Month: September 2003

Boneheaded Stunts

When I got the bike, I said to myself, I’m not going to behave like one of those boneheaded biker people I see everywhere. Everybody says motorcycles and scooters are dangerous, and they are, but most of that danger comes from sheer stupidity: inadequate safety gear, overpowered sport-bikes, riding on the shoulder or between lanes to cut in front of cars, speeding… Within a week I was riding around in sneakers (wear the same boots every damn day?) and a t-shirt, creeping up the shoulder to make a right on red. But I do have a good full-face helmet, kevlar gloves, and of course a bike with a 50cc engine, no acceleration, and minimal testosterone-stupidity factor.

But yesterday I managed to do two things that were breathtakingly boneheaded. First, I made a wrong turn and got stuck on Route 2. Route 2 has a speed limit of 65 and a practical minimum of about 70. My bike doesn’t go above forty. I was there for one white-knuckled, shoulder-riding, profanity-laced mile before I managed to get on the exit. Then, on the way home, doing 35 in a 30 zone, I got pulled over by a cop who noticed that not only was I speeding, but if I was going to be driving that fast, I’d need a license plate. A what? I’ve got a plate, it’s right… uh, well, somewhere, stolen or fallen on the side of the road. So today will include a trip to the RMV and a call to the police to report a lost or stolen plate. Joy of joys. At least I got off with just a warning on the speeding ticket. Who goes only 30 on Mass Ave?

Four Quickies

Brad DeLong comes through again with one, and two whoppers from Bush.

Discourse.net has a touching story about how our grandparents knew about creeping fascism and we’ve grown complacent. As I’ve asked before: how do you know when to leave? You don’t. You just don’t.

And the humor section is an email that’s been floating around of Bush/Cheney ’04 bumper sticker slogans. Here’s a few of the best:

Four More Wars!
Apocalypse Now
Because the truth just isn’t good enough
Compassionate Colonialism
Deja-voodoo all over again!
In your heart, you know they’re technically correct.
Leave no billionaire behind
Less CIA — More CYA
Lies and videotape, but no sex!

Psychological Trends

More self-injury in the news– parents freak out about this shit every couple years, it seems. It’ll be gas-huffing next year, then they’ll be back to kids chugging DXM to get high, and then maybe sex and STD’s. See also apotemnophilia, non-fatal suicidal gestures, trepanation, mass hysteria, recovered memories, ritual satanic abuse.

Political Rant, Avoid if Sensitive

Hey you stupid fuck, why don’t you wake up and notice that your leader supports none of his supposed principles? Are you too in love with your SUV to care? Would it be too much to ask that you check the facts? Well, you’re going to get your ass kicked anyway.

Conventional wisdom has it that Massachussets can’t possibly vote any way other than Democratic, except for a Governor’s election, and I don’t doubt it. So what can I do, aside from vote, to convince people that Bush is a loony nutbag kleptocrat?

Also, where the hell are those stamps I had just a couple days ago?

Sleepless Everywhere

Provigil is in the news again. I looked at buying some Cephalon stock a few months back. But Provigil goes off patent in three years, and it’s their only really exciting drug. Their sales are good, for now, but they’re mostly from off-label uses, which are legal but which they can’t promote.

Besides, long-term side effects could appear at any moment. Or somebody could have a psychotic break and kill people after abusing it, and destroy the drug’s reputation. Even if it’s not the drug’s fault, the reputational risk is huge for the company– one underhanded campaign by a rival firm or pressure group, and the stock price is in the toilet.

But it really is an exciting, if troubling, drug: the first really mass-appeal cosmetic psychopharmaceutical. Sure, Prozac and so forth improve our personalities, but they have enough side effects that you only end up with them when you have at least moderately serious behavior problems. This has an obviously unneeded application with scary revolutionary potential. Who wouldn’t find it appealing? Just think of the money you’d save on crank! Think of the economic benefits of three full-time jobs! Suddenly, minimum wage is a living wage! Suddenly, you can take up painting, spend time with the kids! The trains will have to run all night, of course. That’ll be the day.

Motocicleta Revolucionaria

Finally, a pic of me on the damn scooter. I feel ambivalent about the Che shirt. It’s a great image, and I like that it’s not the standard version of that picture. On the other hand, Che is neither a role model for me nor a new, fresh, or shocking person to put on a shirt. Even the shirts featuring the same treatment of Doctor Zaius, Kramer, and so forth, have gotten a little old.

Krugman had a great article in the NYT last week about the tax-decrease ploy, and he’s pretty scared about the long-term stability of the US government. You look at where Bush is leading us, and it’s to the kind of place where a revolution begins to make sense: where the poor really have nothing to lose. I feel like I’m going to be fine– good skills, no debt, no responsibilities, parents to fall back on. But I don’t want to live in a country that screws the poor the way the right is trying to.

You want to talk entitlement reform? First off, the retirement age is rising to 70, and we’re going to means-test Social Security and medical benefits (Medicare? Medicaid? I can’t remember which is which). That’s obvious to me– I don’t care how unpalatable it is, we’re going to see it happen in the next fifteen years, even if we also raise taxes to avoid defaulting on debts.

If I meet another Libertarian in the street I swear I’m going to kick them in the nuts and then ask them if they want the government to protect them from violent crime.

People, in the People Category

I go on and on about Brad DeLong but he’s great. He ruminates on things that he doesn’t know, reviews his past mispredictions, constantly reviews models. And I agree with a lot of what he has to say. Plus he intersperses his economics lectures with cute stories about his kids.

Chris Lydon has a blog. I’m looking for a transcript or audio encoding of his talk with Krugman at the First United Church this past Friday. He’s pretty neat too.

Requisite Political Blather

Politics have been making me physically ill recently. I can only stand about twenty or thirty minutes of looking at this before I cringe and want to stop. So I’ve been reading the victorian-style novel Tipping the Velvet and the non-political contemporary nonfiction Kitchen Confidential instead. Good stuff.

But here’s the politics: The cover story in The Nation is titled “Blood in the Water,” about how the Dems are now on the attack. So, yeah, they’re attacking. Dean’s stumping madly, and everyone who sees him speak seems to be impressed with his candor and control– this is not sputtering, red-faced, clinton-conspiracy anger.

And of course Paul Krugman, celebrity economist is certainly making some carefully-documented, well-reasoned, statements that we’re being lied to. I’ll be seeing him speak at a Harvard Bookstore event this week.

Lies lies lies: Slate has an article about Condi’s misstatements on post-WWII history. And of course Brad DeLong has been keeping track of all the people keeping track of Bush’s lies. My favorite, however, is that even the
WSJ Editorial Page is questioning Bush’s integrity. When the avowedly rightist, pro-wealthy, pro-big-business WSJ editorial page is questioning you, you know you’re tainted. Jeff Skilling, Kenny Lay, Trent Lott, meet Dubya, Perle, and Cheney: the new recipients of the ostrakon.