Remembering 1/31/07

Remembering 1/31/07, there is LED art all over Boston today.

heh...

Experience

Lot of talk these days about the relative merit of experience versus the symbolism of change. I think I've come down on the side of change.

Experience is simply the name we give to our mistakes. - Oscar Wilde

One of my mistakes - back in 2000, as Bush took office, I was clearly unimpressed with his lack of eloquent leadership, but took solace in the "experience" of his advisers - Cheney, Rumquist, and Powell. Little did I know that they were to prove to be an anti-constitutionalist, a self-impressed managerial prima donna, and a wishy-washy follower. So much for the value of experience.

Another problem with experience is that when it is gained in times of strident, non-productive partisanship, the result is experience in strident, non-productive partisanship, and along the way, enough enemies are made to prett much guarantee that most of what you try to accomplish will either result in more division or succumb to insurmountable roadblocks.

As a "child of the 60's" boomer, I've got enough experience not to expect miracles from the promise(s) of newcomers and relative outsiders (that's for sure), but I still have some hope that things can change, and maybe we can get away from at least some of the divisiveness of the past 15 years.

We just need someone who wasn't at the center of it.

Dining with the Din of Children

A great idea from a post on Chowhound:

"When a family of six was about to be seated at a table adjacent to a dapper looking young man and his date, after giving us a wink, the fellow tapped the mother of the brood on the shoulder, and said, 'I'm so very sorry, ma'am, but the conditions of my parole don't allow me to be this close to young children. Do you think you could ask for a different table?' The mother hen gathered up her chickadees and all but left rubber as she fled the room."

If only I had such nerve (and wit) at a recent restaurant taken over by a couple kids.

FFFFOUND!

FFFFOUND! - Amazing collection of flagged images.

What's in a name?

I like this quote via Andrew Sullivan:

"It is a bit of a problem, the title 'Atheist'--No one really wants to be defined by what they do not believe in. We haven't yet settled on a name, but you wouldn't expect a Baptist minister to go around calling himself an a-Darwinist. But it is crucial that people who do not have a sky god and don't have a set of supernatural beliefs assert their belief in moral values and in love and in the transcendence that they might experience in landscape or art or music or sculpture or whatever. Since they do not believe in an afterlife, it makes them give more valence to life itself. The little spark that we do have becomes all the more valuable when you can't be trading off any moments for eternity," - Ian McEwen, in TNR.

The Greatest Sentence Ever Written

From DJ Bronwyn C's 2007 Top 10 on WFMU.org:

Lead sentence to a crime-news story in the NY Daily News, by reporter Scott Shifrel: “A baby jammed in a shoebox amid a swarm of cockroaches, a pile of drugs, and a loaded handgun was well cared for and loved, her teenage mother insisted as she was released from jail yesterday.” An entire novel in 36 words.

Un-Foxing-Believable

This evening, the Fox Going-out-of-Business Channel's Cavuto show got obsessed with the idea that a big factor in today's 256 point drop in the Dow should be blamed on the success of Obama and Huckabee, who according to the show's regulars are the biggest anti-capitalists since Marx and Lenin.

Could it have something to do with fallout from the credit-market meltdown? Nuh-uh.

Maybe today's leap in unemployment in the jobs report? Nah.

How about profit taking in sectors that have held up through the year end, in anticipation of further economic deterioration fomented by the failure to regulate the credit markets? No way.

It was Obamabee's hatred of the wall street wealthy and fear of taxes that spooked the market. OMG - both Democrats and Republicans are out for our money.

At least according to Neal, Charles, and Jonathan.

Makes "Mad Money" Jim Cramer seem down right sane and rational.

I wonder if that theme's going to carry over to Saturday morning's "Cost of Freedom" shows on their parent Faux News Channel. At least I'll be able to fast forward through the silliness if it does.

Foxy News

From Andrew Sullivan, on last night's Iowa caucus coverage from Fox...

"I did watch Fox. The one thing that kept striking me was that almost every single woman on the channel has been made to look like a Barbie doll (just not as articulate); and almost every man is old and white."

...and from the American Heritage Dictionary...foxy - 3. Discolored, as by age or decay, 4. Slang - Sensually attractive; sexy.

I missed the fun, watching only white guys on MSNBC.