30.3.07
Oh, Alberto...
Well, I think Gonzales is finally on his way out. It seems the White House is frantically scrambling all its talking points into a "support pyramid," which will then crumble, just like it did for Donald Rumsfeld. Oh, Rummy, those were the days. Your hand gestures, your deep philisophical discussions.
Interestingly, I heard this morning on NPR that Gonzales's chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, had only tried one criminal case in his whole career. Just who we need to determine what federal prosecutors should be booted for not doing their job (i.e. prosecuting Republican hacks).
I am really getting tired of having incompetent people in my government. I think they should have to take a test...I mean, I had to take one to get into law school, college, and to become a lawyer. Why shouldn't you have to take one to prove you can run the country?
28.3.07
What the world is coming to....
I'm currently reading "The End of Poverty" by the renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs. It's a great book, explaining how, through very reasonable means, we can end extreme poverty in the world in our lifetime. (Extreme poverty being the kind of poverty where people are unable to survive on their means - hunger, lack of drinking water, death by diseases such as AIDS and malaria, lack of access to medical facilities, electricity, roads, good farming, etc.)
Now, I'm not here to preach on a pedestal like I'm some saint, I know most certainly that I am not, and I am just as much of a consumer American as a lot of other people. That said, however, I am appalled at this new craze with the book "The Secret" which Oprah so wrongly put on her reading list. I credit Oprah with getting a massive amount of Americans to read Steinbeck, and Garcia Marquez. So I am disappointed to find this book on the list, which is being read by every other person on my morning train.
The crux, it seems, is the notion of the "law of attraction." Meaning, think about the thing you want really hard, and it will then be attracted to you. In some ways this applies to a love interest, or other non-tangible items, but mostly it appears the examples are material goods - a BMW, a toy, etc. Great, just what we need, more people focusing more attention on themselves and thinking more about what they don't have and want and feel they need, instead of thinking about what they already have - like clean drinking water, electricity, and wonderful mass transit. The juxtaposition is amazing. The people I see reading this book do not appear to be lacking in the material goods department. They are business men and women on their way to at a minimum decent paying jobs downtown. I don't understand, in a world where there are so many needless deaths because of the failures of rich countries like ours, how people worry more about that new blackberry than worry about the death of another human being from something so curable, like hunger. If people read "The End of Poverty" at the same rate they are consuming this other crap, maybe we really could end extreme poverty by 2025. I could only hope.
Now, I'm not here to preach on a pedestal like I'm some saint, I know most certainly that I am not, and I am just as much of a consumer American as a lot of other people. That said, however, I am appalled at this new craze with the book "The Secret" which Oprah so wrongly put on her reading list. I credit Oprah with getting a massive amount of Americans to read Steinbeck, and Garcia Marquez. So I am disappointed to find this book on the list, which is being read by every other person on my morning train.
The crux, it seems, is the notion of the "law of attraction." Meaning, think about the thing you want really hard, and it will then be attracted to you. In some ways this applies to a love interest, or other non-tangible items, but mostly it appears the examples are material goods - a BMW, a toy, etc. Great, just what we need, more people focusing more attention on themselves and thinking more about what they don't have and want and feel they need, instead of thinking about what they already have - like clean drinking water, electricity, and wonderful mass transit. The juxtaposition is amazing. The people I see reading this book do not appear to be lacking in the material goods department. They are business men and women on their way to at a minimum decent paying jobs downtown. I don't understand, in a world where there are so many needless deaths because of the failures of rich countries like ours, how people worry more about that new blackberry than worry about the death of another human being from something so curable, like hunger. If people read "The End of Poverty" at the same rate they are consuming this other crap, maybe we really could end extreme poverty by 2025. I could only hope.
27.3.07
Long time
So I was on the elevator on Friday with an older gentleman and here is our conversation:
Him: Still raining out there.
Me: Yup, just in time for the weekend, too.
Him: Well, at least we're still above ground.
WTF? What the HELL does that MEAN? I've been trying all weekend to figure it out and the only thing I can figure is that he meant at least we're not dead. But I'm still not sure.
On a happy note, my boss just got married to a woman who he's known for 58 years. They were neighbors. His wife died 12 years ago and her husband recently passed. Combined they now have 13 kids and 38 grandkids. Nice to know it is still possible to find love so late in life.
This past weekend I started training again, after coming off hernia surgery. I went to yoga on Saturday (Bikrim, which I LOVE) and ran 3 1/2 miles along the lake on Sunday. I started riding my bike on Monday to work, but got a flat and had to ride back home on it and then take the train. I'm taking it in to the bike shop this weekend for a tuneup, which I should have done anyway. But I am proud that I put on a back fender all by myself and without a bike tool even (thank god for IKEA and their allen wrenches...) I couldn't do the front fender or the rear rack, however, because of complications with my bike (the front fender needs a hole in my frame near the wheel that is there on one side, but not the other, and the rear rack needs to reach two holes in the frame that are unreachable through or around the back brakes). I'm not that skilled. But hopefully I'll be riding to work starting sometime next week, and hopefully it warms up again for that...
Him: Still raining out there.
Me: Yup, just in time for the weekend, too.
Him: Well, at least we're still above ground.
WTF? What the HELL does that MEAN? I've been trying all weekend to figure it out and the only thing I can figure is that he meant at least we're not dead. But I'm still not sure.
On a happy note, my boss just got married to a woman who he's known for 58 years. They were neighbors. His wife died 12 years ago and her husband recently passed. Combined they now have 13 kids and 38 grandkids. Nice to know it is still possible to find love so late in life.
This past weekend I started training again, after coming off hernia surgery. I went to yoga on Saturday (Bikrim, which I LOVE) and ran 3 1/2 miles along the lake on Sunday. I started riding my bike on Monday to work, but got a flat and had to ride back home on it and then take the train. I'm taking it in to the bike shop this weekend for a tuneup, which I should have done anyway. But I am proud that I put on a back fender all by myself and without a bike tool even (thank god for IKEA and their allen wrenches...) I couldn't do the front fender or the rear rack, however, because of complications with my bike (the front fender needs a hole in my frame near the wheel that is there on one side, but not the other, and the rear rack needs to reach two holes in the frame that are unreachable through or around the back brakes). I'm not that skilled. But hopefully I'll be riding to work starting sometime next week, and hopefully it warms up again for that...
3.3.07
New knitting
I ALMOST forgot to photograph these (after my failure to photograph ANY of the knitting I did for Christmas, which included 6 hats, 2 scarves, a headband and a set of mittens). So here they are, my beauties. I knit these two hats for my alma matter law school's Public Interest Law Charity Auction. The proceeds from the auction go to fund students who dedicate their summers volunteering for public interest organizations, rather than sell their souls for $26,000 a summer to a big firm.
These hats were knit with Manos del Urugay yarn. The pattern on the left is a modification of a fair ilse pattern from the winter issue of Knitty.com, and the pattern on the right is my own design.
These hats were knit with Manos del Urugay yarn. The pattern on the left is a modification of a fair ilse pattern from the winter issue of Knitty.com, and the pattern on the right is my own design.
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