Enoch

On-topic update: Senate Republican leaders have stripped Craig of his authority as the ranking minority member of one full committee and two subcommittees, and several prominent Republicans have publicly called on him to resign.

Sly & the Family Stone -- Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).

<sigh> You guys had to go and provoke him, didn't you? I'd make some comment about how there was no singular view of "the founders" and how they included broad, ambiguous language like "general welfare" in the powers of Congress to give the new government the flexibility to deal with unforeseen circumstances, but that really doesn't have much to do with Republicans cruising for blowjobs in public restrooms. Is this really such an uninteresting topic that it needed to be hijacked by yet another game of "taunt the wacky libertarian"?

Sure, the natural world would recover if the humans all died, but the author fails to account for Skynet and his robot army of destruction. With no humans around, who's going to protect all the trees and daisies from robotic annihilation? Huh? It sure as hell won't be the elephants, I can tell you that! Edit: And, just for fun, The Humans are Dead

Elton John -- Tiny Dancer.

Taking down a hypocrite is always fun, and I'm no fan of the intolerant policies of politicians like Sen. Craig, but does anybody else think that it's kind of odd that the policeman was sitting in a stall in a public john, making eye contact with a guy looking into his stall for 2 whole minutes (well past the point when any normal person would've told him to back the hell off), positively responding to "signals" and then arresting the guy for soliciting sex? Who was soliciting who here? Where's the evidence that Sen. Craig actually intended to have sex right there in that bathroom? Isn't is possible that the next words out of his mouth would've been "I've got a room in the airport hotel-- meet me there in half an hour"? Getting a "guilty" plea out of such limited evidence smacks of coercion. ("Plea to the lesser offense, and we won't go public with the story!") I can understand the cops wanting to prevent the airport men's room from becoming an anonymous-sex mecca, but there are other ways doing so that don't involve such sleazy police behavior and questionable standards of guilt.

Exactly. I did my undergrad at a campus in the middle of a large city in the Eastern U.S. Students were free to purchase parking passes at one of the commercial garages around campus, but those cost a ridiculously high amount of money (like, over $200 per month). And nobody needed one considering that there was a subway stop just a few blocks away. Studying music at a school where it's taken seriously is extraordinarily hard work. I didn't do it-- my school had more of a dilletantte's music department, which suited me perfectly-- but a few friends of mine from high school tried it for a while. They all ended up switching out of fine arts to more traditional degrees.

Way to suck the joy out of life, Hades. Your advice to a new college student is to avoid interaction with his peers and take the bus to campus? Why not just come out and say "try to be that weird guy nobody has met outside of class who runs off mumbling something about a bus schedule every time anyone tries to talk to him"?

I concur with everything Drabek says. I'll add "undecided" is a perfectly fine major for the first couple years. Don't be so sure that you know what you want before you've tried some of the alternatives. Yeah, you'll probably want to graduate with something a little bit practical (unless your career plans involve spending your 30s working as a Starbucks barrista while you finish your dissertation), but that doesn't mean that you can't toy with the idea of studying jazz composition or Yiddish literature.

I don't know about taste, but how would you know who won?

So on Saturday night, my fiancee & I are having her sister over for dinner while her husband is out of town. I get a phone call from my sister, telling me that my brother-in-law needs one more person to participate in his NFL fantasy draft in an hour. (At this point, all you Euros can stop reading.) I see this as a prime opportunity to make some money off of some dumb Eagles fans* (meaning my brother-in-law and most of his friends). So I finished my dinner, got my stuff together, drew the 7th pick (out of 10), and spent the rest of the evening (until 1:30AM) on the phone with my sister, who was relaying my picks in to the crowd of guys at their house. Despite the lack of preparation and never having actually done a fantasy draft before, I had some substantial advantages over them. I was mostly sober, I could look stuff up online, and I had a copy of Pro Football Prospectus 2007, which is far more insightful than the mainstream fantasy guides. Plus, they were idiots-- when my 7th pick came up, Joe Addai was still available. (Most drafts have him going in the 3-5 range.) At that point I knew that I was going to have a good night. Additionally, I'm an NFL fan, and something of a nerd, so it's kind of shocking that I hadn't gotten into fantasy teams earlier. If nothing else, it'll provide something else to talk about at family gatherings. *This is not to imply that all fans of the Philadelphia Eagles are dumb. There are Eagles fans who do not turn into blithering idiots when their team is mentioned. But neither of them were involved in this draft.

Seriously, no other fatalistic protocol droids here? I'm more unique than I thought. And, in that vein, did anybody else notice the spelling error in the "Wicket the Ewok" description? "Harmless as a flee"?? Also, I believe that this link is obligatory in this situation. As evidenced by my particpation in this thread, I don't necessarily agree, but it's still pretty damn funny.

Seems to fit.

Applesauce.

Civ 4: Beyond the Sword. After several months away from Civ, I've been pulled back in. (I love the new random events.) But I'm struggling a bit with some of my old bad habits. I tend more to be a builder than a warmonger, but I will launch an early rush if the opportunity presents itself. Otherwise, I'll tech up and wait until I have a significant technological or strategic advantage to strike. (Rule 1: Only wage wars that you can win quickly and efficiently. Rule 2: Wage every war that you can win quickly and efficiently.) My problem is indeciveness, especially when I end up next an AI who is a complete jerk (Montezuma, Tokugowa, Alexander, et al.), but who is out of the range for an effective early rush. I need to learn to plan my diplomacy better to prevent or mitigate the inevitable late-classical-age stack of units that these guys send after me. (Either by hitting them first, by bribing an ally to do so, or by kissing up to them and directing their ire against a different civ.) The most effective Civ diplomacy is to avoid trying to keep everybody happy and instead cultivate two very close allies (two so that you can avoid the "you stopped trading with/declared war on our best friends" penalty to relations), and let the rest of the world hate you if they want to. I just have to be more decisive early on, pick who I want to ally with, and stick to it. "Pleased" or "cautious" relations are of no help-- you want allies who are "friendly" and enemies who are "furious."

I have never actually seen an episode of the new HBO series Flight of the Concords, but over the past few days, I think I have watched at least 1/3rd of the whole series on the youtubes. Really funny stuff. Here are a few of their songs: 2 from earlier live recordings: . The Humans Are Dead. 2 from the HBO show: . . (my current favorite)

You just need to combine your alcohol with cocaine to offset the depressants. I'm eating some "Navy Bean with Bacon" soup I got from the cafeteria in my building. It's a touch salty for my taste. I paired it with a salad (romaine, baby spinach, carrots, broccoli, green pepper, boiled egg, kidney beans, peas, croutons, and basalmic dressing) and a Pepsi.

Michael Jackson -- Thriller. Remember back when Michael was the unquestioned coolest guy on the planet? (Yes, I know I sound rather old saying that to this crowd.) Damn, that guy could dance. Look at the way he effortlessly moves around his date after they leave the theater as he's singing the beginning of the song, shifting his style of movement with every line of the song. It's captivating. And he and Quincy Jones (as a producer) put together an amazing album in Thriller. Although the "movie magic" in the video hasn't aged well, it's still a fabulous performance by all involved.

I doubt that a lifetime ban is in the cards, but a jail sentence and a suspension would probably amount to the same thing. Best case scenario is probably that he'd be allowed to come back in the 2010 season. At that point, he'd be 30 years old, having played his last down of professional football 3.5 years earlier. Now, 30 isn't very old for most QBs, but his appeal has always been more as a runner than as a passer. It's a veritable certainty that he'll have lost a step or two (particularly while he's in the can-- I don't think they let nutritionists and personal trainers in to oversee his workout & diet). As a pure passer, his last (only) season as a truly effective quarterback was 2002. That'll be a distant, distant memory for any teams considering him in 2010. Chances are that he simply won't be a good enough player for teams to take the PR risk associated with signing him.

Hot black tea. No milk/sugar/lemon/whatever. I'm not eating any at the moment, but my office smells like grilled meat. There's a seldom-used kitchen on my floor of the office building I work in. It only gets used when there's some sort of luncheon event in one of the more formal meeting rooms near the agency head's office. I can only assume the vent above the griddle is somehow tangled with the AC supply to my area of the building. Every couple of weeks, it smells like somebody's cooking up some hamburgers.

I don't see what all this war talk gains us. The more sabre-rattling that goes on, the more solidly the Iranian people line up behind their current government. 10 years ago, the consensus was that democratically elected reformers would slowly undo the theocratic elements of the post-1979 Iranian government. Bush's "axis of evil" speech set that process back years, and further military threats (and invasions of neighboring countries) continue to compound this error.

Oh, I'm hardly any authority on this stuff. I did enough research to build my rig 5 months ago, and haven't been paying too much attention since. (I find the speed at which all my new stuff starts looking less and less new a bit depressing.) The only thing I have to add is that I had an excellent experience with evga tech support. If that's important to you in your shopping, they're a good company to buy from.

Is there a PC demo yet?

In honor of the passing of the legendary Max Roach, I'm listening to Sonny Rollins' "Blue Seven," which features an amazing drum solo by Roach. It's over 2 minutes long, and it's almost disappointing when Sonny comes back in at the end of it.

Tom Waits - In the Neighborhood.