not create jobs. What it does is let companies that have been sheltering cash offshore repatriate the profits at exceedingly low tax rates. The lowest federal income tax bracket is almost twice as high as the rate given to these companies! Why don't we just use the government to write checks directly to them? Clearly they do a better job defending the country and building schools than our democratic processes.

Also, drug war advocates must be getting nervous after a generation of absolute failure despite having spent hundreds of billions of dollars, killing innocent people all over the globe, and imprisoning millions of people who have harmed no one save themselves. The leader of the Liberal Democrats in the European Parliament has come out for a fully legalized, regulated system, just like all the other dangerous consumer products from alcohol to automobiles. I can't wait to see the desperate counter assault against such common-sense realism.

the results are in

We have successfully Westernized the Indian subcontinent...woohoo! Check it out. BusinessWeek has a really interesting survey of changing attitudes among young Indian women.

i was serious peoples

Apparently you didn’t think I was serious when I said a few days ago there is all this alcohol in our fridge we don’t want; Miller Light, Budweiser Select, Guinness Draught, Boulevard Wheat, and more. The next time it enters your brain to fork over a wad of cash to an alcohol company for a case of beer, save it instead and help empty our fridge.

oh dear lord, i did it again

This isn't happening. We had a late night for some important loan app thingy deadline that's tomorrow, and I was in such a hurry to leave (actually, the person I was walking out with was in an even bigger hurry, but we both wanted to leave) that I walked out with a pen in my pocket. Someone might have said something except, well, accounting folks are the only people left at 8 at night and you think they notice something like that?

(R) That's all this post was going to be until I just heard an interview with some Harvard professor (blegh). Anyway, he made the preposterous claim that businesses are hurting because our school systems are horrible. Yes, I will be the first one to claim there are problems and that our schools deserve more resources. But his position was that our educational system is somehow shortchanging businesses who need qualified employees, particularly "top level", whatever he meant by that.

WTF????

The situation is exactly the opposite. Good people who have worked hard in school and want to be productive members of society are having incredibly hard times finding a job. It's the job market, not the school system, that really sucks right now. About the only way people are landing jobs outside of teaching, nursing, some engineering specialties (it always pays well to be a Chem E or an EE), and being a mercenary (sorry, working for a "private security company") are those who have a specific connection through a family member or professor. Networks have always been the best way of finding a job, but now more than ever merit is an incredibly small part of the equation for landing a job. Only in some fantasy world is the problem the opposite; that there are these magic jobs out there that are just waiting for smart, well-educated people to apply. Of course, if I were a tenured prof at Hahvahrd, I'd probably think the job market was pretty sweet, too.

In fact, I'll put my money where my mouth is. I work at an organization that does really important work, and I am getting good experience across a broad range of business disciplines (something I very much enjoy about non-profit work). I don't (usually) like to brag, but I happen to be one of those "top level" people. I'm very smart, highly educated, ambitious, and I have excellent communication skills. I also happen to have a few suits I don't look too shabby in. (Or if you prefer, in which I don't look too shabby.) You show me a company that has one of these great jobs open because they just can't fill it, and I'll resign my position and accept the offer from one of these suffering businesses.

almost as exciting

As I drove out of the parking lot yesterday, I put my 26,000th mile on my car. Not quite as exciting as 25,000, but a milestone nonetheless. In particular, it reminds me that I am now well past my 60,000 mile checkup. Oops.

Sort of car related, I set a new record driving to work this morning. The average is about 10 minutes, but today it took only 7.5! If the idiots would just stay off the road every morning...

Not related at all, Alex came into town last night to get his stuff on his way through to Champaign. I haven't been to the grocery store in awhile, but we managed to scrounge up a dinner of corn on the cob, small shell pasta, and chicken patties for him.

Oh, and real food like Wheat Thins, Keebler chocolate chip and M&M cookies, French crullers, and Pringles.

good election overview

(P) This and this are good rundowns on the statistical problems found in the last couple national elections. If you haven't been following the voting irregularities of the last five years, you're missing a really interesting story. Your local gas station pump gives you a detailed receipt, yet many of the electronic voting systems generate no auditable record whatsoever. Most of the time, you don't even know who you voted for. The rest of the industrialized world manages to actually, you know, count votes, exit polls are extremely reliable, then-Vice President Al Gore won the 2000 election, it appears that Senator Kerry won the 2004 election, although that is still up in the air, and there have been several questionable state elections.

If this were just Democrats whining, it really wouldn't be very interesting. George Bush is the President, and short of a resignation or impeachment, he will execute those duties accordingly until 2009.

What makes this interesting is that the new age of cheating at the ballot box--electronically--favors the kind of chaos that control-driven organizations, both political and corporate, detest and fear most. There is a ton of underemployed engineering and computer science talent out there, and the farther up the education ladder you go, the less tolerance for PR-driven corporate conservatism one finds. At the other end, the biggest threats to corporate and government computer networks haven't come from terrorists or the Russians; they've come from 13 year old kids. If people really can get away with meddling in elections, you know all sorts are going to want to leave their mark.

14 hours of fun

Storms are great fun so long as nothing bad happens. (yeah, I know, that's real original. Most things are great so long as nothing bad happens)

Anyway, we lost power about 4 yesterday, and it didn't return until about 6:30 this morning. It was fun playing cards with Brad and Kelly by candlelight, and McChickens are always classed up in the dimmed light, but I did miss my computer. It got a little warm after a few hours (we're on the third floor, so all the heat drifts up to us) so Jodi wanted to grab some ice cream. Well there was this incredibly chatty artsy chick, brunette hair slightly astray, who Went to Webster working there at Ben & Jerry's. She at least made interesting conversation, and seeing as I had no other place to be, I happily did my part to keep the conversation going. After awhile, she got distracted by a friend of hers and ran off the way that only art majors can. So another girl came over in a Cards cap and straight blonde hair and was like, "so did you actually get helped in all that?" and laughed with me when I described the girl that had previously been helping me. The second, far more normal girl, of course, turned out to be a Wash U student.

I also learned that AmerenUE does not put their emergency number on their bills. The 342-1111 is for billing stuff. You should call 342-1000 in an emergency. Of course, during an emergency, their phone lines will be too busy for you to get through, but at least you'll feel better knowing it's the emergency line.

As a power outage bonus, you get a totally unrelated thought. I helped out with an evening contemporary service as part of our youth group sharing about their recent mission trip up in 'Sconsin, and we had dinner afterward. I sat with a married couple and two single women, and much of the conversation relived in vivid multimedia form the various shows and songs of their childhood. I am a tad younger than the three ladies, but after a couple quick exchanges with the guy who is their age, we both concluded neither of us had any idea what the ladies were discussing. I had seen two of the shows, and hadn't even heard of the others. It was a foreign tongue, completely alien; fascinating and scary at the same time.