Web Log Archive March 18th through March 31st, 2007
Saturday, March 31st, 2007
Just (finally) got around to watching Al Gore's 'Inconvenient
Truth' with Maggie. I liked it. At a little more than an hour and a half, it
is a good length (i.e., not a bladder-buster) and Gore's delivery (it is
a slide show) is practiced and smooth. He doesn't quite manage either to
conceal his elite heritage or to put aside his (yes) effete manner...but
that's OK. He comes across as intelligent and engaged.
The message is quite depressing, no clear solution is advanced and the
only consolations are for people my age and older: that we are unlikely
to live long enough to witness the worst of what are likely to be the
cataclysmic consequences of this global warming phenomenon.
However, there's another depressing message (if only implicit) in this
movie: it's the feeling that we all would have been better off today had
Al Gore, and not George Bush, been elected in 2000. But...Al Gore was
elected in 2000! He just never got to serve.
Friday, March 30th, 2007
"It
is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of
government to their selfish purposes."
"I would sincerely regret, and which never
shall happen whilst I am in office, a military
guard around the President."
"It's a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a
word."
Andrew Jackson
Thursday, March 29th, 2007
"Firing
a prosecutor for failing to find...voter fraud is like firing a park ranger
for failing to find Sasquatch."
Michael
Waldman and Justin Levitt
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007
Happy Birthday, Betty!
Yesterday it was announced that White
House Press Secretary Tony Snow has suffered a recurrence of the (colon) cancer
that he 'beat' only two years ago. This time, it's in his liver. Mr. Snow is a
mere 51, wealthy, personally popular, good-looking (geez, he's
still got his hair) and with a to-die-for job. But now, it's quite likely
he will not live out the year.
A story like ole Tony's is thought-provoking. I mean, suppose you knew
that your life would almost certainly end within, say, two years?
I've heard of people who, finding themselves in such a situation, decide to 'act
out', as it were. I remember this guy, from where I worked for a long time, who
was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer at age fifty-three. Of course he
stopped coming to work but he also promptly went out and bought the motorcycle
of his dreams. Other people decide to travel to exotic places. More than a few
quietly and meticulously
make arrangements to 'cheat' natural death at some point well before they no longer
have the physical strength to effectively do so.
But Tony's situation brings to mind the early death of another Republican
operative, Mr. Lee Atwater. At age thirty-nine, at the apex of his career as a media
'hit man' for the first George Bush, he was stricken with inoperable brain
cancer and he died at age forty. Lee spent the last few months of his short life
apologizing to the people he had targeted politically (like Michael Dukakis) and
to the many lesser-known
people to whom he had behaved so rudely.
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
"...in Canada, a woman tried to coax her dog who wasn't eating by eating [some] pet food herself. She became violently ill."
Monday, March 26th, 2007
Had
my bi-annual eye exam today and, during an extended wait, I got to read a US
News & World Report article about our "Ten
Worst Presidents". Among some fascinating factoids:
William Henry Harrison delivered the longest inaugural address (co-written, in
fact, by Daniel Webster, his Secretary of State) of any President before or
after him. On March 4th, 1841, he spoke for about two hours in a cold, windy
rain with no hat and no overcoat.
The next day, he took to his bed with pneumonia and died a mere thirty days into
his term, on April 4th, 1841. He was sixty-eight years old, the oldest President
to take office up to that time. He also holds the distinction of being the first
President to die in office.
Sunday, March 25th, 2007
"If we don't believe in freedom of
expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."
Noam Chomsky
Saturday, March 24th, 2007
Support:
Technical support, how may I help
you?
Lady: Last night my computer
started making a hissing noise so I shut it down. This morning when I turned it
on it started hissing and crackling and then it started smoking, giving off a
bad smell. Then nothing. Now it won't even turn on!
Support: We'll send over a
technician within the hour. Just leave the computer as it is. We'll either fix
it or swap it out for another one.
After the technician diagnosed the problem, he
remarked that, perhaps, the snake had been going after the mouse.
Friday, March 23rd, 2007
"Most
of us would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism."
Norman Vincent Peale
Heard in passing: "...a
serious heart attack." Kind of like a 'major
disaster', I reckon.
Hear ye: I propose a moratorium on references to "the
elephant in the living room" and/or to "the
800 pound gorilla in the room". Both phrases
have been, of late, heard all too often and, so now, are devoid of impact
(as well as grating to the ears) and should be banished (along with the
now-mercifully-heard-less-often "disingenuous").
And one more once (thank you, Count Basie): 'Criteria'
is a plural noun. It's the plural form of 'criterion',
as in 'one criterion, two criteria'.
Geez! ;-)
Thursday, March 22nd, 2007
It's always easier to start something than to finish it!
It's always easier to begin something than to end it!
Wednesday, March 21st, 2007
Daily Bush-Bash
"I
don't care what the polls say. I don't. I'm doing what I think what's wrong."
New
York Times Interview, 3/15/2000
Tuesday, March 20th,
2007
The First Day of Spring!
Nobody Gets Outta Here Alive!
Say what? If the right one don't get ya, then...in fighting heart attacks, strokes and cancer, "...we're keeping people alive so they can get Alzheimer's disease." Steve McConnell (and Tennessee Ernie Ford)
Monday, March 19th, 2007 The Fourth Anniversary of the Beginning of the Iraq War
For sure, I've had a lot of dumb dreams in my long life and, as it is with dreams, I've forgotten almost all of them...usually within a few minutes of having come awake. But this morning I awoke during a dumb dream and, so, could remember much of it.Sunday, March 18th, 2007
"I
wonder, among all the tangles of this mortal coil, which one contains
tighter knots to undo, and consequently suggests more tugging, and pain, and
diversified elements of misery, than the marriage tie."