Many of you know that I am a sucker for big dumb fluffy cats - hence, Bo and Abbot. Check out these guys sent to me by J:
http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/health/2007/12/14/stout.skorea.glowing.cats.ytn
Craziness.
The funniest part of the video is when the reporter starts talking about applications for the technology for humans. Do you think glow-in-the-dark people are in the works?
From The Week:
Why Obama's suddenly catching fire
If Hillary Clinton wants to know why she's sinking in the polls, said Jonah Goldberg (Los Angeles Times), she shouldn't blame Oprah Winfrey. Instead, she should take a hard look at Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. When Democrats took control of Congress in 2006, triumphant liberal activists expected "some sort of good-government reform." It hasn't happened. Congress is still married to pork-barrel spending, and it's done nothing about health care, the budget deficit, or global warming. Though now led by liberals Pelosi and Reid, Congress failed to stop the Iraq war. In fact, it keeps voting to fund it. The '06 victory, in fact, has translated to almost nothing for Democrats who believed they'd brought the Bush era to an end. "As Washington politics grow more disappointing," Democats are taking a new look at Barack Obama and his "politics of hope." His talk of transcendng politics no longer sounds quite so naive, while the prospect of electing a woman no longer sounds so revolutionary; she seems cautions, centrist, and safe. Democrats long for a president who "will magically change the world," and unfortunately for Clinton, neither "Clinton nor Hillary are abracadabra words anymore. But Obama is."
In honor of the upcoming Abbott-TT reunion, I'm posting one from the archives. Abbott and TT happen to be littermates, and I think that gives them a special bond. Sometimes, when the mood strikes, they'll pile on top of each other like this:
Aside from the fact that Abbott is twice her size, you can barely tell them apart.
Many of you know that I have always found it very peculiar that, given the number of truck-related accidents on highways, one never sees the remnants of food deliveries scattered all over the median. I believe I first considered this strange non-occurrence whilst driving behind an erratic ravioli truck in Providence, RI. I naturally wondered whether, if the truck tipped over, ravioli would spill all over the place.
Luckily, I was not to know the answer to this question. However, R. in Madison, WI recently sent me a news item about a man who used a Krispy Kreme delivery truck as a getaway vehicle for his sausage heist.
From The Capital Times:
Cash bail of $2,100 was set today for Warren G. Whitelightning of Crandon, the man who allegedly led police on a high-speed chase through Madison's west after stealing a Krispy Kreme Donut truck when he was drunk early Saturday morning.
Whitelightning was officially charged in Dane County Circuit Court today in a criminal complaint alleging several offenses. He is being charged with shoplifting eight giant red hot pickled sausages from the Open Pantry on University Avenue, stealing the doughnut truck, ramming a University of Wisconsin Police car, attempting to elude pursing officers, operating after revocation, his fourth time drunk driving, and a hit and run.
Andre and TT have only one more day together, before they are separated for a few months due to Mr. Boo's employment logistics (I keep Andre, Ms. Boo will oversee the TT-Abbott-Ooma reunion). So it's nice that after living together alone for a few months, they have finally reached a detente where they can fall asleep within inches of each other. Today's a lazy Friday afternoon, and nothing better for it than to curl up in a circular fashion on the bed.
Apparently, mirror symmetry is all the rage in the cat world these days.
There's a new website called farecast.com that lets you check out pricing trends for different flying routes to figure out if prices are rising or falling, or when flying will be cheapest. So I'm trying to buy tickets to travel from Detroit to Portland over New Years, and I'm finding it really tough to get cheap tickets. The graph below from farecast explains why:
So apparently, right around Jan 1, all the flights are really expensive before dropping back to their reasonable price of about $320. I understand supply/demand and all that, but I have to say this really sucks. No other type of transportation works this way. Trains, tolls, bus fares, or ferries don't raise their rates around certain times of the year by almost 100%. I would even prefer if they just flattened the prices at a slightly higher rate rather than gouge people who have to fly during specific times. This is yet another reason why airlines sucks and they all deserve to go out of business.
I'd like to give a shout-out to Mr. Hound Blog and his new site, the appropriately named
hound-blog. Check it for pictures hounds doing what hounds will, which as far as I can tell mostly involved sleeping and looking dopey.
I just got off the phone with a representative from AT&T Universal. I was trying to cancel my credit card because I have something like half a dozen, and I just got a new Northwest Card. To my dismay, the AT&T person got all hostile. She asked me why I was canceling this card, and I said it was because the card is not linked to any incentive program. This was not a lie because I got the Northwest Card for the miles so that the airline doesn't treat me like shit, which it does if you don't maintain Elite status. The AT&T card gives me exactly nothing.
We enter in medias res.
(How did you decide to cancel the card? Randomly. What? No rewards. So then she went on about how she could give me this great card with cash back on all purchases.)
AT&T Rep: Blah, blah. You'll have Blah blah interest rate and blah blah cash back rate blah blah.
ME: I really just want to cancel my card.
AT&T: What interest rate are you getting on your other cards now?
ME: I don't carry a balance.
AT&T: (Pause) Well this is a cash back offer. Who doesn't want cash back?
ME: Look, I don' t want to mean, because I know this is your job, but I am very committed to canceling this card. (Searching on LLBean website for boots. It's snowing!)
AT&T: You said you wanted rewards. So what do your other cards have that I can't offer?
ME: I would really just like to cancel my card.
AT&T: You don't care about getting cash in the mail? (Playing her ace card)
ME: No. I am not motivated by cash.
I can't believe I had to say that. I felt like a jerk. Realistically, a 1% return rate on all of my purchases is not sufficiently motivating.
AT&T: (long pause) What is your address?
ME: Why?
AT&T: (pause) So we can send you your cancellation notice.
ME: Oh....
Everyone always wants to know why I don't like to use the phone or make business calls. I'm afraid of unpleasant conversations where I feel like I have to be rude to get my point across. Luckily, I'll be on AT&T's records for a year in case I decide I want to reapply for my card.
I took this nice picture, and even though Monday night catblogging is even less traditional than Tuesday night catblogging, I just had to put it up.
Don't you feel like Andre and TT are having complex thoughts about life at this moment? There's something almost philosophical about their gaze.
Given our apparently low readership, I was surprised to find that Ms. Boo's post on Sri Lankan Air was apparently quite controversial. Quoting commenter "Nike" (presumably not his/her real name?):
Fuck off you racist pricks!
I'm gonna fly SriLankan and there is nothing you can do about it
http://www.srilankan.aero
In March 2003 the Skytrax Research Agency’s worldwide passenger survey voted SriLankan, for the third consecutive year, Best Airline of the Year for Central Asia. In that same year TTG(Asia) voted SriLankan Best Airline in South Asia. In 2001 the UK’s Wanderlust magazine placed SriLankan eighth in its Top Major Airlines travel award category.
One consolation of Ms. Boo living far away in the Northern Mid-West is that we've been holding out great hope for Abbott to return to his Maine-Coon roots and become shaggy. Here's Abbott as recorded by Ms. Boo's camera phone shortly after she moved away in August.
And here's the shaggy little beast now.
I think it's working!
I recently bought a domain name, and while checking prices I noticed that the Network Solutions pricing chart lists .com domain at $9.99/year if you reserve it for 100 years. If you think this isn't unreasonably optimistic, check out this talk on just 10 of the many ways that the world could end (full talk is here):
I realize that it is not Friday, the traditional day for catblogging. But while we've been away from the game for so long, the cats have continued to do blogworthy things at their typical pace. Therefore I've decided to start working on the backlog. Hence the unorthodox "Tuesday night" catblogging.
My cat TT (long story about her name, but suffice it to say that the proper spelling is either "TT" or "TD" and the pronunciation is "tee-dee") has decided that with Ms. Boo living in another state temporarily, Mr. Boo shouldn't be sleeping alone. So she has begun the curious habit of working her way under the covers while I'm sleeping and curling up in a ball under the blanket next to my belly in the middle of the night. This morning, I got out of bed without disturbing her, and snapped these pictures. The first demonstrates how clever is her camouflage, that she is completely hidden under the covers.
For the second pic, I lifted the covers and snapped a shot. Apparently she was still sleepy, since after dropping the covers, she fell back asleep and hadn't gotten up when I left for work.
This graph plots the amount spent on the war in Iraq versus different types of energy R&D (coal, nuclear, etc.). Methinks that maybe, just maybe, the financial calculus of the war doesn't add up? Makes you wonder what's the real reason we invaded...
From The Week:
Good week for speaking up, after passengers aboard a Sri Lankan Airlines flight
from London to Colombo rebelled and refused to let the plane take off because it
was missing a jagged, 5-foot section of one wing, sheared off in an accident the
previous day. Sri Lankan Airlines insists the plane could have flown safely,
explaining that the tips of the wings "are purely for aerodynamics."
[Italics mine]
Jim Cramer, host of "Mad Money," had commented on the news that Giselle demanded payment recently in Euros, and Jay-Z can be seen flashing 500 Euro notes in his latest video, saying they were partially responsible for the drop in the Dow. Speaking to the Boston Herald about it later, he had this to say:
"I write a column that is tongue and cheek. Is Gisele really to blame? No,” Cramer told the Track. “But when things have gotten to the point that even people like Gisele and Jay-Z realize the dollar is too weak, things have gotten out of control. (Italics mine).
As part of my job search, I signed up for this service called www.theladders.com, which is a pretty good job searching/networking/recruiting website. Part of the service consists of a weekly newsletter, ostensibly written by Marc Cenedella, the CEO, about how to improve your resume, find a job, network effectively, whatever. The letter this week is just crazy, though:
Man, I hate American Airlines
A grumbly Monday morning to you. Folks, other people’s travel hell stories are about as interesting as other people’s "kids" or "new exercise regimen" stories, so I’m not going to bore you with one of those. And as a matter of fact, my recent flight on American wasn’t uniquely miserable. It was just run-of-the-mill lousy.
But what really got me bummed out was my flight attendant’s outfit. Katherine had gone to the trouble of wearing buttons with all sorts of sayings on her uniform [...] And so as Katherine approached me I strained to get my work weary eyes to read the fine print on her button. It was a light blue button with dark blue writing, and I could just about make out the words:
"I"
"Have"
"No"
"Idea"
"Why"
"I"
"Work"
"Here"
And you know, Katherine and her type stand for everything that’s bad in the world. For every one of us trying to achieve great things, there’s a Katherine standing nearby ready to tear it down. For each of us trying to make the world a better place today, this hour, this minute, there’s a Katherine in the wings sticking her tongue out. And not only is there a Katherine, but there’s a company willing to hire her. Like American Airlines. And while Mom said if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all, I wish the Katherines and the American Airlines of the world nothing but failure. Failure in their campaign to pull down the productive people, failure in their efforts to keep winners from winning, and failure in the marketplace so that better people and companies can serve American Airlines customers. (Italics mine).
Back from hiatus. Now that I have nothing to do at work for the next 3 weeks, I'll be posting a lot more. Also, setting up my web site. But no, I'm not going to link to it since the whole point of this blog is that we're anonymous...
Recently I was rereading Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, his memoir about raising his brother in San Francisco in the early 1990s. I remember thinking it was a good read when I read it around 2001-2002. Now it seems quaint and nostalgic, a vivid portrait of a time that I lived through semi-sentiently and to which I can relate at least some of my formative experiences. I mean, he and his friends don't use either email or cellphones. It was practically the Dark Ages, and I remember it. At one point Dave talks about robots doing work for us; Now, in the future, Mr. Boo just had our Roomba vacuum our apartment!
In regard to other prescient observations, Dave describes Clinton in 1993-1994 thus:
He [Clinton] speaks like a president, not always authoritatively or anything but he can form sentences, complex sentences with beginnigs and ends, subordinate clauses - you can hear his semicolons! He knows the answers to questions. He knows acronyms and the names of foreign leaders, their deputies. It is heartening, it makes our country look smart, and this is an important thing, something we have too long been without. (paperback edition, p. 288. Italics in original.)Dave has unwittingly hit upon a crucial trait in an American president: She should at least seem smart, even if she isn't. Better yet, she should actually be smart. Currently we have a president that makes us, as a nation, look stupid. Gentle voters: we must consider our public image! It is time to elect someone who makes us look smart, at the very least...maybe Barack Obama?
Andre's favorite thing to do is stand on the printer tower next to the computer desk while I'm working at the computer. This picture is pretty much typical from my point of view. We have this sort of master-slave relationship, where he cries and bumps his head against me until I pet him, and then when he's ready for me to stop he lets me know by either backing away or smacking my hand. Needless to say, Ms. Boo finds this endlessly amusing to watch.
Sign seen painted on the back of a large delivery truck today: "Culver City Meats. You Can't Beat Our Meat." Wow.
UPDATE: Looks like someone else found this funny and took a picture.
Here is a picture of a physics class in Spiderman 3.
In real life most of the class would be Asian or Southeast Asian men. Asian guys can't even cut a break in nerdy movie scenes (thanks to my friend CY for pointing this out and his helpful graphic).
You may remember from our last catblog post that ooma needs to slim her noble bulk down a bit. I have been very discipined about rationing them this week, with the result that every morning Abbot let me know that he is staaaaaarving. ooma is a rock, though. Very stoic. Last night I chased her down the hall (after she escaped from the apartment) to help her out with the whole "calories in vs. calories out" problem she has. I think she has retaliated by making sure her that her calories-out don't rise above a certain level. Today all she has done is this.
Actually, I think the fact that she can wedge herself in there like that is kinda cool.
I found this listing on a crafts for sale site. Do you think that someone should tell this artist that the image in the upper-right hand corner is probably not going to be a huge seller?
The writing in the New York Times today, Frank Bowman has an op-ed piece making the point I made a few weeks ago.
If Alberto Gonzales will not resign, Congress should impeach him. Article II of the Constitution grants Congress the power to impeach “the president, the vice president and all civil officers of the United States.” The phrase “civil officers” includes the members of the cabinet (one of whom, Secretary of War William Belknap, was impeached in 1876).
That the president has the constitutional power to [hire and fire appointees at will] does not mean he has the right to do them without explanation. Congress has the right to demand explanations for the president’s managerial choices, both to exercise its own oversight function and to inform the voters its members represent. The right of Congress to demand explanations imposes on the president, and on inferior executive officers who speak for him, the obligation to be truthful... he has no right to lie, either by affirmatively misrepresenting facts or by falsely claiming not to remember events. [My italics].
I've been following the D.C. Madam story with something approaching outright joy, seeing as how it's the perfect nexus of sex, hypocrisy, power, schadenfreude, and suspense. So far it has claimed Randall Tobias, (former) Deputy Department of State, in charge of US Foreign Assistance. The hypocrisy of someone specifically criticized for promoting abstinence and monogamy over condom use in the developing world is, of course, fantastic. However, I'd like to consider the personal side of this story for a minute.
Deborah Jeane Palfrey has been operating an escort service in D.C. for years, sending high-priced call-girls out to people's apartments, hotels, and offices for "erotic fantasy services" (she claims of course, no sex was ever involved). Now, she's been running this operation from a cell phone. I assume the number was posted somewhere, maybe in the classified section of the local weekly, on the Internet, maybe even in the yellow pages. So someone calls up from their personal cell phone, anonymously, to this number, requests a girl at such and such a time to such and such an address. As a client, they never give their real names or other identification, and they assume that all of this is lost in the haze of anonymity and plausible deniability. They assume that they will not get embarrassing callbacks on their cell phones, no follow-ups, no ties, nothing to link them to their philandering habits.
Fast forward 10 years later, she is indicted for operating a service pretty much everyone in Washington uses. Think about it - her client list contains an enormous number (I think it's safe to assume) of the very policy makers who determine that what she's doing is (allegedly) illegal. And so she's pissed - she provided a service for everyone's enjoyment, and at the moment when her chips are down, no one will own up to supporting her. Fair enough, you think, that's the way politics goes.
But wait! But here's where it gets good. The cell phone company is quietly recording all incoming phone numbers, and, every month, sends Palfrey a statement.
So now she has hard evidence of every one of those sons of bitches who she served over the years. And she's got nothing to lose. Of course, all she has are phone numbers, no names, but an enterprising reporter or investigator could probably put names to most of those private cell phone numbers. So she first tries to auction off the list, is thwarted, and then in an act straight out of a Christopher Buckley novel, just gives to list away to ABC news. And ABC news is promising a tell-all episode of 20/20 during sweeps, where they will name "a Bush administration economist, the head of a conservative think tank, a prominent CEO, several lobbyists and a handful of military officials."
So put yourself in the position of one of these people. Over the years, you've from time-to-time enjoyed the pleasure of such a woman, unbeknownst to your wife and kids. And you've called a few different services, always discreet, always anonymous. And now there's this cloud hanging over your head. And here's the best part: You have no idea if your name is on the list or not! Because it's been so long and you've used so many different call girl services, you can't remember if you've ever used hers. Hell, you might not even have known the name of half the services you've used, you just called a number you found in a classified ad. And you wake up every morning next to the wife you've been cheating on, not knowing whether you're name will show up on TV or not.
For today's catblogging, I'm posting a picture of Ooma doing what she does best - looking very fat and happy. I was going to post a picture I took of her at the vet the other day, but this picture of her before we went to the vet is really more in keeping with her spirit. We somehow have to figure out how to slim her down. Our fear is that if we start feeding her less so that she gets down to a normal weight (12 lbs is the goal, she's currently almost 15), our less, um, robust cats will shrink away to nothing.
I think that Phillip Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy is pretty much one of the best set of books ever written. Take that Harry Potter! I was very excited when I heard that a film version of the Golden Compass was being filmed. I was somewhat less excited to learn that the director was going to be Chris Weitz of American Pie fame...
Anyway, I have been watching the genesis of this movie avidly and was a little broken-hearted when Mr. Boo left his company that was working on the movie. Luckily, New Line has created a fancy website whereby individuals can take a quiz to ascertain their daemons.
My daemon is a male osprey. I have to admit I was a little disappointed by this 
because I don't really see myself as a bird.
However, I think I did better than Mr. Boo. His 
daemon is a female jackal named Ariel (like the little mermaid). According to Dictionary.com, a jackal is:
1. any of several nocturnal wild dogs of the genus Canis, esp. C. aureus, of Asia and Africa, that scavenge or hunt in packs.
2. a person who performs dishonest or base deeds as the follower or accomplice of another.
3. a person who performs menial or degrading tasks for another.
I'm a little worried about the state of Mr. Boo's soul...
Seeing as how I had the day off today and Ms. Boo was working, I decided to see Hot Fuzz. If you've seen Shaun of the Dead, then you know what to expect. The same kind of humor, only this time in a more Stepford Wives-type plot rather than a zombie flick. The film stars Simon Pegg (who also wrote it) as Nicholas Angel, a kind of super-cop with the London metro force. He is "promoted" to serve as Sergeant in a country bumpkin town because he makes everyone else look bad (with an arrest rate 400% higher than any other cop on the force). There, he meets slovenly partner Danny Butterman (Nick Frost, who was also Pegg's sidekick in Shaun). They quickly become man-friends, with Butterman learning something about being a true cop, which Angel learns to chill out and enjoy stupid cop movies like Point Break. All while townspeople myteriously die in suspicious accidents. The final act of the movie is a pure B-movie campy mayhem, unapologetically wallowing in gory FX and corny lines of dialog (bad guy with a spike in his throat says, "Oww, thith really hurtth" while the audience laughs).
The pacing is a bit slow at first, and it isn't until the movie reaches it reckless and silly climax that Pegg and director Edgard Wrights' style of film making shines. However, they really have a handle on intelligent "meta" movies that appeal to the fanboy in all of us, with beautiful tales of platonic man-love saving the day against unspeakable evil. All while winking at convention and bringing the audience along with them into the realm of pure silliniess. Overall, this is on of the most intelligent dumb movies I've seen in a while.
Overall Grade: B
For any fans of Herbie Hancock or old-school electronic music, this is incredibly cool. Herbie Hancock showing Quincy Jones his new toy, a Fairlight CMI controller. My favorite part is 56 seconds in, when Jones casually takes a sip of wine from his glass. You know, just hanging out and drinking while they film this documentary. Also of note, 5 minutes in, the interviewer says, "Seeing you and Quincy here with all these instruments and this sophistication of electronics and everything, but still the, um, African blood, it, uh, really..." Not sure what that's all about. Anyway, enjoy.
Today I had a crazy experience. I was going to my allergist whose office is located in a five-story medical office building in Santa Monica. (Digression: I have a lot of problems with this building. For one thing, it's the only building I've ever been in where the top floors of the underground parking are allocated to the tenants. In other words, we patients drive around and around the parking garage, into the bowels of earth, passing row upon row of doctors' Mercedes and BMWs. And doctors are supposed to be just as disadvantaged by HMOS as patients? Digression ended.)
So when I'm going into the elevator this older woman and a very young woman who I think was her assistant are approaching the elevator as well, and the older woman falls down. She says she's ok, so I go into the elevator. I feel guilty though, so while I stand there I watch other people enter the elevator room and walk away from the woman, so assumed she was, in fact, all right.
When I left my allergist 20 minutes later, the two women are still in parking garage and the older woman is obviously NOT all right. The younger woman is in a panic because she can't reception on her cell phone (remember we're in the bowels of the earth) and the older woman is stretched out in a parking space groaning in pain. This is a very busy office building, and the elevator room is central to the parking lot, so others must have seen them and not helped them. So I volunteered to go up to the older woman's doctor's office and get the doctor. Turns out the office doesn't open for 15 minutes (remember the woman had already been on the ground for 20 minutes at this point.) So I go into the pharmacy and then my own doctor's office and told whoever I found that there's a woman in acute pain lying down in a parking space and is there anything you can do? It turns out no one knew who to call and the other medical professionals couldn't do anything because the woman wasn't their patient. Thus, I am in a five-story building full of doctors and no one would go to help her. When the woman's doctor's office finally opened, the receptionist said she would send someone down with a wheelchair, even though the woman clearly needed a stretcher. Apparently the physician in question was not in the office yet.
Long story short, another passerby ended up calling an ambulance to take the injured woman to an emergency room, which no doubt cost thousands of dollars as emergency visits are wont to do. I can understand the potential for lawsuits if someone touched the woman and further injured her, but damn, it seems like the health profession could be a little more patient-centered. Where are the doctors that you see on TV who are so passionate about helping their clients that they risk life and limb to do their duty? I guess they're just on TV. The moral of the story: Don't fall down in a doctor's office building because you ain't gonna get help.
(Another digression: This incident reminded me of the time that Mr. Boo and I were crossing the street with one of our friends and said friend got hit by a car making an oblivious right-hand turn. The driver got out of the car all panicky but the other cars at the intersection just backed up and drove around the body on the street. Said friend was not injured, but the incident did not improve my faith in human nature. Do you think this kind of disregard for others is endemic only to Los Angeles?)
In keeping with the proud internet tradition of friday catblogging (thanks Kevin Drum), we offer up the following.
This is Abbott, freshly shaven. I got him whipped up into a good and rumbly frenzy by rubbing his belly. Now he's somewhat settled down, doing his best imitation of the stuffed bear.
Funny story about that shaving. I was out of town last week, and when I got on the plane he was enormous and fuzzy. When I got back home, he had miraculously shed all of his fur. Ms. Boo claims to have had nothing to do with it, and no knowledge of how this transpired. I'm still suspicious.The one question looming over the entire Gonzales hearing is what will happen to him? I noticed that in a article written by Richard Schmitt in today's LA Times makes the point that Gonzales can only be removed by resigning or being fired by the President:
It is far from certain that Gonzales will be forced to step aside. The hearing produced no evidence to support the most provocative claim of his critics — that the firings were orchestrated to affect public corruption cases in a way that would aid Republicans. And while some senators fumed about the lack of detail that Gonzales offered, Congress is powerless to remove him from office.
But can the House impeach the attorney general? The Constitution is clear that Congress may impeach "all civil officers of the United States." In our history, the House has impeached two presidents, and just one member of the Cabinet, William Belknap, secretary of war under president Ulysses S. Grant.
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. Article II, Section 4.
Today is the first day since Monday that the lead story when I turned on the radio wasn't about the tragedy at Virgina Tech. Instead, our nation's Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, was trying to explain how he was both responsible for the attorney firing scandal and yet not to blame. Can you have it both ways? Mostly I was alarmed about how much information Gonzales "couldn't recall." Now I am a true believer that the nature of memory has changed in conjunction with our overprogrammed lives and technology that takes care of most mundane tasks. (I can't remember my best friend's phone number, for example.) However, it's beginning to seem like Gonzales is senile or something. I'm not sure that Gonzales is making a good case for himself by not recalling the intent of most of his public statements and/or actions taken over the past six months.
Edit: According to the LA Times on April 20, Gonzales claimed to be "unable to recall" over 50 times! Prevarication or early onset alzheimer's...?
Also, Talkingpointsmemo deserves props for breaking this story. It's too bad that the Pulitzer Board does not recognize exclusively online news coverage. The folks at TPM had the instincts and resources to bring to light a scandal that traditional media outlets missed. It's time to embrace our brave new technological world, people.
Maybe this is a bit abstract and irrelevant given the sadness of what happened at VT, but I'm struck by the thought that our cultural lexicon will be forever changed by this. When you say "Columbine," people do not think "town in Colorado where three members of Big Head Todd and the Monsters grew up." They think "school shootings." In fact, google "Columbine, CO" and you'll see that the first hit is a wikipedia article on the Columbine High School massacre, second is an article about the city itself.
So I'm left with a sad thought for the university. Who would choose to move to Columbine, CO to attend high school there, given what it signifies? I've never been there myself, and I'm sure current students find this line of thinking a tiresome and obnoxious. And the infamous school library has been demolished and rebuilt. Nevertheless, wouldn't you find it a bit creepy to walk the halls of that school knowing what had happened there?
So what will happen to VT? Will it suffer the same semantic fate, forever redefined to mean a place of killing rather than a place of learning? If so, I would expect enrollment and application rates to suffer, at the least. For better or for worse, things are defined by what happens to them as much as what they do themselves. And unfortunately, we don't have all that much control over what happens to us.
I flew from San Francisco to Los Angeles yesterday, and apparently hair gel is a deadly terrorist weapon. I know this is old news, and I should just get used to it, but the restriction is kind of dumb - apparently 3.5 oz is ok, anything over is verboten. So my hair gel comes in a 5 oz container, which makes it way too dangerous. Never mind that the container was half empty. I even offered to just empty half of the remaining gel right there on the spot - that way it would have to be under the limit. But no, I was told, they have to go by the volume printed on the container, regardless of anything else. So I guess next time I fly, I'll carefully scratch off all of the capacities on the containers and hand-write in "3.4 oz." Doing my part to make the country safe.
We are the boos. We will post pictures of our cats and such. We have lots of interesting thoughts about the world. Yah for us!
