A fascinating episode in the history of american foreign adventures of which I was entirely unaware: William Walker of Nashville; freebooter, evangelist of slavery, and President of Nicaragua. One day, I need to actually study the lead-up to the civil war.
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01:13:39 PM,
Wednesday 4 October 2006
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"Moderate Republicans are reverse Houdinis. They tie themselves up in knots and then tell you they can't do anything because they're tied up in knots." -Barney Frank. This applies quite tidily to my approach to political philosophy.
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05:42:48 PM,
Tuesday 3 October 2006
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The cat isn't as clever as he appears. My landlord just got home on his bicycle, and he ran to the back door and yowled, just as he does when I cycle home. But I'm sitting right here. This means he associates bicycle noise (which I can't hear, but he must be able to) with the door opening, not with me. I feel somewhat slighted.
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05:20:25 PM,
Tuesday 3 October 2006
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I've been thinking... the presidency should me more akin to a constitutional monarch than a prime minister. That's the way it's set up... the presidency seperate and distinct from the legislative parties. It was modeled on 18th century monarchs, only easier to get rid of. The Queen still has power, it's just that culture prevents her ever exercising them. A chief civil servant, whose personal opinions were besides the point. The oath of office invalidating party, class or any other loyalty. You occasionally here people talking that way, but it's rare indeed. Vetos would be for badly written or unclear laws, but vetoing something just because you disagreed with the intent was just not done. Then our constitution would make a bit of sense. We are now so far away from that we have presidential signing statements. This isn't a problem with our constitition so much as it's a problem with our political culture. Which I suppose is why "change the culture in washington" is a cliche.
If judges aren't allowed to declare party loyalty, why are governors or presidents? Our legislature has died, and the presidency has stepped in and filled the void.
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03:30:24 PM,
Tuesday 3 October 2006
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After keeping a spreadsheet with of all our financial transactions for 2 years, I finally decided to look into actual money management software. Microsoft Money has a free trial, and I've been playing with it all evening. I think I like my spreadsheet better. It does have some major advantages: it would eliminate the data entry errors I make when I type in the stuff by hand every week: it is able to read in account information itself from Chase and Fidelity, and it can take manual downloads from BoA and ING. This would be more accurate, and faster. Instead of typing in everything, I'd just have to review and sort it. The catagories are customizable, and you can do subcatagories, which is sort of neat. The trouble is that it's just smart enough to be dangerous. It pushes you around, everything is wizard-based. I've also been doing the budget annually, it wants to do it monthly. Transfering my 30 months of data over into it would be nightmarish. Of course, I don't actually need to do that. I think I'll try maintaining both systems for a while, and think about switching over in the new year.
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(3)
08:01:12 PM,
Sunday 1 October 2006
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For example, we now have a nasty little sex scandal, that just happened to come to light before the election, and that has even generally wonky bloggers are setting aside their better selves for campaign season, and trying to spin into a national issue. Any stick at hand... I want substantive policy debates, and a coherent opposition party! And a pony! Seriously, back into my cave. It's like the analyst was saying after my candidate for governer lost. Goo-goos (good government types) are too fine-souled for american democracy; the game goes to those willing to game the system. And yes, I was defending american democracy over on Mosses blog the other day. Just because it more or less works, when compared to history, doesn't mean I like it. I eat meat as well, but that doesn't mean I like slaughterhouses.
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(2)
01:12:42 PM,
Saturday 30 September 2006
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Some bad news from outside the midterm election song and dance: India accuses Pakistan's ISI of planning the Mumbai train bombings. State sponsors of terror with nuclear weapons, indeed.
Am I the only one who is feeling manipulated by the news lately? Fences, detainees, it's not that it isn't important. It's that they are being ginned up at this particular moment to change how I vote, and I have few news sources I trust at this point. Blogs certainly don't have any scruples about mixing campaigning with the news. I'm being told the fate of civilization hinges on this election, and so are the people on the other side, and I suppose I'm skeptical.
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(11)
12:39:37 PM,
Saturday 30 September 2006
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Having been asleep for the past 4 hours in no way justifies the accepting of client meeting requests with the phrase "I'll be there with bells on." It would worry and confuse the poor things.
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(4)
06:42:59 PM,
Tuesday 26 September 2006
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Bought a network external hard-drive, so we can keep our computers eternally backed up. Bought it from Circuit City, and now have two stupid mail in rebate offers to deal with, totalling $160, going to different addresses. (One of them accepts a copy of the UPC, while the other needs the original). How many of you fill in your mail-in rebates? I'd say my personal redemption rate is somewhere around 1 in 4. For $30 rebates, I generally don't bother, but I feel sick about it later.
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(5)
05:25:25 PM,
Sunday 24 September 2006
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Excerpts from the forthcoming Gothic Archies album here. The third one, "Crows", a GnRish power ballad, is partucularly recommended.
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12:39:39 PM,
Sunday 24 September 2006
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"I believe in my heart that if Jesus were alive today he would be doing the same thing." Madonna, responding to accusations of blasphemy.
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(5)
03:20:18 PM,
Friday 22 September 2006
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I haven't really looked into it yet, but there is a wiki cookbook.
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05:41:53 PM,
Thursday 21 September 2006
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site & script courtesy of Moss
