Category: Other People

To paraphrase Jay-Z, We got 99 problems and that son of a bitch is number one.

But there is good news. For example, cartoon monkeys are doing incredibly cute things with blocks at this very moment. Where’s the Times on this one, huh?

A meditation on identity and marginality from one of the more literate motorcycle-related blogs, “In the Scene.”

The whole world will go on at length. I don’t want to discuss it. Let’s move on as they say, to figuring out what we can do to minimize the damage caused by our election of a theocratic thug. We’re not as divided as we think— a finer-grained map shows not red and blue, but shades of purple. So there is hope.

But still, the American people have spoken. They have voted for four more years of deficits and economic fantasy, four more years of war and daring terrorists to attack us. Four more years of massive contributions to global warming. Four more years of civil liberties erosion, establishment of a state religion, demagoguery, idiocy.

As they say, nobody ever went broke underestimating the American people.

I went to a Twin Peaks themed party this weekend. There was a Twin Peaks cheerleader in attendance. The one with the eyepatch. It was awkward because people couldn’t remember all the names of the characters. Like, say, the creepy guy with the flask who hangs out behind the high school. I think that was a costume. This is definitely not a costume. It’s just how Bridget hides from homework.

Last time I visited Ohio, it seemed like a perfectly nice place. But apparently anyone with half a brain is ready to leave.
This is part of the knowledge economy, I think, part of a significant shift in the productive centers of the world. Many jobs can be done from anywhere, so they migrate to hot spots like Atlanta, San Francisco, Austin, Boston, Bangalore, Tokyo, Seoul. People with the skills to fill those jobs move with them. People without skills are abandoned in ghost towns like they were during the Dust Bowl days. They grow xenophobic, regressive, strange. Their customs are alien to us.

P&G is a major source of jobs and a community anchor in Ohio, but the AFA and other groups are attacking it. They’re attacking their best and brightest, driving out the diversity that makes an economy thrive, eliminating the kinds of things that could make cities like Dayton an attractive place for new jobs and new talent. Bite the hand that feeds you, and eventually, you’ll starve.

I am surprised sometimes to find myself caring about an athlete’s injured tendon. Almost as surprised as I am to find that I have bought a pair of pre-distressed jeans. But they fit so well!

You can use the Totem media player to play this rather funny little public service announcement about taking little boys to the grocery store. Sound optional– it’s got subtitles.

There are some kinds of video that Totem doesn’t play, at least not in the default configuration, but it can handle more than I thought it would.

You can subscribe to the webcal file for the ALCS and put it in Evolution if you want to know when the current set of Yankees/Sox games are happening.

If you are not aware of why Boston is crazy right now, here’s a baseball cheat sheet.
The Boston Red Sox are a baseball team.
They’re from Boston.
Their arch-rivals are the New York Yankees.
Boston has not won the championship, a best-of-seven contest between two teams called The World Series, since 1918. During that time, the Yankees have won it 26 times.
If the Sox win it this year, Boston will probably catch fire and fall into the harbor.

The American League Championship Series is one half of what most sports would call the quarterfinals or “final four” (the other half is the NLCS, in which the Houston Astros are facing the St. Louis Cardinals.)

Been away at a wedding, hence not posting. Apparently the quality of our political leadership has not improved in my absence.

Strangely, it’s the right wing that uses the word “idiotarian” more than the left. Because the right wing genuinely seems to be the faction of stupid people promoting stupid policies. People who believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. That “9/11 changed everything” and use that as an excuse to suspend all civil liberties. People who use the words “taxachussets” unironically (note that MA is dead center in tax burden among the states, the word, like “partial-birth abortion” and “death tax” is basically bullshit). People who believe that Kerry never went to war or that he evaded service or that he helped the Viet Cong, and who laud Bush’s military service in the same breath.

Our Leader is daring North Korea to nuke us. The designated “liberals” in the “liberal” media are unable to point out the lies Bush told during the debate.

At least there are some smart people out there. For example, John Eisenhower, son of Gen. Eisenhower, is endorsing Kerry. And Rita Hauser, former vice-chairman of Bush’s foreign intelligence advisory board, has endorsed Kerry. And Joseph Stiglitz, former world bank chief economist, has endorsed Kerry. He says

Bush supporters rightly ask: is Bush really to blame for this? Wasn’t the recession already beginning when he took office?

The resounding answer is that Bush is to blame. Every president inherits a legacy. The economy was entering a downturn when Bush took office, but Clinton also left a huge budget surplus—2 percent of GDP—a pot of money with which to finance a robust recovery. But Bush squandered that surplus, converting it into a deficit of 5 percent of GDP through tax cuts for the rich.

The productivity growth that was sustained through the downturn presented both an opportunity and a challenge. The opportunity: If the economy was well managed, the incomes of Americans could continue to rise as they had done in the 1990s. The challenge: to manage the economy so that growth would be robust enough to create the new jobs required by new entrants to the labor force. Bush failed the challenge, and America lost the opportunity because of his wrong choices.

Stupid people, stupid policies, stupid results.