¶ 10:53 AM 0 comments
The Argonauts have two other former N.F.L. first-round draft choices who have been barred from that league for violating its substance-abuse policy too many times: receiver R. Jay Soward, the 29th pick in the 2000 draft; and defensive end Bernard Williams, the 14th selection in 1994. The Argonauts also have receiver Robert Baker, who spent 10 months in prison for distributing and trafficking cocaine.
Canadians are known to be more compassionate, so it makes more sense. Oh, and they also have looser drug laws.
¶ 7:08 PM 0 comments
President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations. Notice of the development came in a brief entry in the Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained eye.
These guys are just building themselves into a massive fortress, doing anything to keep out reality.
¶ 2:26 PM 0 comments
I think I got that link in an email once, so this might've made the rounds previously.
¶ 8:12 AM 0 comments
By the way, I didn't see the game so perhaps I shouldn't even comment. I will, however, see them in person in Hartford on Sunday night in their final game before the Cup - definitely hoping for a better result.
In other sports news, Carlos Beltran rocked a home run in the 16th (SIXTEENTH!) inning to win a key divisional series opener vs. the Phillies for the Mets last night. I guess that's 25 billion (or whatever his contract is) well spent.
Also, that horse got hurt. Not to show myself for the heartless bastard I am, but who cares? We have our nation's finest dying daily in a completely pointless quagmire of a war in Iraq, and people freak out that a horse almost died? Wtf?
¶ 8:09 AM 0 comments
I think the likelihood is that either Iraq will descend into a Yugoslavia-type maelstrom with much death and destruction and a break-up into mini-states as a result; or it will descend into a Lebanon-type maelstrom with much death and destruction but manage to come back together as a weak nation-state in the end. The second is the better outcome for the region and the world, but it is not guaranteed. Both scenarios are dire, and could spin out of control into regional conflagration.¶ 7:56 AM 0 comments
This reminded me of the absolutely brilliant animation that came out of a few months ago. Some guy took the actual audio track of the Mets famous 1986 World Series Game 6 victory over the Red Sox (the Bill Buckner game) then reenacted the final inning in RBI baseball (that old Nintendo classic). Check it out here. Even if you're not a baseball fan, it's worth watching just because it's so cool.
¶ 4:30 PM 0 comments
You hate meetings at your work? Think how much it would suck to have to sit through this one. For once, I don't blame Cheney. (yep, this photo is real, from Reuters -- which brings up another thing: falling asleep in a meeting is problematic enough, but if major international news agencies have photographers in your meetings, you really shouldn't do it ) ¶ 10:04 PM 0 comments
So what happens now? One idea: Jim and Pam go together to work at Dunder Mifflin corporate, or rather Jim goes to work there, and Pam does that graphic design internship they had offered her previously. How would things be resolved in Scranton? I have no idea, but I'd have to imagine Roy will want to crush Jim's skull at some point. How will Michael weigh in on this story of true love? It might be too deep of thing for him to wrap his sociopathic mind around. I just don't see how they could work into the plot everyone all staying in the Scranton office, so they will have to come up with some other way for the documentary makers to film everyone.
How good of a job did the writers do in leading us to think that Jan and Jim would hook up, both of them dejected after having opened themselves up in the name of love? Brilliant writing. But no, that final scene, the final scene that I never really expected, that I thought at best might be only implied, was what they left us with, Jim finally doing what we all wanted him to do. (And where did that happen anyway, was that in the office?) The big question for me: Pam talking to her mom, telling her about what Jim did, responding to something asked by her mom, says, "I think I am." What, Pam, what do you think you are?!? I love with Jim?
Will Michael find love with the realtor in Season 3? Will the season be all about how love, marriage, and fatherhood finally make him a man?
Anyway, it's amazing I have written all this about a TV show, this from a guy whose TV watching is really only the Sopranos and the Office, and Mets games of course. Here are some other people's thoughts:
Just to prove people are really talking a lot about this, here is a Technorati blog search engine search for Jim and Pam.
TV Squad has an episode recap and also opines that the Office is "the best comedy on TV today."
The LA Times has an interesting take: The Office is actually a replacement for The West Wing, in that it attracts the same kind of audience, though the "presidency" represented is not the West Wing liberal fantasy, but our current administration. Michael Scott is Dubya:
"Conflict Resolution" was the name of last week's episode, in which Michael resolves a simmering dispute between two employees by suggesting a cage match. "Cage matches? Yeah, they work, how could they not work?" he says to the camera. It's "The Office's" version of the Bush/Rumsfeld certainty about democracy in the Middle East: Freedom? How could freedom not work?
And another article from The Sun Herald on the Office finding its place in the TV universe (after initially emerging as an Americanized clone of the British original)
So for those of you who have not seen all the episodes: see them this summer, and be ready for an awesome Season 3.
For those of you who have seen them all, any thoughts?
¶ 10:07 AM 1 comments
While listening to 1010 WINS the other day I found out about the principal of PS 21 in Bed-Stuy who refuses to let his elementary school students outside for recess. He says that stray bullets are too much of a problem and it is unsafe to let the kids out no matter the weather. Mayor Bloomberg responded that the neighborhood has actually gotten safer recently, that the police are working with the principal on the issue, and there's no reason to keep the children indoors.
Flash back to about a month ago. I get a report that my homeroom students are acting up in the art room, and my disciplinary assistance is needed. Knowing that it's eighth period (the last, about 2PM) and that the art room and my students in it can get crazy sometimes, I stroll purposefully down the long hallway to look into the situation. I arrive, and the art teacher is screaming at the children. My class is crowded along the windows in the corner classroom and loudly commenting on what's going on in the park behind our school. There are 4-5 people sprinting through the park and the sounds of gunshots are in the air. I start screaming to get away from the windows, for God's sake, and what the hell are you thinking there are bullets flying, and what the hell is going on, anyway? Art teacher responds- 'they're shooting in the back' to which I respond 'no shit' in my head. After a minute or two, everything was calmed down, and we talked at length about why its important to stay away from the window if there are random people shooting just outside that window. The one child who moved toward the door had some thoughts about that one…
I'd taught at the school for a year at that point and had not heard about shootings around the park, but Art Teacher told me enough. "There've been a couple times this year, I don't know when it was- but I've got it written down here somewhere…" It was all I really wanted to know. It wasn't really a surprise. But it was unnerving. I know there are guns around the school and I've seen and heard too many gunshots around me already, but what the fuck? Two PM? Within fifty yards of a classroom window? Most of the students in the classroom run toward the window? Its just unfair. To everyone.
For those two hours, Martínez, the Mets star known for his intensity and cleverness on the mound and his quirkiness off it, is in the yard outside his six-bedroom Tudor revival home in Greenwich, Conn. He is planting. He is pruning. He is talking to his tulips. "What about you, beauty?" he will ask in language rarely, if ever, heard on a baseball field. "Aren't you going to grow up to be so pretty?"¶ 9:11 AM 0 comments
WASHINGTON - CIA Director Porter Goss abruptly resigned yesterday amid allegations that he and a top aide may have attended Watergate poker parties where bribes and prostitutes were provided to a corrupt congressman.[snip]
A CIA spokeswoman said Foggo went to the lavish weekly hospitality-suite parties at the Watergate and Westin Grand hotels but "just for poker."
¶ 8:44 AM 0 comments
¶ 2:41 PM 0 commentsGoogle has launched their new Google Pack, a collection of "essential free software" for Windows PCs.
The Pack includes Firefox, Ad-Aware, Norton AV, Adobe Reader, plusallmany of Google's desktop apps - Picasa, Google Earth, Desktop Search and the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer.
(via BV) I wonder if this will make it to MetsBlog? That would be like my two blog-worlds colliding.
¶ 3:09 PM 0 comments
The GOP (at least, as it was rising to dominate American politics) defined its ideals as pro-market policies that promote competition and efficiency. Yet increasingly, the party - as conservative columnist Bruce Bartlett says of George Bush in his book, Impostor - is "incapable of telling the difference between being pro-business and being for the free market." It favors specific competitors rather than favoring competition.
Free markets aren't pro-business - they don't favor incumbent companies if upstarts do the job better. Competition is good wherever it comes from - even the government - so long as it lowers social costs and increases wealth. And efficiency is good regardless of who it might hurt; it is especially good if it hurts those who feed off inefficiency.
If you are a true believer in free market economics, today's GOP is not your party. It wants to restrict the natural flow of labor, proposing a walled-off, militarized border. It wants to make government contracts no-bid, giving the big bucks to friends of the administration without asking them to prove how their companies can effectively and efficiently get the job done. And as Lessig demonstrates above, it wants put in place an economic system that stymies innovation and up-start competion to the tired old economic dinosaurs that fund its campaigns.
¶ 10:02 PM 0 comments
"Now I know there's some polls out there saying this man has a 32-percent approval rating," Mr. Colbert said a few moments later. "But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking 'in reality.' And reality has a well-known liberal bias."
That line got a relatively warm laugh, but many others were met with near silence. In one such instance, he criticized reporters for likening Mr. Bush's recent staff changes to "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic." "This administration is not sinking," Mr. Colbert said; "this administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg."
"Even my teammates give me a little stick for it. They don't like (President) Bush at all," he said. "I don't really get any anti-Americanism, but they kind of say, 'Yeah, we don't like Americans.'''
When he asked them why, they tell him: "Oh, because of Bush."
"It's very ignorant," Beasley said, "but sometimes it's kind of funny."
¶ 8:26 PM 0 comments
Here's a look at the situation then compared to the situation now, by the numbers:
| May 1, 2003 | Today | |
| U.S. Troops Wounded | 542 | 17,469 |
| U.S. Troops Killed | 139 | 2,400 |
| Size of U.S. Forces | 150,000 | 132,000 |
| Size of Iraqi Security Forces | 7,000-9000 | 250,500 |
| Number of Insurgents | 5,000 | 15,000-20,000 |
| Insurgent Attacks Per Day | 8 | 75 |
| Cost to U.S. Taxpayers | $79 billion | $320 billion |
| Approval of Bush's Handling of Iraq | 75% | 37% |
| Percentage of Americans who Believe The Iraq War Was "Worth Fighting" | 70% | 41% |
| Bush's Overall Job Approval | 71% | 38% |
