Author Archives: Aron

I’m fooled!

E-mail scams have reached new levels of sophistication:

Drae Balcrays Merebm,

Tsih eiaml was setn by the Balcrays srevre to verfiy yoru emlia addrses. You mtsu comelpte tihs psecors by clickgni on the likn belwo and eetnring in the smlal winodw yruo Balcrays Membpihsre nebmur, passedoc and memorelba word.
Tsih is dnoe for yoru pritcetoon – bceause semo of our mrebmes no longre heva accses to tiehr eliam asserddes and we mtsu vyfiit. To vyfire yruo emlia aerddss and aseccs yuor bkna auoccnt, cilck on the lkni bleow

Yes, I, too, hvae seen the rseutls of the spuosped rscheearch at Cmabrigde uinervtisy

The Sausage Creature strikes again.

The world is a worse place tonight.

What drives a man like Thompson to end it all…what, after everything in his life, is the final straw that could make him say, “that’s it.” Whatever it could be, it doesn’t give me hope for this world.

Farewell, Hunter, and thanks.

That is the Curse of Speed which has plagued me all my life. I am a slave to it. On my tombstone they will carve, “IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME.”

The Terrorists are Back! The Terrorists are Back!

This reminds me of the good ol’ days of first term. Maybe I just haven’t been playing close enough attention, but it feels like it’s been a little while since the ‘Possible Attacks on America’ argument was trotted out. Now we gotta pass preznit’s defense budget OR ELSE. My favorite bit: just why is the threat more pronounced now than previously?

New CIA Director Porter Goss said the Iraq war was giving terrorists experience and contacts.

I’m glad we nipped that Iraq threat right in the bud…aren’t you?

Can we go on Orange Alert now? Please please please pleasepleaseplease?

Slightly-Toward-the-Edge-of-the-Box Thinking!

Bobo Brooks proposes a radical alternative to Bush’s lame-duck Social Security privatization…uh, personalization…uh, destruction plan. You gots your own personal tax-deferred savings account, just like with Bush, ya see, then you cut traditional benefits by saying you’re indexing them based on prices instead of wages, also just like Bush. And you get to choose whether you want the piddly reduced benefit in full or you want to toss some of that money into the glorified 401(k) account. All sounds like Bush’s program, right? Yeah, but here’s the kicker, the thing that’ll make it just take off:

Are you ready?

The accounts will get a goofy name, and the government will throw in $3500 gratis!

So, that eliminates all of my concerns; who wants cake?

Hey, alternatively we could just divert up to 100% of our payroll taxes into the purchase of lottery tickets! Chances are somebody’s gonna be retiring well, at least!

Inauguration

Just realized that I’ll be spending inauguration day in about the best place I can–the antipodal hemisphere to the US! If all goes to plan, I shall be tramping along the Tongariro Crossing in New Zealand while Bush promises four more years of fear, lies, and willful destruction of all that is good in the world.

Shorter David Brooks

Essentially:

“Exurbs aren’t cities. People live there. I could not host book signings there, so it is impressive that the residents voted for George Bush. Exurbs are bland and formulaic, without any civic life, but it is absurd to think so. Don’t listen to me.”

Finally saying something sensical, at least.

Data…must…fit…preconceptions

David Brooks sure is working hard to make Kerry’s Iraq speech pin him as the ‘anti-war candidate’:

Rhetorically, this was his best foreign policy speech by far (it helps to pick a side). Politically, it was risky. Kerry’s new liberal tilt makes him more forceful on the stump, but opens huge vulnerabilities. Does he really want to imply that 1,000 troops died for nothing?

I didn’t realize it was ‘liberal’ to say that Bush has majorly screwed up on the war. And why should an implication that more than 1,000 troops have died for nothing (or worse than nothing) place the blame on Kerry, and not on the man responsible for their deployment? Perhaps the new definition of ‘liberal’ is ‘telling the truth’…or maybe that’s not such a new definition.

As for Brooks’ claim that Kerry’s primary goal is quick withdrawal from Iraq: if that’s the case, Kerry could have stated it more clearly than this:

In Iraq, we have a mess on our hands. But we cannot throw up our hands. We cannot afford to see Iraq become a permanent source of terror that will endanger America’s security for years to come.

and:

Our troops have served with extraordinary courage and commitment. For their sake, and America’s sake, we must get this right. We must do everything in our power to complete the mission and make America stronger at home and respected again in the world.

God Hates the Gluten-Intolerant

Yet more evidence that the Roman Catholic Church has pretty much no interest in the spiritual well-being of its members.

NEW YORK (AFP) – Roman Catholic officials have invalidated the First Communion of a New Jersey girl with a rare digestive disorder whose gluten intolerance put her on a collision course with Catholic doctrine.

Haley Pelly-Waldman suffers from celiac sprue disease and cannot eat wheat, rye, oats, barley or malt, so when it came time for her to take the sacrament for the first time, her mother Liz asked her priest to allow Haley to eat bread made without gluten, which is a component of wheat.

The priest at St. Denis Catholic Church in Manasquan, a town on the Jersey shore refused, and Pelly-Waldman declined the alternatives offered by the church, namely a sip of wine or a grape substitute.

Pelly-Waldman found a priest who would serve Haley a gluten-free wafer.

But last month the Diocese of Trenton, New Jersey, stepped in and declared that the Communion was invalid because of the substitute wafer.

Bushisms Spreading?

From the New York Times today:

In spite of the poll results, President Bush remains upbeat about his Iraq policy, Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said today.

“The president is confident about the direction we’re headed,” he said, though he acknowledged that the Iraq campaign is “at a critical stage.” He said that success there would mean “a decisive blow to the war on terrorism.”

(Italics mine) Shouldn’t the decisive blow be to terrorism, not to the war on terrorism?

Life on Two Wheels

Been riding my motorcycle quite a bit this weekend–a couple of hundred miles between Saturday and Sunday. God, what an embarassment of riches we have here in Northern California. Saturday consisted of 140 miles, mostly on quiet, beautiful, winding roads…over mountains, across valleys, through forests, by vineyards. Narrow, tight roads; fast, sweeping corners; straight shots through open vistas. Today was more of the same, punctuated by the most gorgeous view of Napa valley on the most gorgeous day imaginable, whilst riding down a gorgeously flowing section of a perfectly-paved road. All this and so much more to be seen within a 50 mile radius of my front door.

How do so many people stand to not live here?