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evolving stupidity Creation seems to have won a small victory in Georgia with the state's school superintendent proposing to remove the word evolution from the school's biology textbooks. This decision, besides being a shameful attempt to befuddle a generation of school kids reflects a slow but certain spilling over of fundamentalist attitudes from inside homes out into society. As of now, it's only erstwhile president Jimmy Carter who has expressed a rather strong opinion, I'd certainly be interested in what the current POTUS' views are on the topic. Apparently the Georgia school board has a history of taking strange decisions.
just about right I grew up in Bombay, now officially known as Mumbai. What's Mumbai? It's a sweltering, magnificent, teeming megalopolis in which every human triumph and affliction shouts at the top of its lungs 24 hours a day.Via this unrelated article on outsourcing to Indian software companies.
bse Now this is just disgusting. From today's Washington Post, Blood from slaughtered cattle, which new research has identified as a potential source of transmission of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, is fed to calves to replace milk, which is diverted to grocery stores. The blood serves as an alternate protein source.
electronic voting Conceptually, an electronic voting machine should be a simple thing to make, for a country that has the technology, resources and people with sufficient brainpower to send a spirit to Mars, and so also to plan a manned mission to the distant Red Planet, it shouldn't be very difficult to create what is essentially a counter on steroids. Electronic voting has already been used in India, I've used it myself, roughly four years ago, which increases my incredulity, why is there so much bad air, insinuation and, in general, suspicion of the process here in the United States? This Op-Ed column in today's NYTimes offers some talking points, Questionable programmers aside, even a cursory look at the behavior of the major voting machine companies reveals systematic flouting of the rules intended to ensure voting security. Software was modified without government oversight; machine components were replaced without being rechecked. And here's the crucial point: even if there are strong reasons to suspect that electronic machines miscounted votes, nothing can be done about it. There is no paper trail; there is nothing to recount.
inscrutable Via the Washington Post, President Bush showed little interest in policy discussions in his first two years in the White House, leading Cabinet meetings "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people," former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill says in an upcoming book on the Bush White House.
sneaking out I'm surprised this hasn't received the press it deserves. Considering hundreds of lives have been lost, billions spent and a post-war situation that continues to totter on the brink of chaos does the American public at large realize the team charged with the responsibility of justifying the touted reasons for launching this campaign has thrown in the towel? The article begins interestingly enough, my emphasis The Bush administration has quietly withdrawn from Iraq a 400-member military team whose job was to scour the country for military equipment, according to senior government officials.
Happy New Year! Now searching for parking in San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter is no fun, certainly not at 1145 on New Year's eve, and it is even worse when the minutes tick by, inexorably toward midnight, and you finally end up welcoming the new year asking your Rufie, the driver friend to honk a trifle loudly please. It was when we were turning back toward home, like defeated soldiers who never got to step on the battlefield that the fun started. The police in SD, in an earnest effort to prevent accidents related to drunken driving had put up a barricade right before the entrance to the freeway, asking drivers to do funny stuff in an effort to separate the drunk from the sober. Now Rufie, who was our DD, is by no means a man of trivial courage, but he is particularly vulnerable to anxiety attacks when confronted by the unpleasant face of the law, thus, this story. The cop first asked him to follow his finger with his eyes but Ruffie dear was so clueless he just kept staring at the officer's badge, wide-eyed, struck as if by it's brilliance on the dark night. The officer repeated his request, a little louder this time pulling Ruf out of his stupor, but Ruf was in no mood to oblige, instead of moving just his eyes he moved his whole massive head irritating the cop as we watched the comedy unfold. Obviously the officer's patience had begun to wear thin and when Ruffie did the same thing for the third consecutive time we were clutching our heads in frustration when he was asked to step out and led to the side for further 'investigation'. As Ruf was being subjected to even greater humiliation we started enjoying ourselves, watching Ruf trying to convince the cop he was sober as a can of Arrowhead. He, of course hadn't had anything to drink, just like the rest of us so it was only a matter of seeing Ruf trying to prove he could walk in a straight line and taking a breathalyzer test as we giggled and smiled at our good fortune on getting caught, the night had finally perked up. That day ended by seeing the moon turn from a lovely honey brown into blood red and wane from half to absolute nothingness as we discussed the merits of diving onto the crashing waves at the edge of the longest pier on the west coast.
on time The earth seems to have been catching up, one second a year, for five years, and is now in sync with it's position in the universe. Hmm, for want of a better word, good. |
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