Logic Check 101?

Scenario for you. You're a Salvation Army homeless shelter. You want to encourage families to stop being homeless. What do you do?

Well, if you're the Salvation Army in Louisville, KY, you display "compassionate conservatism" and charge $5 a night to families staying there longer than a week. Isn't it obvious that this is the perfect solution to homelessness, particularly in "small-town" America?

Finally. . . .

It took them long enough but the mess regarding the White House leaking the identity of an undercover CIA operative is finally hitting the fan.

It should be fun to watch.

Surprise, surprise

Anybody really surprised to learn that the teams looking for WMD's in Iraq are now only looking for small caches of munitions?

What happened to the "hundreds of tons of chemical and biological weapons" that Hussein allegedly stashed?

Or was this just another lie cooked up to start an ill-needed war?

Scary

Just got a very convincing-looking virus e-mail, claiming to be a patch from "Microsoft Security." If it weren't for the fact that the "To:" and "From:" fields were totally bogus, and the fact that I know that Microsoft never e-mails or announces patches in this manner, I might be convinced to actually install the patch.

As viruses become more and more clever, it requires even greater diligence from us all, I suppose.

Random Thursday night occurrences

Three items:

• I saw the Jeopardy! bus on Massachusetts Avenue not two blocks from my apartment on my way home.
  
• But before that, I saw an idiot hand-rolling cigarettes in plain view on the T, obviously not in the least perturbed by all the glares he was receiving from the people around him.
  
• And the local NBC affiliate apparently felt it was necessary to interrupt the season permiere of ER to inform us that the Red Sox have clinched the wild card spot.
  

All in all, a typical night in the Hub. :-)

Signs you're a Republican in trouble

When Fox News pegs your approval rating at only 50 percent, you know things are starting to get out of hand.

Anybody think another invasion is in the cards right now? [But wait! Who's going to fight it? All of our troops are committed right now!] D'oh! We're just going to have to bomb North Korea, I guess, and skip the ground invasion. Yeah, that should work just fine.

Two million?

The liberal/moderate in me sees this as potentially a big blow to the Bush administration, but the realist in me realizes that this is probably just a bunch of malarkey. The telemarketing industry is complaining that two million jobs will be shed between now and Christmas as a result of the no-call list. But two million jobs? That would mean that well over 1 in 100 Americans are employed to bug the hell out of the rest of us, and that just can't be right. If it weren't so, we'd be inundated with calls--and meal times would be absolutely impossible.

So, what's the real number--fifty to a hundred thousand, perhaps?

Chuckle worthy

I have to admit a slight fondness for the new Nextel "reduced Shakespeare" ads. They do a rather decent job of summarizing a three-hour play in about twenty-five seconds, and rather humorously, too.

Warm fuzzies

It was certainly nice to see the Red Sox acting like a bunch of Little Leaguers who had just won the World Series after David Ortiz hit a walk-off home run in last night's win over Baltimore. Huddled together, jumping up and down--with most of Fenway park and Red Sox Nation joining them as well.

It's one of those sights you see so rarely in professional sports nowadays: a team that's having so much fun that they actually remember that it's just a game--and not a business--for a few moments.

Hold my calls, please

It's certainly interesting that it would be an Oklahoma judge that would rule that the new FTC "no-call registry" is an illegal action on the part of the FTC, as it was not specifically created via a "grant of authority" from Congress.

This is more so because it was also Oklahoma that became the first to sue WorldCom executives for consumer fraud. So, what gives?

Recalls ad nauseam?

Hmm . . . did the Republicans overlook the possibility that if Davis is recalled, and a Republican becomes governor of California, that the Democrats could retaliate and recall the new governor? That's what Davis is threatening them with. . . . Although the question of whether or not California Republicans even should saddle themselves with the governorship, when it means they're going to have to inherit the huge financial shortfalls left by Davis, remains an open one.

You call this leadership?

And we wonder why Iraq is turning into a quagmire.

Cheaters never prosper

Wow. I'd like to think that graduate students have some intelligence, but it seems that some of the first-year graduate students have decided to plagiarize one another in problem sets.

A pair of students somehow managed to start a problem with two different sets of notation, yet somehow miraculously end up with the same set of answers--down to the punctuation and lack of spacing. There were a few other minor differences, but did I also mention that these are the only two students who used Microsoft Word to prepare their solutions?

And worse still, the plagiarized answers were wrong. If you're going to cheat, at least cheat from someone who has the correct answers!

Hooray for Yale

It's about time, but Yale has finally reached an agreement the striking unions which have been causing it so much problems.

Personally, I have to say that while I sympathize with the unions' plight, I find their tactics much to be desired. In the past, they've tried to galvanize student support by pulling stunts such as waking up the students by marching down Elm Street (one of the main campus throughfares)--before 7 a.m.

Now, I suppose the point is to annoy the student body enough to make them demand the administration cave in, but as any relatively sentient person will realize, this a "shooting yourself in the foot" kind of strategy: the students will be made angry, but only at the people making them get up at an indecent hour of the morning.

But at least problems are resolved, and everybody seems to make out well with this particular deal.

More of "What were they thinking?"

The latest contenders in the "random Google search" derby:

• More "dunk tank" searches: building dunk tank, dunk tank rentals, etc. (This category is hereby retired, barring an unforeseen even more bizarre combination)
  
• andy roddick acceptance speeches
  
• copyright law adam sandle
  
• breakdancing classes massachusetts
  
• string bach electronic
  

Not your typical haircut

Under the header of "random occurrences," while walking back from the T to my apartment, I saw a man with an Afro haircut pushing a shopping cart toward Harvard Square (where it would really be out of place. But that wasn't the strangest part; that honor goes to the fact that he was using his 'fro as a cup-holder. It was a display that would make even the most poised débutante jealous.

Hooray for the Senate, and Independent Media

The Senate has voted 55-45 to rescind the new FCC regulations allowing growth of media conglomerates. It's a start, but overall, it still faces an uphill battle in both the House and the White House.

Oddly enough, why would Bush threaten to veto this legislation, when to date, he has not had the guts to veto a single piece of legislation?

Thankfulness, not without grief

While I can appreciate all the pretty pictures that are being generated from Hurricane Isabel, I have to say that I wouldn't mind seeing it weaken quite a good deal more before it strikes the East Coast. After all, while I enjoy on a certain abstract level "The Perfect Storm," I am much less inclined to actually want to have it hit me as a Category 5 than as a Category 1, a tropical storm, depression, or less. . . .

BTW: Bonus points to anyone who can figure out the title reference. . . .

A little demonic possession

The elevators in my building are rather frightening means of conveyance--they don't always know which floor they're really on, and even when they do, sometimes they don't quite make it level to the floor--sometimes there's quite a step up--or down.

It's all rather charming, in a stomach-churning kind of way.

1 + 6 + 4 = ??

Well, it should be 11, but ESPN thought it was 12. Oh well, on the other hand, what's really important is that 11 is the number of runs the Red Sox are up over the Yankees after 8 innings.

Clemens got chased out in his final appearance against his old team, and one assumes that Steinbrenner must be nearly apoplectic right now.

And Nomar has more triples (13) so far this season than the entire New Yawk Yankees (12).

Isn't it a great day to be a Red Sox fan?

No good can come of this

As if Clemens weren't bad enough, guess who Manny Ramirez wants to play for in five years, when his Red Sox contract expires? That's right, the Yankees.

Pardon me while I go retch.

Wow

Just when you thought the searches people will try that pull up my blog couldn't possibly get any weirder than flashy clogging costumes, I get two new contenders:

• email addresses of tent producers in the world


• developmental position 2004 psychology OR child tenure-track