Archive for July 2009

The monthlies.

• Ok

  I’ll stop now.

• Fixing Social Security

  The title of this post is not as accurate as it probably could be, but “Eliminating Social Security and Implementing a New, Improved Federal Retirement System” doesn’t have the same ring to it. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t fit on one line, and that’s the type of stuff that eats away at me. Current (and [...]

• Political Stars

  This is a post a long time in the making.1 The content of this post has been on my mind for quite some time. I have thought long and hard on this topic — too hard for too long. This is my culminating effort. This is the post that will make me famous. No pressure. [...]

• Stealing Software

  I started writing this post while sitting half-asleep on a modern uncomfortable sofa in the Amsterdam airport while I was waiting for my connection to Warsaw without the benefit of wireless internet. I used WriteRoom — a software package I find myself using more and more often to write without distraction. (It actually works.) I [...]

• NL

  Just now, via work IM… reyonthehill: Holliday was traded. reyonthehill: St. Louis for three players reyonthehill: National Leaguers co-worker: saw that this AM. It was in the works since opening day, as far as i’m concerned reyonthehill: I didn’t realize the NL was still in business. co-worker: yes, still in business co-worker: apparently, letting pitchers [...]

• If the IRS was on Twitter

  In a wide-ranging, long-winded, semi-work-related IM conversation with a coworker this afternoon, I floated the idea of the IRS on Twitter… @IRS you suck balls @IRS where’s my money? @IRS you just got fooled. thanks for the refund. #fail Be sure to follow the White House and Social Security, you know, if you have the [...]

• The Heist of 2001 — Syracuse v. VaTech

  This is the oldest post that I never completed (until now). I started writing it in 2003, and it was supposed to follow one of my most influential posts: A Case Against Perennially Over-Ranked VaTech. I was going to spend a considerable amount of time going through the entire 2001 football season, game by game, [...]

• Amsterdam

  I foolishly, but honestly, confided in my wife while vacationing in Amsterdam recently. I told her that if — and when — I have my nervous breakdown, or mid-life crisis, or whatever, that this would be where she could find me… Amsterdam. It was honest in that I believe it actually would be true, if [...]

• A Half-Year Of Reading

  Since the beginning of the year, ostensibly, I have read… Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins See No Evil by Robert Baer The Great Unraveling by Paul Krugman Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan 1491 by Charles Mann At this point, it is unlikely that I’ll ever pick up Fowles again.

• First Read Bleeds

  MSNBC’s oft-cited First Read, yesterday… Will Obama be able to articulate specific policy proposals on health care that he’s for, or will we hear more of the same chatter on his principles? Repetition is always important to pushing a message, but one of the things that may be slowing down the process in Congress is [...]

• Bookshelf

  These are the next four books that I hope to read this year, assuming a normal and steady reading schedule (that is, daily commute by train)… The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made by Walter Isaacson; Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond; 1776 by David McCullough; [...]

• Domains for the hell of it

  Back in the hey-day of the Web 1.0 bubble, a silly company NameZero gave users free domain names. So I went on a roll, and acidtrain.com, anti-gop.com, liberalactivist.com, radical-side.com and re-election.com were all mine, along with several others (including any derivation of my name, with dot-net and dot-org alternates, anything that I could think of [...]

• Fixing Health Care

  Quick and dirty… Eliminate Medicare, Medicaid, and every other federal health coverage program (and states would follow), and any associated taxes. Levy a five percent income tax on every American, with no income limit, to pay for universal single-payer coverage, the best the world has seen. Problem solved.

• The Future of the Web

  There are two aspects to the web that need to be tackled… the design and media (specifically video). One of them has been solved with the latest version of Firefox, the other only partially, but a sandbox for development has been built. Web designers have long desired to control the look of their sites,1 and [...]

• Pre-Columbia

  Charles Mann’s 1491 is certainly engrossing. I am more than three-fourths done, but I may not have the time to appropriately digest the whole thing and spew my thoughts on this blog.1 The book can easily be considered required reading for, say, college courses on American history or even high school AP history courses, but [...]

• Tony Soprano Is Dead

  When I first started this post on St. Patrick’s Day, it was titled, The Irrelevance of the Pope (and the Catholic Faith). I started the post as a result of the (unsurprising) news that the Pope would continue to decry the teaching of safe sex, which is effective, including in AIDS-ravaged Africa, and continue to [...]

• Resurgent Draft: California Fiction

  This was a post that started in earnest in November 2005, just when I started to realize that California was not as liberal as many people suggest, and is much more anti-tax than advertised. This post is truly one of those unfinished masterpieces. Unpublished Draft Many people state that California is part of the “left [...]

• Rome

  When John Lennon was asked why he moved to New York City (from England) in 1971, he famously said, “If I’d lived in Roman times, I’d have lived in Rome.” If it were me, I’d have lived in Corsica.

• Antennae

  This bad boy is sitting on my roof, and has been since last fall…1 It’s called the Clearstream 42 and has a range of “up to 65 miles.” With this thing on my roof, I can pick up 5 channels. Two of them are the same. Three of them are PBS. The last comes in [...]

• A Polish Scene

  I wrote this while sitting in a Polish sidewalk café in a failed search for a free wifi connection… 2009/05/25 12:44pm Pol I am sitting in a café/bar in Pisz, a small city in rural northern Poland, maybe a couple hours from GdaÅ„sk, formerly known as Danzig. Damn the Germans. I am on my second [...]

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