Driving in this morning, I reflected on yesterday’s sighting of the usual group of “9/11 was a Republican plot!” nutcases on University Avenue, and felt inspired.

"Chickenhawk," you say,
to silence your opponents.
Get a job, hippie.

Here’s a nice demonstration of how the Republican Party started winning national elections, and why it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future:

In addition to winning hearts and minds, one must also acquire a clue.

12/7/2005

Oral final exam for Japanese 1. Get fitted for a tux.

12/9/2005

Fly to Las Vegas, to...

12/10/2005

Walk my sister down the aisle for her wedding.

12/11/2005

Turn 39, then fly home for...

12/12/2005

Written final for Japanese 1.

12/13/2005

Buy my first suit.

12/14/2005

Last class for Japanese 1, deliver small gifts to the teacher and her two assistants. While this could be interpreted as oseibo, in truth two of the gifts were an excuse for the third. I'm quite taken with the youngest one.

12/15/2005

Three-hour flight to Minneapolis, three-hour layover, two more hours to Dayton, Ohio, in order to be...

12/17/2005

Best man at my brother's wedding.

12/21/2005

Flying home to sleep it off.

I’m a bit fuzzy on just how many brothers and sisters I’ve acquired in the past week, a lively mix of Canadians and Ukrainians.

PS: my mother did not in fact die from the shock of seeing me dress formally twice in the same century.

I love the Internet. Whenever someone writes about how a certain group of people behave, inevitably commenters will prove his point by example. Either they’re not reading past the first paragraph, or they’re so self-absorbed that they simply can’t recognize themselves in his words.

The third possibility is that they’re just drive-by commenters who don’t even bother to read the words of someone who disagrees with them, and just regurgitate reflexively.

I’m delighted to see Intelligent Design being given the serious attention it deserves:

A course being offered next semester by the university religious studies department is titled "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies."

I’m sorry, but this is bullshit so raw that even a Democratic presidential hopeful wouldn’t touch it:

The parents filed a suit against Blizzard Entertainment on Wednesday, saying their son jumped to his death while reenacting a scene from the game, the report said.

What scene would that be? The one where you deliberately send your character off the edge of a cliff, knowing that he’ll die when he hits the ground? Or did he leave a note saying that he was going to teleport to the top of the Twin Colossals and try out that cool new Parachute Cloak he picked up at the Auction House in Gadgetzan? Or did these loving parents just not pay enough attention to their kid to notice that he was suicidally depressed?

If this cash-grab fails, no doubt they’ll turn up a witness who claims that the kid was shouting “Accio Firebolt!” on the way down, and sue J.K. Rowling next.

Last night, I stopped at the Valley Fair mall in San Jose on the way home. It’s a common Silicon Valley shopping destination. You can find all sorts of high tech toys there, and there are large Apple and Sony stores. They even have a kiosk that sells the Rosetta Stone language software I’m fond of. I had an iPod Shuffle clipped to my shirt, and a shiny new Sony Playstation Portable sticking out of a bag.

In a nearby store, the clerk looked at my Shuffle and asked what it was. She said she’d seen two others recently, and hadn’t asked their owners. I said “iPod Shuffle”. She said “what’s an iPod?”. I explained. She thought it sounded difficult to use, since she’s just getting started on that “Internet” thing. I told her how easy it was to set up, and pointed her to the large Apple store for free demonstrations.

As we finished this discussion, the next customer in line noticed my PSP. Recognizing the logo, he asked if it was “some kind of Playstation”. I explained, and his eyes widened at the concept of a portable Playstation. I pointed him to the large Sony store for free demonstrations.

Then I escaped to the security of my car, before someone asked about my cellphone…

[note that both of these people were under the age of 35]

While in the book store last week, I picked up A History of Japan, by Conrad Totman. I didn’t make it past the preface before the bullshit was too deep to wade through. Quoting:

Today we find ourselves at a point where the level of human exploitation of the ecosystem appears to be throwing the entire global biome into crisis. The Earth is now home to well over six billion people, but in fact this small planet's current biological production is not remotely capable of sustaining those people in the manner to which they are accustomed, much less the manner to which they aspire.

This, he says, is why he decided to write a book about Japanese history. Skimming ahead and checking the reviews, it appears his “ecological” approach to history taints the contents from cover to cover, coloring both which facts he chooses to include, and how he interprets them.

I have rarely felt the urge to return a book to the store based on its content, but a historian who so thoroughly injects his personal politics into the material simply isn’t worth reading.