I find it highly amusing that the Internet crashed in Pakistan this week:

An undersea cable carrying data between Pakistan and the outside world has developed a serious fault, virtually crippling data feeds, including the Internet, telecommunications officials said.

The system crashed late on Monday and was still down on Tuesday evening. Many offices across the country ground to a halt as people realized it was not one of Pakistan's regular, but usually brief, technical hitches.

...

Officials at Pakistan Telecommunication Ltd, which operates the link, said the fault was in an undersea cable and had been caused by a power supply problem.

Fixing it would entail an interruption for other countries using the link, including India, Dubai and Oman, one company official said.

I'm surprised that there isn't more duplicative infrastructure in place such that this would never happen. Maybe it has to do with geographical barriers in Pakistan, or maybe with time the country will add more capacity by installing additional "undersea cables."

Needless to say, I sense a way for American companies to profit off outsourcing. Set up massive call centers / data centers / whatever in the United States, and then engage in technological warfare against Pakistan or India, attacking the infrastructure physically. American companies, unable to afford potentially huge losses (from repeated attacks), will revert to hiring American-based computer firms for their communication needs. While most other companies will have outsourced their hiring, the company based in South Dakota or Idaho or some such place will regain a position of leadership in the field. It's a foolproof plan, despite its illegal tendencies.

My favorite joke from an email that a coworker showed me:

Three engineering students were gathered together discussing the possible designers of the human body.

One said, "It was a mechanical engineer. Just look at all the joints." Another said, "No, it was an electrical engineer. The nervous system has many thousands of electrical communications." The last one said, "Actually, it was a civil engineer. Who else would run a toxic waste pipeline through a recreational area?"

His favorite joke:

Two engineering students were crossing the campus when one said, "Where did you get such a great bike?"

The second engineer replied, "Well, I was walking along yesterday minding my own business when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike. She threw the bike to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, 'Take what you want.'" The first engineer nodded approvingly, "Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn't have fit."

Three ridiculous lists that I recently stumbled upon:

• Discovery Channel's Greatest American: Ronald Reagan is number 1 ... unquestionably a bad call. Martin Luther King, Jr. is number 3 and Billy Graham is number 11. King was apparently quite the adulterer. I wonder if people who voted for Graham forsook their morals and also cast vote for King? It's interesting that George W. Bush is number 6 given his current ratings. As an aside, I'm confused as to how 18% of liberals in Virginia approve of Bush's job as President (SurveyUSA poll). Bush, Cheney, and Rove constantly issue verbal assaults against liberals; what thinking liberal can ignore such malignity? Are there liberals who support tough bankruptcy laws, tort reform, inadequate health care, etc?
• The next two lists are on the same website. The Modern Library has lists of the 100 best novels and the 100 best nonfiction books. Each listing has the top 100 as voted by the board and the top 100 as voted by readers: "We succeeded beyond our wildest imaginings — more than 400,000 avid readers rushed online to cast votes for their favorite books." The books had to have been published after 1900, but that leaves many great options. What kind of readers voted such that Ayn Rand and L. Ron Hubbard books make up seven of the top ten novels and essentially four of the top ten works of nonfiction. Presumably the College Republicans sent a petition to all their members urging them to vote (evidenced by the choice of John Lott's "More Guns, Less Crime" as number 10).

I believe that people are insane.

Tonight's speech could not have been less interesting. Every statement out of the president's mouth has been heard hundreds of times before to anyone who pays any attention to the news. What we needed was information about new initiatives that Bush feels might advance the fight for "freedom" (referenced 21 times) in the country. While I don't agree with much on this blog entry, I do appreciate this: "I hate it when he 'addresses the nation' in front of an audience. That's trashy. You address the nation from the Oval Office; you make political speeches in front of an audience."

Yesterday I went downtown for the annual Barbecue Battle, held on Pennsylvania Avenue between 9th and 14th Streets. The event is sponsored by several organizations, including the National Pork Board. The $10 admission fee bought access to concerts, food samples, and various stands of all sorts. The most unique booth belonged to Crest. I entered on the cap end of the giant toothpaste truck. After a wait I gained access to a sink, a roll of toothpaste, and a toothbrush. Curtains separated me from the other Crest aficionados. After the Famous Dave’s pork barbecue sandwich that I ate for dinner, brushing my teeth was in order, and the Citrus Splash toothpaste did the trick.

People came to Washington from all over to compete in the Barbecue Battle. Seeing a pig disassembled in person certainly was a unique, and mildly disturbing, experience. I don’t know how this team placed, but I do know that they failed when it came to flying a flag correctly (the blue field and stars should be in the top left position).

Jimmie’s Chicken Shack put on a great show. Particularly great was the segue from Fugazi’s “Waiting Room” to their hit “High.” The band, singing a quarter mile from the White House, blasted the president in highly enjoyable song form. I stayed for some of go-go godfather Chuck Brown’s set, but I was really thirsty (from all the pork) and wasn’t willing to spend $2 for a bottle of water, so I soon left the enjoyable outdoor event.

I have loved Smoothie King for over a year. Their smoothies, especially the Angel Food and Peanut Power smoothies, are delicious beyond belief. With strawberries inexpensive at the moment, I have taken to making my own smoothies. The picture above is one I made last week. I was particularly pleased with the colors of the spread: ice on the bottom, then frozen blueberries, yogurt, a banana, strawberries, and a kiwi.

Yesterday I tried a smoothie from the Chinatown Häagen-Dazs store and was amazed at how sweet the thing was, pucker-your-lips sweet. Adding some honey may not be a bad idea, but I believe that staying true to the roots of the fruits is the key to smoothie success.

I don't follow baseball carefully but I find the current MLB standings to be utterly amazing. The "Washington, DC area" teams, the Orioles and the new Nationals, are numbers three and four in the whole league, and they're both sitting on top of their divisions, two games and three games above, respectively (though the Orioles have a slightly better record). How did the region go from disaster to greatness in only one year?

A Washington Post article hits just the right note: "Sooner or later, as we ooh and aah over the Washington Nationals, the question must be asked: Is this town's torrid love affair with the Redskins over?" Such would be blasphemous words had they been spoken a year ago in the midst of Gibbs mania, but wow, times change.

I love Birds Eye Foods, in particular their Pepper Stir-Fry: "sliced green, red & yellow bell peppers & white onions." This makes for a tasty meal that is impossibly easy to cook (place the package's contents and a dab of oil over heat for a couple minutes). I perused Birds Eye's great website for interesting facts:

• According to a (linked-to) Baylor College calculator my BMI is slightly under 25, meaning that I narrowly escape being called overweight. (Admittedly though, I weigh myself on a $5 scale so I'm not really sure what I weigh.) Given that I exercise "rarely," I am told that I need to consume 2,750 "calories per day to maintain your current weight." I think I get about 1,500 calories on many days and then 4,000 calories on other days. I should probably stabilize that.
• According to the government's 2005 dietary guidelines, "a person who needs 3,000 calories should aim for 13 servings" of vegetables and fruits per day. I suppose that I should have about 11 per day at my 2,750 rating. This seems a bit absurd. That would require me to eat two pounds of my favorite Pepper Stir-Fry mix plus one fruit daily. Two pounds of onions and peppers seems less than healthy.
• I never would have guessed that Birds Eye is named after a man, Clarence Birdseye. He sounds great: "Though the practice of freezing food has been traced to 1626, Birds Eye began to take shape in the early 1920s when Clarence Birdseye noticed that the fish he caught while on a trip near the Arctic quickly froze. Later, when thawed, the fish tasted as fresh as if he had just caught them. From that observation history was made. Clarence had discovered the basis for an entirely new type of freezing operation that today allows you and your family to enjoy the freshest, healthiest vegetables available."

I am pleased that I am supporting the company of an American hero (since purchased, of course, by huge food conglomerates) when I open a bag of delicious Birds Eye frozen vegetables. I'm also pleased that the company uses the Pepper Stir-Fry as the banner picture for its Fresh Thoughts on Frozen section:

The reason that I'm traveling from Minneapolis to Seattle on Amtrak this August is because of Bush's decision to zero out federal funding for the train system (apparently about one third of Amtrak's budget). I figure that if this goes through and they cancel routes, the Empire Builder will be one of the first to meet the ax. So needless to say, I was interested in the discussion on a conservative blog about whether or not the government should subsidize rail transit, as do many European governments. The Empire Builder route was discussed frequently as an example of a worthless route. I guess I'll be able to decide that for myself in two months. I like this back-and-forth:

By: rotwang
No this is exactly why we have government to fill in the voids where private industry is unwilling or unable to compete. We have interstate highways that run across those same stretches of North and South Dakota and Montana. Private industry would never build those roads, it just wouldn't make economic sense. Are you arguing that we should only build roads that can turn a profit or is there a higher national purpose that is served by having the government build these money losing roads?

Civil Aviation is another example. Civil Aviation would not exist without the massive direct and indirect subsidies of the federal government (indeed governments all over the world) from the support of the manufacturers to the airlines themselves. After 70 years, commercial aviation it still hasn't managed to survive on its own two feet.

By: Doverspa
Why you are a leftist No offense, but this is why you are a leftist. Since there is not demand for a road or highway across this part of the country, taxpayers should build one anyway. That is pure left-economic theory. The people don't know how to spend their money, so government will do the enlightened thing. Amtrak can respond to the market if we let it.

By: rotwang
Yep, the interstate highway system was dreamed up by that uber-leftist communist Eisenhower. And he demanded that 1 in every 10 miles be straight so the Russians could land their planes more easily when they invaded. He was a sneaky one, he was. He even had the gall to officially title it the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Oh, the perfidy!

Indeed, I plan to dedicate my trip to President Eisenhower, for though I love his interstate system, it really did ruin America's love affair with the railroads. Of course, I have yet to ride a train in the United States, so who knows whether the love affair was ever legitimate.

From an Associated Press article:

For a time his favorite food was Cheetos, and when those ran out, Saddam would "get grumpy," the story says. One day the guards substituted Doritos corn chips, and Saddam forgot about Cheetos. "He'd eat a family size bag of Doritos in 10 minutes," Dawson says.

Several days ago I went out my apartment building's back entrance. Waiting for my departure was a flock of geese that blocked the path to the bus stop. I walked on the path hoping that they would move, but instead two feisty geese charged at me:

I took a cell phone picture of the aggression before hurrying back to the apartment to use another exit, making my way safely to the bus stop. Later that day I saw the excellent film "Batman Begins." Sadly, the geese came to mind. As a kid Bruce Wayne is frightened when he falls down a well and a cloud (yes, that's the collective noun) of bats overwhelms him. Bruce grows to overcome his fear of bats, but recognizing that "criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot," uses the bat image to strike fear in the hearts of spineless villains. As such, it seems inevitable that I'll eventually become Gooseman...

Phallic Logo Awards:

   

I enjoy that the logo on the right was one of the winners of the Phallic Logo Awards contest. I took the picture on the left when I was in Prague last year. Sexual humor might be banal and juvenile, but the breakfast spread that our pension offered along with a delicious smorgasbord of cheeses, meats, and breads couldn't escape my camera lens. The Czech breakfast was utterly delightful, despite a canister that B3TA describes as "great 1920s transvestite oral sex action" with a "cock mark" of 46%. My favorite award just happened to be the winner, the logo for the Brazilian Institute for Oriental Studies:

"My view is that Fox News is a propaganda outlet for the Republican Party and I don't comment on Fox News.''

Yesterday I took the elevator to the ground floor of my apartment complex at about 10:30 pm. People with exciting lives were going to parties and such; sadly, I was doing my laundry and had to refill the laundry card. A late 20s Ethiopian couple had already summoned an elevator and was entering it when I arrived. I quickly made my way into the elevator before the doors closed. So the situation was as follows: the couple was dressed as if they were going to a club; the woman was at one end of the elevator, the man was in the middle, and I was on the other end, mostly blocked from the woman's sight by her companion. The woman, unaware that she was sharing the elevator with me, lifted up her shirt and adjusted her bra, which had to look just-so under her clubbing wear. The companion, in Ethiopian, let the woman know, in no uncertain terms, that I was on the elevator. She quickly pulled her shirt down, clearly embarrassed, but also upset, scolding the man in loud and hash tones for allowing her, for even a second, to nearly strip in front of me.

I'm simply guessing what the two were talking about. After all, they were speaking in Ethiopian, a language foreign to me. But I desperately want to know how he told her that her naked torso was visible to me, and I want to know exactly what she shrieked in response. And so it seems that I have discovered a great way to study languages. Studying French in high school was a process of learning words, verbs, adjectives, simple sentence structures, etc. But there was no driving need to learn the language. If I had to learn French to, say, understand what a couple was arguing about, I would take my instruction very seriously. I would study Ethiopian if it meant that I could understand what took place last night. So the key to language instruction is to take a subject that truly interests humans, relationships and sex, and teach around that. For instance, create software for heterosexual men in which a woman takes off a piece of clothing for every correct answer provided; you can bet that men will study hard for the rewards. This approach may not work indefinitely but it’s a start. Hopefully Google Translate won't butcher this: Oubliez se renseigner sur des articles dans la cuisine et concentrez à la place sur la chambre à coucher.

A couple days ago I'm leaving an Alexandria school as a bunch of middle (possibly high) school students approach. One guy in the group, the one with a huge afro and baggy pants, made my day. Recall the 1980s classic image of a tough in the city carrying a boombox on his shoulder, blasting a tape of Grandmaster Flash or Public Enemy. Fast forward twenty years and here is that guy's son, walking all commandingly with a laptop on his right shoulder, rap music tinnily booming out of the tiny laptop speakers. It was quite a humorous sight. With amazing predictability technology continually changes everything, for the urban man on his way to a basketball game and for the woodsman listening to an iPod while hunting.

A self-congratulatory happy birthday seems necessary—I was born 23 years ago today. While I'm sad that it will be another ten years before I'm again of a palindrome age, I am quite happy that I'm only two shorts years away from being able to complain about my life and blame everything on the new fad, the quarter life crisis.

My image of a mental institution consists of a bunch of white men sitting around white tables, under harsh fluorescent lighting, confined in white straitjackets. Today I learned that (maybe through affirmative action) at least one black man should be invited to that table. The man on the bus, speaking to a captive (i.e., unable to leave) black woman, spoke some interesting "truths":

• George W. Bush, Condoleeza Rice, and the new pope, Bendict XVI, form three heads of the (four headed) Beast mentioned in Revelations.
• Credit cards are also the Beast mentioned in Revelations.
• If black people pooled all their resources they would have more money than all white people combined and thus could rule the world. (Incidentally, Census 2000 indicated that 65.7% of America is non-Latino white, while 12.3% is black. That means, according to this kook, that the average black's worth is more than five times the average white's. Color me skeptical.)
• Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated mostly because he was religious. The elites in the government hate religious people.

"I'm not the smartest person in the world," he said, but yet this was all so evident to him. He also claimed not to be the "dumbest" person in the world, which was debatable. A brave non-black woman approached him and told him that he should talk about God's love, which he countered by saying that Satan also needs to be talked about: "If you spend five minutes worshiping Satan, you're spending five minutes not worshiping God." I can't disagree with that, but then he proceeded to talk about, "God hates this," "God hates that," for the rest of his insane half hour rant.

The bus ride could not have ended soon enough, which of course it didn't due to rainy day traffic on Carlin Springs. Ugh.