Archive for May 2007

The monthlies.

• In the News

  - Bush once looked into Putin’s soul and called the Russian president his friend. Now, the two will meet to mend differences as “many experts say relations between the two nations are at their lowest point since the Soviet era.“ – Given fifteen minutes with Bush, a majority “said they would urgently urge him to [...]

• Joshua Tree, Day Two

  Whether or not my wife and I could stand the desert heat wasn’t a real concern. Whether or not our six-month-old lab puppy would survive the weekend, was a whole other question. Haley sure loved to investigate the large boulders… It turned out that Haley really enjoyed the desert (when it wasn’t too hot, that [...]

• Joshua Tree, the Morning After

  The evenings were very nice in Joshua Tree. The temperatures dipped into the low seventies (measured on the Fahrenheit scale) and a swift breeze kept the tents even cooler throughout the night. The moonlight allowed us to make late-night trips to the restroom without any real trouble at all. But, again, the howl of coyotes [...]

• Joshua Tree, Day One

  Arriving at Joshua Tree a little past six o’clock in the evening on Friday (following a twelve-hour drive from the Bay Area, mostly due to traffic in the hell that is the LA area, but also because of a one-and-a-half-hour delay resulting from running out of gas, which prompted the construction of a make-shift shelter [...]

• In the News

  - The conservative district attorney on the Law & Order television show is running for president. (In a few years, I’ll read that line and laugh my ass off. Unless he wins, and then I’ll cry.) – Umh, it seems that every candidate I tentatively “support” immediately gets bad press, first Joe Biden and now [...]

• In the News, Part Deux.

  - A new poll finds that “more than two-thirds of Americans believe there are circumstances in which a patient should be allowed to die, but they are closely divided on whether it should be legal for a doctor to help terminally ill patients end their own lives by prescribing fatal drugs.” Details. – Barack Obama [...]

• In the News

  - Cindy Sheehan has resigned as the “so-called ‘Face’ of the American anti-war movement.“ – Gut reaction: I don’t really like the new Huffington Post. – Since announcing “almost three years ago that genocide was taking place [in Darfur],” the Bush administration is announcing plans to levy sanctions against Sudan. – And the U.S. and [...]

• Liveblogging the Bush News Conference

  8:00amNo arrival yet. And your bird can sing.* 8:02amBirds still singing, no sign of Bush. Oh, there he is. “Please be seated.” 8:02amBush: “My members of Congress.” Huh? 8:03amBush quotes the Iraq Study Group. What has happened over this past year? Oh yea, the Democrats regained control of Congress. 8:06amBush mentions a catch-and-release immigration policy, [...]

• In the News… Worst. Commencement. Speech. Ever.

  This is why people rely on CNN and the Daily Show (and skippy the bush kangaroo) for their news, because I can’t keep my act together. – A bill passed through the House would for the “first time create a federal law making energy price gouging illegal.” The White House suggests that the president would [...]

• Status Update

  What the fuck was that? I have no idea. But let’s pretend it never happened. Think happy thoughts… Here is a video of Haley fetching a stick in Lake Tahoe (approximate temperature of dihydro-oxide: 45 degrees, measured on the Fahrenheit scale)… (It is a good thing I taught her how to swim first.)

• Bush’s Fateful Morning

  Jake Tapper reported on Al Gore’s possible suggestion that he would have prevented (or at least would have been more able to) the nine-eleven attacks, and I commented… President Bush has always referred to September 11, 2001, as that “fateful” morning, which would imply that even if Bush had the competence to pay more attention [...]

• Status Issue

  NOTE (9:30am, 5/23/2007): Blogger is down. (Again.) I have not been able to publish since 9:58am, reyonthehill time, yesterday. As a result, my most recent posts aren’t showing up here. But they are available at my feed page. Please check that in the interim. I apologize (and Blogger should apologize, and Google should apologize, and [...]

• Bush’s Vacuum

  Bush on failure in Iraq (from yesterday)… “What happens if this potential ally fails? Into a vacuum will flow radicalism and extremism funded by different elements from around the Middle East.“ Isn’t a vacuum exactly what we want?

• Fixing the NHL

  So my jinx on the Sabres worked. Great. (So this is why people own guns.) There are a lot of stories about how the NHL is broken (it isn’t, but it is poorly managed), and I offer a few suggestions. The main reason the NHL is conceived at being “broken” is because of the tv [...]

• In the News

  - Although Bill Richardson had participated in the democratic debate a few weeks ago, the press has allowed him to formally announce his candidacy today. – Bush on the Attorney General: “He has done nothing wrong.” Setting the bar high, I guess. – “The Bush administration is quietly on track to nearly double the number [...]

• 11th Commandment: Email Reply

  Maybe I’d think about joining the Catholic church (or rejoining, since I was confirmed), if they adopted an eleventh commandment, “Thou shall reply to all personal email (in a timely manner).” Too much to ask? Note: Even if the church did adopt the eleventh commandment, I still wouldn’t re-up with the fraternity of eternal sin. [...]

• So, This Vimeo Thing (or, The 250 Meg Show)

  Alright, I have shopped around plenty for online video sharing sites over the years, and Vimeo is one of the best. There is no doubt about it. The site doesn’t include any of those silly best-of-Seinfeld compilations remixed with Ludacris-or-something, and the site offers the cleanest interface, hands down. (Everyone should know by now my [...]

• In the News

  - A troubling fact is developing here in California as “for the first time the state will spend more on incarcerating inmates than on educating students in its public universities.“ – The campaign to spread Firefox is a lot like the campaign to elect Howard Dean in 2004, only a lot more successful. – If [...]

• Resisting the Drums of War

  Roy Eidelson, the Executive Director of the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania, sent me his latest project, a video titled “Resisting the Drums of War” that examines the war-mongering of the Bush administration… I am not sure if it really is any good, but it does come [...]

• Caption Contest

  Bush at yesterday’s press conference… “Now you promised me you’d say a lot, right? You promised.” Image: San Francisco Chronicle

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