Archive for July 2006

The monthlies.

• Getting The MBA (Off My Chest)

  I must apologize to my earnest readers for a bit of confusion that I had mistakenly implied in a recent post, Adventures of a War President (War Means Jobs, Baby!). In the closing, I joked about “an MBA colleague.” This is what lead to the mass confusion and hysteria, and I apologize if it had [...]

• Are you high knowledge?

  The Pew Research Center has just conducted a survey to find what viewers/listeners watch/listen what programs. It turns out Bill O’Reilly’s viewers are some of the smartest, and Jon Stewart’s Daily Show viewers are not far behind. Pew defined this ranking, however, on the number of people with “high knowledge.” What is a person with [...]

• Adventures of a War President (War Means Jobs, Baby!)

  When Bush insisted to Tim Russert, “I’m a war president,” in a February 2004 interview on Meet the Press, who knew that Bush was not only discussing his war in Iraq (and the pulling of troops in Afghanistan in order to prosecute the unnecessary war in Iraq) and his administration’s desire to follow Iraq with [...]

• Trading Deadline

  Today is the Major League Baseball trading deadline, which addresses the question, for all intents and purposes, how the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox shore up their rosters for the stretch run by plucking overpaid players from underachieving teams in the last year of their contract. End result: Boston vs. New York in [...]

• COTL Calling Out Redux

  If you are a liberal blogger, consider submitting your best work (read: blog-entry) into the latest edition of the Carnival of the Liberals, hosted by me on Tuesday, August 2. I have been anticipating this moment for some time, and now that it has been made official, please consider submitting a post into the No [...]

• Morning Commute Quips

  While driving to the train station this morning, I passed a car on my left and said to my fiancee in the passenger seat, “Look at this car; it’s even uglier than the Cruiser.” I quickly passed the car, and as I looked back in my side mirror I realized what make it was, and [...]

• Morning Politoon… Freedom Haters.

  Doonesbury offers insight on Bush’s frustration with freedom-hating incipient-democracy voters… (Click on image for full cartoon.) Image: Yahoo!

• It Don’t Mean Much

  Although I didn’t go ahead and make tee-shirts available for purchase (but I cannot promise what I’ll do after four years either), today marks the third anniversary (I guess the correct term is “blogiversary;” thanks Skippy) of this blog, and seriously, I am looking forward to three more. Seriously, I am. (No, seriously.) On that [...]

• Steve Young Commercial Redux

  Continuing on with the cellphone photowonders… Last week, I blogged about the filming of a commercial outside my office window here in downtown Oakland. This doesn’t happen too often, so I pulled out my cellphone camera and documented the event. It turned out the commercial was for a Toyota Camry (or a Toyota dealer in [...]

• In the News

  I didn’t want to say anything, but I have a blog… – I am not suggesting anything different would have happened (it would), but an engineer should have been in charge of this project, not some politician. – It is about time someone wrote about the fact that the Buffalo Bisons were part of breaking [...]

• Tough Choice

  I haven’t really followed this case or trial so I must plead ignorance on the details, but would you rather be found guilty of drowning your five young children, or be found clinically insane, evidenced by the fact that you had drowned your five young children? It is a toss up for me.

• COTL — A Calling Out

  The place to be on Wednesday, August 2, is here at reyonthehill as I will be hosting the eighteenth edition of the Carnival of the Liberals. (Alright, I may have overstepped my brief there; go ahead, do what you were going to do, post that comment on dKos.) I’ve been trying to think of a [...]

• In the News… I Survived.

  Well, the heat has officially subsided (along the bay, at least), and I had to close the bedroom windows last night, so my mind is working properly again. Unfortunately, there are no blog-worthy news items this morning… except maybe that Ann Coulter believes that Bill Clinton is a homosexual (haven’t heard that one before) and [...]

• Waiting For A Happy Burrito

  The best burrito in Oakland City Center is at Happy Burrito #2, a short hop, skip and a jump, followed by another skip and a hop, and one more skip, from my workplace. The burritos are so good (especially the “super asada”), you will usually have to wait in line for one. Note: I am [...]

• When Knowing The Truth Doesn’t Help Matters

  This sort of stuff creeps me out; it always has. On a family vacation in Florida back in the mid- to late-eighties (when I was 7 or 8 or so), my mother wanted to watch a 20/20 special on “real” exorcisms. I only caught a mere glimpse of the program, but it has scarred me [...]

• Morning Politoon

  The incipient governments of Iraq and Afghanistan are extremely fragile and the young Lebanese government is cracking, all of which is made worse with a Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice neocon administration making the decisions. Toles… Image: Yahoo!

• Not A Phone Call, A Link To Contribute

  One of the most ridiculous statements Markos Moulitsas (of DailyKos) has ever made came in an interview with Jake Tapper: “I can’t call up strangers and beg for money. I think it’s demeaning.“ If you don’t see a plea for contributions when you visit DailyKos, reload the page… it’s coming.

• Katrina Levee Failures, An Engineer’s Lecture

  Back on July 11, I attended an engineer’s lecture examining the reasons the levees and floodwalls failed in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Professor Michael Duncan, the one with the eyepatch, is an excellent speaker and he discussed his findings and research and explained a few of the differences between his and the UC Berkeley [...]

• In the News

  - A small change in NASA’s mission statement may halt our “understanding of terrestrial problems like climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions.“ – The presidential candidate with the most votes wins? What is this, high school? Instead of eliminating the electoral college, a professor urges states to join hands and select electors based on [...]

• Federally-Mandated State Licenses

  Hmm, “federally-approved state licenses.” Shouldn’t we all just get behind a federal identification card, termed “the Fed,” and eliminate the “identification” that the Social Security card illegitimately provides us? Isn’t federally-approved (and mandated) state licenses the same thing? And what if you don’t want to have a driver’s license — no one can force you [...]

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