April 2008 Archives

...but dammit, it's funny.

More than 120 veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq commit suicide every week while the government stalls in granting returning troops the mental health treatment and benefits to which they are entitled, veterans advocates told a federal judge Monday in San Francisco.

Staggering numbers.

Um, why aren't we rioting in the street yet? Oh yeah, we're getting economic stimulus checks.

So Moveon.org is having an "Obama in 30 seconds" competition in which people are supposed to submit videos of their campaign ads. Some are great, some are just plain weird, and some, well...

Tip for future would-be ad-makers: it's one thing to spell out your class year in an aerial group shot, but quite another to spell an easily "confused" name. Oh, and you need to tell your crowd members not to wear white tops, or your "B" will look like an "S".

Does Hillary Clinton really think mocking Obama for pointing out that people have every right to be bitter is a good strategy? Oh yes, I know, the whole point is that he is "elitist" for saying that people might cling to the familiar (if unhealthy) in the face of turmoil and a government that doesn't seem to give a crap...

And John McCain, bless him, sends out a fundraising letter warning that "We cannot let this elitist philosophy make its way into the White House." No, the elitist philosophy that's been living in the White House for the past 7+ years will do just fine, thank you!

Is this election over yet?

First I read this: White House senior officials approved detailed torture techniques, then there was a link in the sidebar to this: Child dies after being beaten with videogame controller by her mother's boyfriend

A friend said in a recent online discussion, "Sadly, what we think of as 'inhuman' is all too human." Exhibits A and B...

She deserves credit for telling this story. She may have not gotten every detail right, but she got the gist of it.

Wireless data network finally closes up shop for good. This piece of news makes me very nostalgic for my graduate school days a decade ago when I got the student rate and leased a black plastic brick with an antenna, which I velcro'd to my Apple Powerbook 500 (I think?) laptop. I could check my email anywhere in the Bay Area, whether in class, in a cafe, or in a car in downtown Santa Cruz (parked, of course.) The data transfer rates were laughable by today's standards -- heck, everything was, though; I was only on Mac OS 8 at best.

So we belong to this club that sends a Jewish-themed children's book to our house every month. It's a not-for-profit effort, funded by a generous grant aimed at keeping the "people of the book" in the fold.

Some of the books are great. The first one we received, Before You Were Born, has the loveliest illustrations. There are Jewish folk tales, board books about the various holidays, and even the odd music CD.

And then there is the odd clunker.

Exhibit A: God Must Really Love... Numbers!

Check out a typical page spread.

Is it my imagination, or does the caterpillar on the left seem to have... a Hitler mustache?

And what's with the "Good job, God!" Does he really need positive affirmation that badly? Is he a two-year-old?

And then there's this spread:

The weird circles on the frogs? Not a disfiguring skin condition, but rather, shiny gold foil... which for some reason, the illustrator/author/publisher, in their God-given wisdom, decided to apply there rather than to... the flashing fireflies, where it would make more sense.

Anyway, there was really nothing particularly Jewish about this book, honestly. (If there were, wouldn't it say instead, "Nu, God, good effort, but next time make the frogs a little more hoppy"?) Looking at the publisher's website, I find it suspiciously evangelical in tone ("Keep growing in faith and joy through Little Simon Inspirations books for your child!")

So, we're not so into this particular book around our household.

However, I have great hopes for this month's offering...

As I've mentioned before, back in my junior year, I spent a semester at Leicester University in the U.K. One of the more "holy ****, I'm not in California anymore" experiences I had was riding the paternoster to my English tutorials.

See for yourself, through the wonder of YouTube...

This was Google's.

Virgle's goal is simple: the establishment of a permanent human settlement on Mars. Larry Page, Sergey Brin and I feel strongly that contemporary technology is sufficiently advanced to make such an effort both successful and economical, and that it's high time that humanity moved beyond Earth and began our great, long journey to explore the stars and establish our first lasting foothold on another world.

Oh wait, there's one more in Gmail that's much funnier.