I'm concerned that as we get closer to the election, al-Qaida will have the ability to swing it, the way they swung the polls for Bush in 2004. They have a vested interest in maintaining the notion of a clash of civilizations, the ability to bring out the worst in us. I may be depressed. (from reading this review of collections of Their public statements). If you look at the presidential approval ratings this country has been regretting electing Bush since 4 months after the election.
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(6)
08:26:50 AM,
Wednesday 8 August 2007
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I have just realized that both my current bosses remind me of St. Johns tutors (Mr. Sachs and Mr. Houser)
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05:59:40 PM,
Tuesday 7 August 2007
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We have two refrigerators! The first time, there was no way on earth the new one was going to fit, so they took it back. This time, the new one would fit, if we could only get the old one out. But the new stove sticks out too far, so now someone has to come move the gas stove out of the way, then we have to call the refrigerator people back to take the old one out and shuffle the new one in, and then the stove has to be reattached. But at least we can keep perishables again.
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(1)
02:21:57 PM,
Tuesday 7 August 2007
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07:27:56 PM, Monday 6 August 2007
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My congressman managed to get the loophole where vehicles over 3 tons (escalades, hummers, etc) could be written off any small business owner (real estate agents, doctors, etc) as a tax deduction. Learning about this particular bit of governmental insanity when reading High and Mighty years ago was a milestone on my path to becoming a goo-goo. Good Congressman. Have a congressman biscuit. I was trying to see if writing him an email about the farm bill and the evil consequences of subsidizing cash crops on 3rd world poverty would be helpful. Looks like I'm too late anyway, it's already passed the house, and the Kind/Flake fairness amendment failed by a large margin. Yes, we have a Rep. Kind, and a Rep. Flake, both apparently idealists. If we had government transparancy, I'd be able to find out how Markey voted on it, and what the text of it was, without relying on ONE campaign press releases for my information. I'm fairly impressed with the ONE campaign, but you have to admit, they have pictures of Bono on their website. I resent the implication that I'd be influenced to support trade reform by Bono. I'm just grumpy because I've been trying to get information out of THOMAS. There is no way the awfulness of THOMAS is not intentional. Things that bad don't just evolve. You can see the hand of an intelligent saboteur.
Found it! Here's the vote. Another Congressman biscuit for Markey, breaking with Democratic leadership and everything. Still can't find the text, though.
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(12)
11:16:00 AM,
Saturday 4 August 2007
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Dear world: Jane Austen is not a Jane Austen heroine. Stop it. It's silly, and makes me feel that you've missed the point. I'm very sorry that the supply of novels dried up before the supply of dewy actresses did. Why don't you go harrass the Brontes for a bit?
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(1)
09:16:02 PM,
Friday 3 August 2007
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Someone quoted on NPR this morning actually said SCHIP would lead to longer lines in healthcare. Now, this is rather telling. SCHIP isn't any form of rationing. There's a case to be made against it, because people quit their jobs to remain in poverty to keep their insurance, which is a sick and evil incentive. But mostly that's a reason to expand it, and to somehow create affordable insurance that's available to everybody. But the notion that it would increase waiting lists: the only mechinism by which it could do that would be by, you know, letting poor kids go to the doctor. So basically, he was arguing that the middle class doesn't want poor people cluttering up the waiting rooms. To be kind, he was probably just clueless, and doesn't realize that the AMA's anti-HMO talking points aren't actually universally applicable. But cluelessness isn't admirable either. I'll try to work out who it was, so we can all jeer in the right direction.
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(4)
09:59:51 AM,
Friday 3 August 2007
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If ducks had paddlewheels rather than legs, when they were on land they could zoom around like little motorcycles. I didn't get much sleep.
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(3)
06:53:00 AM,
Friday 3 August 2007
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Democrats against democracy. Or, to be specific, Chris Lehane against an incremental increase in the fairness of the presidential election in California. "... an effort to rig the system in order to fix the election." Wouldn't want that. I would have said it was an effort to fix the system in order to rig the election, but whatever. I wonder if anyone will think to ask Al Gore what he thinks about this. I hope without hope that this catches on, and scares the democrats into doing something about the electoral college on a federal level.
I don't quite get it, though. Why do they do it by district? According to the story, it would give them 20 of 55 votes. But they got 45% of the vote in 2004, so a simple, fair, proportional division would actually be better for the Republicans.
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(22)
02:20:54 PM,
Thursday 2 August 2007
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The theoretical trouble with renting: Cheap refrigerators have higher operating expenses than expensive ones. But neither I nor the landlord have sufficient incentive to pay extra for it. Same with insulation, new windows, water heaters, and so on. The only thing providing incentive for capital improvements is the market, at least in theory you can charge more rent for a better insulated apartment. But the rental market is far from open, particularly in areas like this that operate largely on the fee system. Real estate agents make their living of controlling the information about apartments so they don't get cut out, so shopping around is difficult. Also, moving too expensive and painful; no one is going to move to a similar apartment down the road to lower their utility bills.
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(16)
12:05:47 PM,
Thursday 2 August 2007
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Does the fact that the helicopter crash in arizona amuses me make me a bad person? It's the other helicopters reporting on the collision that does it, I think.
Huh. Okay, so I went and watched some video of it, and I'm completely cured now. I no longer find it funny in the slightest. I think this is the humanizing influence of modern media people talk about, how TV news has changed war, and so on. I'm much more convinced of this than I was 10 minutes ago.
Still not sure whether I was a bad person for finding the idea, divorced from the reality, to be funny. But, yeah, film footage doesn't give you the option of divorcing it from reality. I'm not linking to it, because, ugh. But if you think it's funny, and would rather not, I can't recommend it highly enough.
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08:51:11 PM,
Wednesday 1 August 2007
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I don't think "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is grammatical. Or, I suppose, I don't understand the utility of the distinction between being meaningless and being ungrammatical. If something conveys meaning, I don't think I care whether it's grammatical, though I could be wrong there. If it's meaningless, I certainly don't care whether it's grammatical. I do care how well something conveys meaning, and how nice it sounds, but neither of those correspond well to the concept of grammar as I know it. So I suppose all I mean is that I don't care about grammar. I don't see what is to gain from seperating the structure of language from meaning. I mean, it has a structure, and it's probably good that someone studies it. Rather like beetles, or cosmology. If cosmologists and entymologists annoyed me for no apparent reason. Hmm. that was a fruitless bit of thinking right there.
Grammatical is a hideously ugly word.
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(4)
12:26:39 AM,
Wednesday 1 August 2007
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