[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rAHrHd2lcw[/youtube]
Category: Personal Page 22 of 59
Just off a flight from Salt Lake City, and the two (business partners?) next to me pointed to the (long-existing) cranes that are part of the DC skyline and remarked how quickly “that stimulus money is moving.”
In his first major speech since being confirmed, the nation’s first black attorney general told an overflow crowd celebrating Black History Month at the Justice Department the nation remains “voluntarily socially segregated.”
“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards,” Holder declared.
He is absolutely right, and anyone who says otherwise is almost unbelievably naive or pushing an undeclared agenda.
Returning to regularly scheduled programming soon, though.
One of my favorite pro cyclists – Magnus Backstedt – is retiring.  At 6’4″ and 210lbs, he was proof that you don’t have to be a tiny little stick man to do well in cycling (tho’ it helps). Good luck, Maggy. We’ll miss you.
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End to high times in Dubai?
[F]aced with crippling debts as a result of their high living and Dubai’s fading fortunes, many expatriates are abandoning their cars at the airport and fleeing home rather than risk jail for defaulting on loans.
Police have found more than 3,000 cars outside Dubai’s international airport in recent months. Most of the cars – four-wheel drives, saloons and “a few†Mercedes – had keys left in the ignition.
I’m sure that no one could have imagined it.
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Did you know that the US is getting new pennies next week? I did not.
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Fred Kaplan takes a good look at Federal archiving policy. That might sound a bit dull, but it’s terribly important if we want to be able to ever assess the gap between what our politicians tell us and what the government actually does.
“Electronic records,” the study found, “are generally not disposed of in accordance” with federal regulations. In particular, many e-mails are “being destroyed prematurely,” for several reasons. [ . . . ]
Finally—and this is simply stunning—the National Archives’ technology branch is so antiquated that it cannot process some of the most common software programs. Specifically, the study states, the archives “is still unable to accept Microsoft Word documents and PowerPoint slides.”
This is a huge lapse. Nearly all internal briefings in the Pentagon these days are presented as PowerPoint slides. Officials told me three years ago that if an officer wanted to make a case for a war plan or a weapons program or just about anything, he or she had better make the case in PowerPoint—or forget about getting it approved.
And now, it turns out, all those presentations may be lost to the ether.
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Supposedly, Virginia will have smoking ban legislation soon. I’ll believe it when I see it.
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Trying to figure out what to do for your kid’s 15th birthday? Hire the Abstinence Clown! Can’t be that expensive, since it’s federally subsidized, and truly, the possible entertainment value is almost inconceivable.
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I’ve been looking for a new motorcycle helmet, and I think I might have found it.
Millard Fuller, co-founder and long time hands-on manager of Habitat for Humanity, died today. He was 74.
From its beginning in 1976, headquartered in a tiny gray frame house that doubled as Fuller’s law office, Habitat grew to a worldwide network that has provided shelter to more than 1.5 million people.
Habitat home buyers are required to work on their own houses, investing what the Fullers called “sweat equity.”
Preaching the “theology of the hammer,” Fuller built an army of volunteers that included former U.S. presidents, other world leaders and Hollywood celebrities.
One of Habitat’s highest-profile volunteers, former President Jimmy Carter, called Fuller “one of the most extraordinary people I have ever known.”
[ . . . ]
Jeff Snider, executive vice president of Habitat during the early ’90s, recalled Fuller as a man driven by his commitment to the destitute. Once, Snider said he suggested setting aside some of the money Fuller raised.
“He had one and only one response, which was, ‘The poor, Jeff, need the money now,'” he said. “So we ran the place full tilt, on the edge all the time, and it was stressful — but he was right.”
In another life, I spent a decent amount of time working with community service programs in Americus, Georgia, and I had a couple of chances to meet with Mr. Fuller.   He was one of those people you remember, and I do so fondly.  I was terribly disappointed to read, in the obituary, that he did not always live up to my expectations of him, but that doesn’t change the incredible work that Habitat for Humanity has done in the US.  Habitat is head-and-shoulders above the rest of the field as the best example of the positives that faith-based initiatives can offer.  Mr. Fuller deserves remembrance and thanks for that.
Ooh, this could be messy:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWqvMFGYJKA&eurl[/youtube]
I watched the J. Geils Band do a sound check for Centerfold in Waikiki, 1982. I was a kid, transfixed:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZEe9EuGWQE[/youtube]
Men at Work – Who Can It Be Now?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swQi4CAzmrA[/youtube]
Real Life – Send Me An Angel (as seen in RAD)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyW9864AXVk[/youtube]
(That last one may have been a repeat. And that is entirely okay.)
Ten years to the day, my live blog of the 1999 State of the Union speech by President Clinton, here. Putting aside some truly cringe-worthy language, it’s an interesting read for me. I’d say that some of politics have changed somewhat since then – I’m more skeptical about “free trade”, I’m less skeptical about Social Security. My values have remained pretty much the same, though there’s some development there, too (I now care deeply about universal healthcare).  Looking at the issue list, though, it’s surprising how little has changed, even when so much has.
(As the “archive” column on the right indicates, I’ve been at this for a while. When I started off, it was about 75% (too) personal, and the remainder was about the sort of stuff you’d imagine interested a law student in DC in the late 90s ( Clinton’s impeachment, the death of Jordan’s King Hussein, etc.). Around 2002/3, I joined up with a couple of other people on a site that focused entirely on policy and politics. That lasted for a bit, and then I turned back to writing mostly on my own.  My long term ambition is to restore most of the writing from those years to this site, filtering for the personal.  You know, right after I get my files organized.)
*What Would Rudy Ray Moore Do?