ramblings
« Previous EntriesHealth of the Republic: Down 7% to 5%
Friday, July 11th, 2008I’ve been meaning to write this post for a little while but net issues have been keeping me away. In any event, the recent passage of the so-called “FISA reform” (now with telecom immunity!) has sent the Health of the Republic tumbling downward. I had begun to be cautiously optimistic that American liberty [...]
Bitter taste
Saturday, April 12th, 2008For full disclosure, I am an Obama supporter, I feel he is the best candidate both in terms of electability and in terms of actual ability to do the job. I’ve watched his campaign with interest and rising enthusiasm. All of that said, I think people have to recognize that his statements in [...]
Alternate History: The Speech that Wasn’t
Tuesday, September 11th, 2007In preparing my second Convocation speech, I spent most of the summer at a loss. Once I had changed apartments, I sat down in earnest. Eventually, I ended up jettisoning my original effort and producing the speech as given. But in case you wonder what could have been, below I’ll post the [...]
Hidden meanings?
Tuesday, August 21st, 2007I don’t know what this means, but I’ve discovered something weird with the iTunes Music Store. I wanted to find a particular song by Bob Dylan called “Dignity”. But the search box won’t find it for me, instead returning an error: “We could not complete your iTunes store request. The iTunes Store [...]
The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (10): Managed Disequilibrium
Saturday, August 11th, 2007Every night, the crew of the Regal Princess find some live entertainment to put on in the grandiosely-named International Show Lounge. Sometimes it’s in-house, like a crew sing-along. Usually, it’s more like a Vegas revue: Sometimes piano, sometimes comedy, sometimes live performance, sometimes old Broadway standards. For the most part, I’ve [...]
The Mongrel Dogs at Sea (6): Security Silliness
Friday, August 10th, 2007I was going to write today about my visit to the USS Arizona and USS Missouri memorials and how moving it was. I suppose I’ll get to that, though maybe not today. Right now I’m going to blog about one of the deepening madnesses of the 21st century, the traveler [...]
Adrift
Sunday, August 5th, 2007Well, not really. But for all of you out there breathlessly awaiting every post from The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach (yeah, right), a word of explanation. I’m in the middle of a two-week cruise to Hawai’i, and Net access is extremely limited. So I’ve not been posting. Now that I figure [...]
Irksome metric
Sunday, July 1st, 2007Today, there’s a piece by Maya Jasonoff in the Sunday magazine of the New York Times on the Americans loyal to Britain during the Revolution, and it has me irked. It’s not the thesis, which I agree with, that we should be more aware that the “self-evident” truths were anything but, to about [...]
The Appeal of Apocalypse
Tuesday, June 19th, 2007What is so seductive about the end of the world?
Evidence of the eschatonic impulse are around us everywhere. Disaster movies often reign supreme in the theaters — and the bigger the disaster (Independence Day, Armageddon, etc.) the more successful the movie. Foreign policy seems more and more a push for one last throw [...]
Why I’m a Technophile
Sunday, June 17th, 2007For you to understand this post, there are two things about myself I should tell you — they’re already well-known to any of my friends:
I drink a lot of Coke.
I have catastrophically bad eyesight.
More below the fold.
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