-
Four changes if I were king of America
I’ve made them non-political, strictly symbolic. They are
- The national anthem shall be changed to America the Beautiful; an accessible song with a solid melody and natural meter; and the Star Spangled Banner will be consigned to history, where it will be of much interest to our eventual tone-deaf robot overlords
- Daylight Savings Time shall be abolished. Trying to fool the sun sets a bad example for children and weakens our moral fiber
- Calvin Coolidge shall be worked into Presidents Day somehow. We’re long overdue for rewarding people who do their job quietly, with no drama
- We shall come up with a simple way to properly fold the US Flag that does not require two people
What would y’all do?
-
Day 4 of my slightly less caffeinated life…
I reach day four of my caffeine cutback week, and I do have to say it’s helped my mood and attention span. Surprisingly I don’t get headaches when I do without it totally, as do most people.
-
Ron Paul gets annoying
Or his supporters do anyway. I got two spams this morning telling me how only Ron Paul can save us from the coming dark age. The fact that he has fans among the 9-11 truth movement is troubling, though I know of no evidence that he sympathizes with that weirdness.
-
Two things to read about PMCs
First, Tyler Cowen in the New York Times, second Letters of Marque on Wikipedia.
-
A good one
From Scott Adams on the dangers and benefits of Crystal Meth.
-
Quotes of the evening
From Napoleon
In war, moral is to the physical as three is to one.
And this old chestnut from the Duke of Wellington
For a great nation there are no small wars.
-
What I’m reading while uploading file…
- Monkey Attack!
- A long profile of David Simon, creator of the Wire, and Homicide, Life on the Streets
- This article and this one got a student newspaper pulled, maybe there’s hope for this new generation.
- Advanced Flash techniques
-
People are strange
From the AJC; it seems that someone has been stalking Garrison Keillor
Garrison Keillor has gotten a restraining order against a Georgia woman he claims has made telephone calls and sent him explicit e-mails and disturbing gifts, including a petrified alligator foot and dead beetles.
…Campbell said Keillor had misunderstood the letters, e-mails, packages and phone calls. She said she was never closer to his house than the sidewalk.
“I believe that he’s paranoid, or some woman, his wife, is upset and told him he has to do something about it,” she said.
Life is stranger than we can imagine. Garrison Keillor?
-
Tuesday morning rapid fire
- Lincoln and the Jews – from the Federation of American Scientists
- The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk – the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe
- Two from Charlie Rose, specifically this interview with Petraus’ main counter insurgency adviser David Kilcullenm and also with Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater.
-
Three interesting things
- There are more World of Warcraft players than there are farmers (from Paul Krugman via MR)
- The reason the average car produces X many tons of CO2 (a figure I always found fishy) is due to the fact that the carbon bonds with oxygen already existing in the air, which never occurred to me until I read this article. The majority of the actual mass (the O2) comes mostly from the existing air.
- John Edwards, still not popular! It says good things about America, and the Democratic party that he’s doing well. I suppose the Republican alternative to him is Tom Tancredo.
- From this BloggingHeads.tv – “John Kerry was a Democrat’s idea of what the Republicans like”. The Republicans seem to be making the same desperate mistake with Giuliani right now.