Perpetual Jet Lag

Once Again, Someone Else Said It Better

"This page has not hesitated to criticize the Bush administration over its policies in Iraq, and we continue to have grave doubts about the overall direction of American strategy there. Yet today, along with other Americans, whether supporters or critics of the war, we rejoice in a heartening advance by the Iraqi people. For now at least, the multiple political failures that marked the run-up to the voting stand eclipsed by a remarkably successful election day."

New York Times Editorial, January 31 2005.

Congratulations, Iraq.

The Independent Republic of New York

There's actually a bill in the New York City council to form a commission to study whether NYC should become the 51st state. Seriously.

I don't have the stats, but I recall hearing once that if New York City seceded completely and became its own country, it would have the 8th largest economy in the world. 8th. Why stop at leaving one George (Pataki), why not just up and leave them both?

I'm not being serious, here, though I do agree that NYC gets screwed by both Albany and Washington DC. Also, maybe it's just me, but with currency like this, how could you not want to visit?

Photo Illustration by Mirko Ilic of New York Magazine. Found on Gothamist.

It's Gonna Be the Future Soon

A colleague at work has a new Treo 650 he's been showing off for some time - pictures of his new son, showing off Bluetooth syncing and his new Star Trek headset, etc. - and recently found that he has an RSS aggregator that syncs wirelessly over WAP.

He came up to me today and said, "Hey, check this out. Heard of RSS?"

I scoffed and showed him the Attempted Chemistry homepage and the RSS template in Moveable Type. (Have I heard of RSS, indeed!)

Guess who now has a wireless, automatically updating subscription to the 2004 winner for Most Worthless Personal Blog?* Can you say "Gadget Envy?" I knew you could.

* Not really.

Voluntarily confined to quarters

I like cold weekends. It's a rare occasion that I get to commune with my couch in such an extended, meaningful fashion.

Jenny and I are updating the ProjectExplorer site (in the walled "beta" area; public updates next week) in preparation for the fundraiser next Monday. In very good news for them: they met a challenge fundraising grant last week, thanks in part to the generosity of friends and colleagues, and are getting much needed funding.

Watching so much football over the weekend has exposed me to too many Levitra commercials. I wonder if it would be more or less effective marketing to just come out and call it "Dr. Porkenheimer's Boner Juice." At least it would be clearer what the hell she was talking about. Thank god they took that "football through the tire swing" ad off - my innuendo meter pegged.

Finally, Starbucks is selling "drinking chocolate." I haven't had it yet (on a suspicion that it'll cause a heroin-like addiction) but I've been told it's like warm syrup. Right now you can only get 6-oz servings at a time, though I wonder how long before they'll gladly sell you a Venti cup of it for $10. This won't be good for the public's eating habits, though given the weather I'd bet it would be nice and comforting.

Mmmm... warm.... I'm off to make some more tea.

We had to spend the money in order to save it

From the "You can't make an omelette without throwing away a few eggs" department, The New York Times reports that since Social Security is in such a crisis, we've been spending Social Security funds to convince people we're running out of Social Security funds.

Somehow I don't think spending the money faster (much less on a public relations campaign, which may [again] run afoul of the propaganda rules) is going to help us save the money.

It's Official

I hate to break a hiatus (work got really busy suddenly, combined with a continued lack of a connection at the apartment -- do I break down and use dial up? ) with political news, but given all the ink and bytes spilled over this, I couldn't resist.

The search for WMD ended last month.

There are dozens of people I could single out for recognition here, but in reviewing my archives I found the following (with apologies as appropriate):

WMD As Gardening Implements [June 26 2003]
Matt thinks I'm wrong about the lack of evidence regarding WMD. I don't agree, though in fairness, when I saw the Exclusive on CNN's American Morning today, the first thing through my head was "Oh great. Matt's gonna get me on this, I'm sure of it." [Comments were lost in the move for this, but I recall the response to the post being something like "talk to me in a year and we'll see."]

Also found there was a post following the mid-term elections in 2002. Turns out I was right two years early:

Sometime in the recent past, sometime near the 1996 election I think, the democrats simply lost the ability to be visionaries, or more likely, learned to suppress it in order to win tactically...

I only hope that the Democrats learn from this little exercise and do two things to ensure their success in 2004:

1. Fire that weasel Terry McAuliffe. He's easily the most ineffective spokesperson I've ever seen. If he said he was in favor of a turkey sandwich, I'd seriously consider the pastrami.
2. Find someone who has the balls to stand up and say what he thinks. 12 years ago today, Bill Clinton was just some hick governor. Find someone with that charisma, with better ideas and morals, and a hell of a running mate, and we take the nation in a landslide. Don't cop out and round up the usual suspects (Daschle, Gephardt, Gore) for the primaries. Do some fucking recruiting; the fate of the party depends on it.

Impediments to Blogging

The world, for the past week, has conspired to keep me from posting.

First, some jackass with nothing better to do than register gibberish domain names (e.g. osdeidpzxlw.com) spams me and the AttempedChemistry blogs with hundreds of spams on New Year's Day. A post about my standing 50 feet away from the ball (and that's horizontal distance: there was hardly any vertical offset) is now on hiatus. (Photos at home, and will be posted this weekend.)

Then, this weekend, a complete dearth of internet cafés in downtown Boston kept me from posting about the last game at Walter Brown Arena, though others have done much better than I could. (Photos locked within my camera, and me without a cable. More this weekend.)

Then, Hilton wanted to charge me $12.99 for internet access when I stayed at Logan Airport, preventing me from posting about the first game at Agganis Arena. Again, others have done much better, and more to come.

Tuesday, I checked into a corporate apartment that was supposed to have broadband. Turns out it hadn't been set up, and won't be until at least next week. This prevented me posting about my experience carefully opening a flimsy "frame" around bad "art" and inserting the free Walter Brown poster instead.

And finally now, instead of having an open morning to fill you in on all this, in long flowering prose, I have to go to a three hour meeting. It's not even my meeting, and I'm not even invited: I'm there to monitor progress. I may break out my phone at one point and start playing Q-Bert.