It’s hard to believe sometimes, after growing up in Hunterdon County, that it’s such a rich place. In fact, it’s probably one of the richer places in the States, and it’s easy to forget that this makes it one of the richest places in the world. Funny, though. If money did buy happiness, it certainly seems that there should be a lot more happy people around.
From Slate’s Today’s PapersThe WP continues it dominance in WMD coverage—in fact, it’s been the only consistent source of probing among the big papers—and has been driving reporting of the Wilson investigation. But today’s (two-column) headline doesn’t exactly sum up the one juicy bit in today’s dispatch: “BUSH AIDES SAY THEY’LL COOPERATE WITH PROBE INTO INTELLIGENCE LEAK.” As it happens, the Bush aides also said they won’t look for the potentially felonious leaker unless investigators push them to. Citing WH aides, the Post says Bush has “no plans to ask his staff members whether they played a role in revealing the name.”
SI has posted its list of 100 Things You Gotta Do Before You Graduate.
At 54, have an artery-clogging sandwich at the Grease Trucks, a group of independently operated trailers on College Avenue in New Brunswick, N.J., home of Rutgers. Many of the delicacies have Fat in the name.
Truthfully, my life this week has been about as quiet as the blog has. Most of my thoughts this week have been consumed by two areas, life in the office and the ongoing frustration of the accident.
I continued playing with the Struts framework in the office as a way of enforcing the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern on our future software development. We also experienced so-so staff meeting where we discussed budgets and the IT organization’s strategy. Concerns around these two topics have led to a noticeable drop in staff morale, and despite attempts from management to communicate on these issues, I would say they’re failing. Their problem, more than anything else, is that by speaking in “buzzword jargon”, the message is lost to interpretation, which only results in further confusion. And so far as I can tell there’s plenty of confusion out there.
I stoppped by the body shop this morning to take a look at the car and get a status update. The good news is that the shop expects to be working on the car by the end of the next week. The bad news is simply how awful it looks. I’ll admit it, I’m spoiled by the many features my car has. I can’t wait to get it back.
A recent commentary in BusinessWeek (Registration Required) provided the most straightfoward summation of why not to vote for Bush in 2004.
The domino effect of removing Saddam has not occurred. Getting rid of him was supposed to clear the way for a new road map for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. It hasn’t. It was supposed to scare North Korea into freezing its program of building nuclear weapons. It hasn’t. It was supposed to curb terrorism in the region. It clearly has had the opposite effect: Before the war, Iraq was not a hotbed of terrorism. Postwar, it is. We created what we said we wanted to prevent.
The bad thing about Monday Night Drinking is Tuesday morning. As usual, I really didn’t feel like getting up. Then again, how many mornings DO I feel like heading off to work? Last night was a good break, as I was able to relax, finish off a magazine (I have a pile of them still to get through), and then head out for a beer and a night of losing at pool.
Yesterday’s less-than-positive news came on the accident report from the police. Specifically, the driver who was responsible for my involvement in the accident last week is, according to the report, uninsured. So now I’m out the $500 deductible and tomorrow I’m renting a car, so I’ll be out an additional $11/day until my car’s fixed. On the flip side, it will be repaired with quality parts since NJM is footing most of the bill and they’ll (hopefully) end up taking the bum to court.
A brief update: I did visit the doctor last Wednesday and was given Vioxx and a muscle relaxant. The damage estimate for the car is in, and it’s $5300. I’ll be picking up the police report either today or tomorrow, so I’ll see what the official version of the story is. And on Wednesday I’m planning to rent a car, and return the “G-Pa-Car-” to my parents.
In avaiation news, I’m dropping Continental’s NonePass FF program to switch to either United (most likely) or US Airways (less likely). Also, if you’ve flown JetBlue prior to September of 2002, your privacy was violated as private passenger data was turned over to a military contractor to validate a passenger screening system (but NOT CAPPS II, we’re assured, just something like it).
Howard Kurtz poked fun at his media counterparts in a Wasthington Post editorial today, shedding light on how the media-as-entertainment hypes events to new heights of fear when, truthfully, they’re really not that bad.
“As the storm of hype continues, bear two other things in mind. First, Isabel is a Category 2 event. Sixty-five worse storms — Categories 3, 4, and 5 — have made landfall in the United States in the past century, according to NOAA . The media is so disaster-hype-prone at the moment — partly because disaster predictions keep the ever-larger demographic of senior citizens glued to the tube — that Isabel will be spoken of as some kind of weather event without precedent. It’s been worse 65 times in the last century.
“Second, you’ll hear that property damage is unprecedented. This will be cited by hype-meisters to justify the notion of Isabel as a phenomenal mega-event, and cited by enviros to back claims the hurricanes are increasing in intensity. But of course property damage will set new records: property is becoming more valuable. Between inflation, the strong market in housing values and a 30-year trend of building upscale housing in coastal areas, with each passing year, what stands in the paths of hurricane is simply worth more. All the National Weather Service record-damage hurricanes (Andrew, $26.5 billion, 1992; Hugo, $7 billion, 1989; Floyd, $4.5 billion, 1999; Fran, $3.2 billion, 1996; Opal, $3 billion, 1995) are recent. This is a result of rising property values, not rising storm intensity.”
Coincidentally, I watched Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine, in which his central theme is the idea that fear is in large part respnsible for our odd view of guns, and that this overwhelming sense of fear is due to the overhyped media. Sesnationalized infotainment such as “Summer of the Shark”, escalators that can kill, and other ridiculous oddities receive outsized coverage. In fact, there was a 20/20 special in the last year or two that essentially makes the same point. Ratings, in short number, trumpet any need to feel responsible by the media to actually put forth measured responses. Except in politics, where lies repeated en masse are sufficient in determining what may be true.
Wow, according to the NY Times, another acknowledgement of misleading by our “Fearless Leader”.
Mr. Cheney, on “Meet the Press” on NBC-TV, was asked about polls that showed that a majority of Americans believed that Mr. Hussein had been involved in the attacks.
“I think it’s not surprising that people make that connection,” said Mr. Cheney, who leads the hawkish wing of the Bush administration. Asked whether the connection existed, Mr. Cheney said, “We don’t know.”
He described Mr. Hussein’s reported connections to Al Qaeda, connections that American intelligence analysts say were not very deep.
Mr. Bush, asked by a reporter today about that statement, said, “No, we’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th,” a far more definitive statement than the vice president’s.