Month: January 2008

Dear Gentleman crossing H St NW

Dear Sir,

I was in the maroon hatchback, waiting to turn right on H from 18th this evening as you walked through the crosswalk, with the light, as pedestrians are permitted to do.  Some jackass behind me honked, and you thought it was me.  It was not.  I know you waved at me as if to say, “Hey, jerk, I have the right of way.”  And it’s true that you did, and I was respecting it.  Had I honked at you, you would have had every right to give me a rude gesture or a nasty look, as I would have deserved it.

But it wasn’t me who honked.  I think it was the RAV4 behind me, although I’m not sure what he was complaining about.

In any event, I apologize.  The guy behind me was a jerk.

Sincerely, Complaint Hub

I seriously feel a little bad.  I guess I shouldn’t.  I didn’t do anything wrong.  The guy I don’t know and will never see again, who’s probably already forgotten this happened, just thought I did.  But I do try to be courteous to pedestrians, beyond simply yielding when they have the right of way.  Except jaywalkers.  Jaywalkers are on their own.  I’m not saying don’t do it, because I certainly do.  I’m just saying that you’re on your own.

Dear Dallas Fans

Look, you have it all wrong. The problem with Tony Romo isn’t Jessica Simpson. It’s December.

In two seasons, Romo has a completion percentage of 64% and a rating of 95. For reference, Joe Montana’s career numbers are 63% and 92. So, Romo’s off to a good start. He’s thrown 57 touchdowns to only 33 interception. His career record is 20-10 (All numbers include his two playoff games).

But then look at him in December. He’s 4-7. 11 touchdowns vs 14 interceptions. His completion percentage is 59% and his rating is 74. He has 31 fumbles in his career, 13 in 11 December games.  The numbers look even worse if you take out two games against Detroit, not exactly the shining model of a good football team.

The numbers are even more disparate if you remove December from his totals (Shocking, I know, that basic mathematics still apply to the quarterback of the Cowboys.  Someone tell Jerry Jones).  67% completion percentage outside of December, 46 touchdowns to 19 interceptions, a 16-3 record, and a 108 rating.  Those are Hall of Fame numbers (Assuming they continue, of course).    But ask Dan Marino how people react when you can’t win in the playoffs.  Or ask Peyton Manning two years ago.

Romo seems like a nice guy, and he’s certainly had some early-season success.  But he needs to learn how to play in December.

If you want to hate Jessica Simpson because she’s pretty, famous, and really dumb, then go ahead and hate her if it makes you feel better. But blame Romo’s playoff misery on something else, because it’s not her fault.

Again, for reference, you want to know someone with a career passer rating of 74?  Gus Frerotte.  Jon Kitna’s career rating is 79.  Charlie Batch’s is 78.

Do you hear me, John Madden?  Romo may go on to have a long and brilliant career, but before you anoint him the heir to your man-crush on Brett Favre, let’s see him win a meaningful game in December.

Whats wrong here?

Techdirt: Mitch Kapor Finally Pulls The Plug On Chandler

Every once in a while there would be an update, but many other projects seemed to make a lot more progress than Chandler ever did. So it’s not much of a surprise to hear that Mitch Kapor has finally bailed on Chandler, and that the foundation behind it is going to scale back its efforts.

BoingBoing: Chandler: Free, open calendar with awesome sharing

It’s still very early beta, and there’s a lot of polish missing from the current builds, but in the short time I’ve been using it, I’ve seen it make massive improvements. I’m really looking forward to future releases — give it a whirl, send ’em some feedback, or hack some code.

These two articles were posted about five hours apart.  While they aren’t quite totally mutually exclusive, it’s funny to see BoingBoing singing the praises of this project just as Techdirt announces that the founder is bailing.

This makes me want to be a scientist

Hubble finds double Einstein ring via Uncertain Principles

More than just a novelty, a very rare phenomenon found with the Hubble Space Telescope can offer insight into dark matter, dark energy, the nature of distant galaxies, and even the curvature of the Universe.

I read stuff like this, and it makes me want to go back to school and research stuff.  Not that I know anything at all about dark matter and the nature of the Universe.  But this is just cool.  I don’t get nearly enough of that at work.

It makes me feel very small, though, thinking about distant galaxies.  It reminds us that the Universe is kinda big, and we’re relatively pretty friggin’ tiny.

Youre missing the point

Ron Paul 90s newsletters rant against blacks, gays – CNN.com

A series of newsletters in the name of GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul contain several racist remarks — including one that says order was restored to Los Angeles after the 1992 riots when blacks went “to pick up their welfare checks.”

I read enough of the article to see that Paul denies writing this stuff.  I’m not sure I believe him, but whatever.  This doesn’t change his chances of winning – he never had a chance of winning.  But this really hurts everyone.  We need a legitimate third party candidate to remind everyone that it doesn’t have to be a choice between a Democrat and a Republican, that not everyone falls neatly into one of these two parties.

I’m really disappointed that Paul is turning out to be even crazier than everyone thought.  He’d done a great job of generating buzz and support as a guy who isn’t really a Republican, regardless of where he’s running.  But now he’s a racist, anti-semitic homophobe, and he’s probably undone a lot of the good he did.

I wasn’t going to vote for him.  But I was pulling for him to have a good showing to pave the way for others down the road.  This could have been a fantastic election – the first African-American candidate with a chance, the first woman with a chance, and the first non-Democrat/Republican in some years to get a non-trivial amount of votes.  And we still have the first two.  Even if Obama and Hillary both lose, it will be easier for the next candidate who isn’t a white male, and that’s good for the country.

As I told a friend, we had Perot, and then Paul.  We’ve had some others who aren’t even as viable as those two clown.  Maybe by 2025 or so, we can get a third party candidate who is actually electable.

The media didnt predict for a week that Lazarus would return

A Dramatic Second Act for the Senator From Arizona – washingtonpost.com

Now even his supporters are wondering whether he can take his adrenaline-fueled campaign national, a transformation he could not make eight years ago.

Did someone very important in the world of mainstream news decree that everyone must use dumb words to describe McCain?  During the New Hampshire primaries, he was called “the Republican Obama”, “Lazarus”, “the Eschaton” (Although I think that one was tongue-in-cheek”), and probably a bunch of other stuff I didn’t notice because his followers were too busy chanting “Mac is back!”, which I 1)  found annoying and 2) kept hearing as “Yankees suck”.

And now the article linked above called him an “insurgent”.  Now, I don’t know about the rest of you, but for me the word “insurgent” calls up images of IEDs and 12-year-old Iraqis with rocket launchers.  Is this a jibe at McCain from the Post?

And there can only be one “Comeback Kid” per election, and you can’t start calling yourself that after only two states have officially voiced an opinion.  Hillary and McCain need to sit down and negotiate an agreement.  One of them can be the Comeback Kid.  Since Bill Clinton already had that nickname, I guess Hillary probably has the upper hand there, but the 71-year-old McCain can maybe play the irony card.

So, I’m disappointed that Hillary won.  I’m encouraged that Obama made another strong showing.  I’m encouraged that Huckabee was back in his rightful place with the second-tier candidates.  I think it’s awesome that, for a long time, Gravel’s vote count was below 100.  That would be cool if you were one of the dinks in New Hampshire who voted for him, where you could really see your vote mattering, right there on the CNN ticker.

Inhabitat is fired

I don’t know how many of you read inhabitat.com. I’d been reading for a while now, and have just removed them from my RSS reader. You’re probably familiar with the One Laptop Per Child initiative, which aims to provide laptops for children in developing countries. You can argue about whether or not this will do any good, or about the motivations of the founders, or whatever. But you can’t call it the “$100 laptop”, which is what they were originally calling it. It doesn’t cost $100. It’s at least twice that, and a website calling it the $100 laptop is irresponsible and misleading.

So, when Inhabitat did that for the umpteenth time, I left a comment expressing my displeasure. It was strongly worded, but no profanity. It was, I thought, an entirely reasonable criticism. Well, whoever moderates the comments there apparently believes in censorship rather than actually defending a position.

I have never deleted a comment here based on the content.  All I’ve ever deleted was spam.  Not to say I wouldn’t delete a comment if it were sufficiently offensive, but if I were going to delete comments of everyone who disagreed with me, I might as well just stop allowing comments.  Or stop blogging altogether.

So, does anyone know any good wind-kissing hippie blogs?  I stopped reading Treehugger because they just aren’t very good.  So I’m left with almost nothing.  I can only deal with a pretty small amount of Al Gore worship in my hippie blogs, so keep that in mind.

And now for something totally important

Spears hospitalized; loses right to see kids – CNN.com

A court commissioner Friday gave sole physical and legal custody of the former couple’s two little boys to Federline and suspended the troubled pop star’s visitation rights.

So the court decided that the genius who is now romantically linked to Paris Hilton is the more qualified parent.  Actually, romantically linked is probably too strong.  They probably got drunk and hooked up.

Anyway, somewhere along the line, someone should have sat Britney down and gave her a little talking-to.  She could have been Madonna’s little protege, making obscene amounts of money and doing pretty much whatever she wanted.  Instead, she’s a joke who lost custody of her kids.  How often does a judge give custody to the father?  I have no idea what the number is, but it’s small.

At the same time, I hope whatever she’s been hospitalized for is something they can treat and fix.  Just because she’s retarded doesn’t mean she should be in the hospital.

Iowa is a bunch of jerks

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive – Clinton out of it, Edwards suggests « – Blogs from CNN.com

“Iowa does not have best track record in determining who the parties nominate, everybody knows that,” [Third place Hillary Clinton] said at an event in Manchester. “You know, New Hampshire is famously independent, it is a place where people want to make up their own minds — they’re not interested in what anybody else has decided.”

I’m sure CNN is cherry-picking the most controversial quotes, and I’m cherry-picking the best of what CNN has, but wow, that is totally awesome. Even cooler than Edwards calling Obama a “corporate sellout”.

I hope all you readers are ready for some politics, because the race is finally interesting again. People are dropping like flies. Pretty soon we’ll only have the legitimate candidates left.

Anyway, as people who know me are already aware, I don’t much like Hillary. It has been suggested that this is because I don’t like strong, smart women. To that I say, “Have you met my wife?”. Still, I can’t really explain why I don’t like Hillary. It’s probably her cabal of witches.

If I were an Iowan, I’d be salty. The only two Iowans I know are both sensible, intelligent, and didn’t vote for Huckabee. Hillary basically said, “Hey, you didn’t vote for me, but New Hampshirians are much smarter and less easily influenced, and surely they’ll vote for me.”

So, Hillary is a big jerk.

Iowa could have been worse

Richardson out

Meanwhile, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who will finish a distant fourth in Iowa, with roughly 2 percent of the vote is staying in the race. “We are on the way to New Hampshire tonight. We plan to make this a referendum on the Iraq war. This is far from over,” Press Secretary Tom Reynolds tells CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux.

As Biden and Dodd step gracefully away, Bill Richardson decides to make this campaign his personal soapbox. Good job, Bill. If you’re lucky, history will remember you as a large-jowled buffoon and not the guy who cost the Democrats the White House. Face it – you aren’t a serious contender, and your time would be better spent supporting someone who is.

I just overheard my project manager and another employee discussing the results. The employee is happy that Hillary didn’t win, although he would have preferred Edwards. His reasoning? She’s cold, and she’s assembled a cabal of women around her who shield her from advisors and the people a President has to listen to. Seriously, he used the word “cabal”.

Now, there are some good reasons and some bad reasons to vote against Hillary. But if this is your reasoning, you might as well start talking about how she’s a space alien who wants to sell us all into slavery. You thought I was uninformed about politics? Wow.

I’m glad Obama won. I count myself a reluctant Obama supporter. Of all the candidates, he’s the only one I can really see as the President.

Huckabee, meanwhile, really scares me. Religion can certainly be a positive influence on people. There is much to learn from many religious documents, including the Bible. But I can’t fathom the thought process that leads one to vote for a man who believes in the literal truth of the Bible.

His recent potshots at Bush are a little childish, too. I haven’t heard what he’s said, just that he’s been ticking off Republicans by insulting our fearless leader. If he wants to distance himself from the President, fine. He probably should. But there has to be a better way. If I was in Huckabee, I’d distance myself by proposing that Bush and Cheney be tried for treason, but some might call that “overreacting” or maybe “lunacy”. To those people I say, “History will redeem me.”

It worries me that Obama gets a lot of his support from young voters.

Obama also apparently had a better showing among young voters. Fifty-seven percent of poll respondents age 17 to 29 said they supported Obama. Clinton handily beat Obama among voters 65 years or older. (link.)

People in that age group typically don’t vote in huge numbers. And wow, I just realized that, by the time November rolls around, I won’t be in that demographic anymore. Anyway.

Still, a somewhat encouraging night. People thought a Clinton victory in Iowa would pretty much seal it for her, and that didn’t happen. I would have liked to have seen something different on the Republican side. For example, anyone but Huckabee. But at least it could have been worse.