Author: Aaron Weber

Exceptions to the rule

Nobody wants an abortion. But sometimes, it’s the least-bad option. And all the complicated rules surrounding it don’t exactly help a bad situation.

A lot of people say it ought to be banned with “exceptions in the case of rape, incest, and danger to the mother,” which seems to make some people feel better. But if you think it through, it entails hostile police saying you’re lying and delaying the process until it’s too late.

People suck.

Hot Media Love

The Guardian reviews Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.” A wonderful book, a sort of postapocalyptic Hemingway with more accessible emotion and less machismo.

The New Yorker reviews the new Bond movie, “Casino Royale.” I loved Bond when I was a kid, and even though I generally avoid movies now I look forward to seeing this one. Yes, even though there are fewer gadgets. I loved the gadgets when I was a kid. I spent hours designing supercars that could fly and had smoke screens and rockets. Hell, I spent hours designing rocket boosters for my three-speed bicycle. The gadgets were the best part of the old ones, but I hear that this one substitutes acting and character development or something. Whatever.

OMGWTF: MA politics

I’m pleased, but not surprised, to see Deval win the Massachusetts Governorship. Hell, I had the champagne (excuse me, California sparkling wine: 2005 Sofia Coppola Blanc de Noirs) in the fridge last night.

But the down-ballot votes really surprised me.

Green/Rainbow candidate Jill Stein got about 18% for Secretary of State, and Working Families Party candidate Rand Wilson got 20% running for Auditor– those are huge numbers for a protest vote.

And then the ballot measures went negative, too. Item 1 would have allowed wine sales in grocery stores, and it seemed like a no-brainer to me, but it’s down by ten or fifteen points. Item 3, allowing child-care workers in state-subsidized operations to unionize, seemed like a shoo-in, too– MA’s an organized-labor state– but it looks like a loser too.

Massachusetts: land of contradictions and weirdness.

Let me wade into flame-war territory for a minute here

Every day or so I get another couple fliers about Somerville Ballot Initiatives 5 and 6. Every day there’s somebody out in front of the T stop urging me to vote yes and/or no on 5 and 6. And dammit, I am sick and tired of people being all high and mighty about it on both sides.

What people are voting on: Measure 5 is a non-binding resolution supporting the right of return for Palestinian refugees: allowing people displaced by the creation of Israel back in ’45 (and their descendants and so forth) back into the country. Measure 6 is a binding measure that would pull the city’s investments (retirement funds, etc.) from Israeli companies and government bonds.

You’d think I would be a natural supporter of those goals. After all, I don’t always (or even usually) agree with the policies of the state of Israel. As a general rule, I don’t like the idea of religious or ethnic city-states. I believe that market-based sanctions are good tools for foreign policy and I believe in voting with my dollar as well as with my ballot. I am sympathetic to refugees. But no, these are stupid laws. Here’s why:
Continue reading “Let me wade into flame-war territory for a minute here”

More on Liquor Licenses

Just a ways down from my house is The Burren, a rather nice Irish pub in the central business district of Davis Square, Somerville. They’re applying for a 2AM license. Now, normally I’m all in favor of stuff being open late. I like late night stuff. I like business. I like bars.

I do not like people urinating on my house, which they have a tendency to do when they are drunk and walking from the Burren back to Tufts.

And you know that if the Burren gets a late license, Orleans, directly across from my house, will probably get one. As it is, Orleans is such a lame bar that I’m barely willing to tolerate its existence at any hour. But I’m a nice guy and their summer evening tables in the Comcast parking lot are not really all that bad. But I really hate people shrieking as they leave it (WHOOOO YEAH WHOO WHOO!), and I really hate people in trucks with fart-can exhausts and ground effects idling in front of my house with country music at full blast that I can hear all the way in my bedroom with the doors shut and a pillow over my head. I guess they’re picking up their friends working to clean up after close? Irritating.

Don’t get me started on what must have been the Tufts a capella group that got drunk there. I don’t care how good your voice is, a capella sucks at the best of times. It has no place on a residential street at one in the morning.

When I first got to Boston, I wondered why it closed down so early. Now I know: undergrads abuse the responsibility, and prematurely cranky old guys like me (seriously, I’m not even thirty) are jerks about it.