Well, I was hankering to do some programming, so here is how I spent a bit of my post-work time today. A long time ago a picture was posted on CollegeHumor.com of a field of sunflowers. However, when you highlighted the picture in Internet Explorer a young nude Asian woman was revealed. It was a neat trick so I wanted to figure out how to do it myself. Below this text is one of my creations. If you have Internet Explorer, highlight the image or just press Control-A to select all the text on the page. Fun, right?!

It's pretty amazing really:

• Karl Rove, (Republican) President Bush's right-hand-man, might possibly be implicated in the Valerie Plame national security leak. We will find out more in October when the grand jury expires.
• Bill Frist, (Republican) Senate Majority Leader, is being investigated for having sold stock illegally.
• And as of today, Tom Delay, (Republican) House Majority Leader, has been indicted in a probe of a potentially illegal campaign finance scheme.

I really hope the Democrats come to power soon so I can tell if only Republicans are terribly corrupt or if anyone in a leadership position becomes corrupt. The Democrats certainly had their share of scandals when they ruled the House.

With all this crazy news, I'll probably soon hear that the Pope is gay. Oh wait. Or that Bush is drinking again.

I started my mission of taking a picture with all the state signs last September when Lauren and I, for a fun evening of car riding, drove to near the Potomac River and I got a picture of the Virginia state sign. My current collection can be found here.

What has been mildly frustrating in the last year is that I have traveled to states where I had no opportunity to get a picture with a sign. While in Oregon I got a picture with the Washington state sign but then on the trip back to Oregon the sign was just a small marker on the top of an interstate bridge. In Hawaii on that same trip I saw no sign. (This led me to believe, as would make sense, that Hawaii has no sign, but apparently they do, though if that's an airport sign I'm not sure that it counts.) When I visited Josh in Missouri and we went on a road trip to see a concert, I got a picture with the Kansas sign, but we never saw an Oklahoma sign. Likewise, we cut through Kansas City on the way to his apartment in Columbia and we saw no sign at the border, which often seems to be the case in urban environments. During my August trip I was thirty miles from the border where I could have gotten both the Montana and Idaho signs, but I wasn't about to walk thirty miles just for two pictures.

There is no hurry as I make my way towards my goal, so the above, while missed opportunities, weren't so annoying. What did bug me was that, for so long, I didn't have pictures of the signs that are within an hour's drive from my residence. It took me about eight months before I photographed myself with the Maryland and Washington, DC signs, which were about ten miles from my parents' house. The other big one was West Virginia, particularly so as I have been in the state several times since last September. Finally, last Monday, on the way back from Ohio, I completed the mission of getting pictures with the local state signs. That brings my total to twelve states and Washington, DC. I still have quite a ways to go, but at least now I can rest happily because I have pictures with all the state signs in a, say, two hundred mile radius of me.

Unfortunately last week I crossed a pedestrian bridge connecting Ohio to Kentucky, but the awesome Kentucky state sign (with a horse on it) that I saw on the interstate was missing, leaving me empty-handed (save for the Cold Stone Creamery ice cream that I got) after my trip to that state. I suppose happiness always come with some disappointment.

Hilarious, from the Onion:

Congress Abandons WikiConstitution
September 28, 2005 | Issue 41•39

WASHINGTON, DC—Congress scrapped the open-source, open-edit, online version of the Constitution Monday, only two months after it went live. "The idea seemed to dovetail perfectly with our tradition of democratic participation," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said. "But when so-called 'contributors' began loading it down with profanity, pornography, ASCII art, and mandatory-assault-rifle-ownership amendments, we thought it might be best to cancel the project." Congress intends to restore the Constitution to its pre-Wiki format as soon as an unadulterated copy of the document can be found.

U.S. News & World Report: Did you ever say, as has been widely circulated on the Internet, "640K [of RAM] ought to be enough for anybody?"

Bill Gates: "No! That makes me so mad I can't believe it! Do you realize the pain the industry went through while the IBM PC was limited to 640K? The machine was going to be 512K at one point, and we kept pushing it up. I never said that statement—I said the opposite of that."

I attributed this quote to Gates for years so I'm sad to see it not true. Alas, I thought it would be the perfect introduction to this entry.

The federal government's fiscal year ends on September 30. Spendout is an annual activity during which each office attempts to spend all their funds before the fiscal year is over. This leads to a lot of "fraud and abuse," in my opinion, but many large businesses are structured this same way. Managers seek to use, to the point of wasting, their funds lest the office be seen as having been allocated too much money in the first place (which would reflect poorly on the office when upper management decides subsequent allocations).

In my office we get some fun computer toys around spendout time. Last week I was given a one gigabyte flash drive to replace the 128 megabyte one I used this last year. It's pretty absurd that so much memory can be stored in such a small physical space. The first computer I used had no hard drive. My family's 1993 PC had 170 megabytes of storage space, which was more than enough at the time. It's absolutely amazing that, twelve years later I can store six times as much data in the space of my ring finger.

My prediction for the future: All data will be stored in portable drives; hard drives will not exist and software programs will be stored centrally on a remote system. (Actually, it would be great if personal data could be stored centrally, but privacy concerns would never allow for this.) So if I purchased Photoshop I could use it on any computer that I logged into. This would instantly eliminate piracy and would ensure that my software was always fully updated. This plan would require a huge central network of servers to serve as storage space, but I certainly would be willing to pay, say, $1 per gigabyte of central storage. Not having to personally worry about backing up data would be worth the cost and centralization alone.

I finished reading Philip Wylie's "Generation of Vipers" today. I was spurred to read it by an Instapundit post that mentioned the book. I like to learn about how "things really were" decades ago, as the gloss of time unfortunately surrounds everything. There certainly were some who found the currently-called "Greatest Generation" lacking in moral, intellectual, and even physical aptitude. The descriptions of 1942 America are sometimes too similar to America in 2005. Slavishness to the churches, inadequate information about sex, businessmen with too much power, inept politicians, etc. And with all the advances that are bound to take place in the next sixty years, I'm sure that in 2065 the human race will still be grappling with the same issues that detract from universal competence and rationality now.

Wylie was of the opinion that, in 1942, half of the "illnesses" that ailed people were psychological. Wylie didn't fear expressing his views bluntly, one of the reasons the book was an unexpected commercial success and a minor delight to read sixty years later:

Your neuralgia comes from the fact that you married a finale hopper, or flapper, who, through the years, has turned into a fountain of carbolic acid. What with wincing, shuddering, dodging, fending, grimacing, arguing, hollering, and generally turning your viscera into vinegar, your blood into lemon juice, your dung into slime, your hair into nothing, and your skin into the sort of dank leather that covers an old baboon's behind, you have got neuralgia. Your neuralgia persists and increases because there is a law against strangling this bitch. It gets to be jumping neuralgia when she finds out that you have hired a secretary with a face that is not a flour-and-water paste topography.

I'd like to think that the following isn't as much of a problem as it used to be, but, hmmm, when was the last time Utah elected a non-Mormon senator or Massachusetts a non-Catholic?

Our Protestant churches, and, even more especially, the Catholic Church, devote an incredible portion of their political energy—perhaps most of it—to interference with the sex mores of the great non-Protestant and non-Catholic majority. Such religious enterprises are therefore essentially fascistic and in no way democratic. But it is a fact that no law which runs counter to the exact letter of the medieval Catholic dogma can be passed in any of our states, and if a sensible law infringes on the archaic attitudes of Protestantism, it cannot be offered in a state legislature.

Thank you, Warren Court, for bringing some sanity to America and circumventing this:

The church has stood, a rock colossus of bigotry, in the path of ten thousand proposed reforms. Sane efforts to legalize birth control, the dissemination of birth control information, the manufacture of proper birth control appliances, appliances for the inhibition of the spread of venereal disease, public instruction in sex hygiene, free clinics for the treatment of venereal disease, the inspection and treatment of prostitutes, controlled prostitution itself, the publication of psychological and physical sex information, aid for unwed mothers—myriad attempts by sane men acting sanely on real problems—have been fought down by church-frightened legislatures and church-dominated courts.

And finally, Wylie's description of my hometown. A decade later, he added a footnote to the twentieth printing stating, "This portrait of our capital does seem a shade roguish, in retrospect. The reader will reflect that I had just left off working for the government and living in Washington." Even with that disclaimer, it's a grim scene Wylie describes:

Washington itself, indeed, might be abolished where it is, and transferred to a new place. Sensible men everywhere in this land might well hope—and earnestly pray—that an enemy bomber flight would reduce it to sudden rubble and compel the move. The mere necessity of a physical regeneration of the government plant would so illuminate the present multiboggles and sophisma of our central government that changes for the better might be expected on a new site. The people who have been crying that government should be given back to them would thereby have one more chance to take back the government, for the powers of government are always seized—either by the people for their own purposes or by tyrants, whether malevolent or delightful.

The loss of the physical city of Washington would be a benefit not only to government, but to aesthetics, because it is unquestionably the ugliest city of any pretensions that a human civilization has yet raised up to scar and blemish the countenance of the planet. Here is a city without a plan that has reference to modern life, a city filled with every classical incubus of architecture, with a hundred brown boxes of buildings that grow like fungus in the midst of its proudest and most highly marbleized environs, a city without proportion or color or quality, a city from which lurch dingy thoroughfares strewn with staggering edifices that present every sullen, rococo, snarling, sick, noxious, and absurd form of vainglorious house and apartment architecture designed in the long decades of Victorian false front and the subsequent age of atrabilious brick to assuage the cheap passions of the middle class and the Middle West.

Washington is in this, also, the stone symbol of rapacity converted to smugness, of tawdry imitation which is a condemnation of America as unoriginal and servile, as well as a revelation of the ghastly turn of our subconscious minds. This orgiastic claptrap has no honest meaning or no open purpose, and it is not livable. It is, rather, a smothering of the soul or a gallows boast, perfervid and florid—an unwitting confession of peewee excesses, of niggling lavishnesses, and of misapprehensions of the phony for the real and the swinish for the good. To abide in it composedly is to be either a lama beyond reach of all earthly things or perilously mistaken in the acceptance of slack composure as inviting, when it is hell's latchstring.

All the topographical and physical dreadfulness of America is lumped here, with only the relief of a few façades, a dome or two, and the sterile square obelisk dedicated to the founder. It is a forever dug-up city on a dirty river, unrelated in position to other cities, detached from trade and science, and ridden with the most dank and melancholy climate on the continent. As cities must, it expresses the approach to life of most of those who stay in it, and sensitive men who get there are consumed with a will to find excuses for getting away. Only the center of this sepulcher is whited; the necrosis of the rest shows forth shamelessly all the yellows, greens, browns, putrid reds, and indecipherable purples which are the colors of decay. Without refinement, dignity, or a sense of itself either as an entity or a necessary expression of other than America's worst, it is a painted boneyard.

Viperous!

I just opened a pack of Q-Tips, 500 count. As with vitamins and some other products, I think it's neat to think about where I'll be when I exhaust the product. If I use one Q-Tip a day, which would be an overcount of the frequency of my ear-cleaning, 500 will be gone in February 2007. I'll make a prediction: Democrats will have performed well in the 2006 elections but will still be out of power in the House and Senate; the Republicans will have raised taxes due to hurricane and war spending; I will be in graduate school; and, I will have one more state to visit before completing the 50.

On Saturday I went downtown to attend part of the Operation: Ceasefire concert, held near the Washington Monument in conjunction with the day's antiwar protests that drew at least 150,000 people. I'm not sure whether I would go to a pro-war concert even if I liked the performers, but I had no dilemma for this show as I agree with the antiwar sentiment, though not with some of the elements present at the show. Fortunately, I was leaving as some woman launched an anti-Israel tirade, and I'm still not sure why there were signs claiming that the US is occupying Haiti. That's quite a stretch.

Lauren and I arrived just as the Evens started their set. Ian Mackaye, formerly of Fugazi, fronts the band. The set was fine, as I knew most of the songs, but they would be much better in a small venue. Well, most bands are better in small clubs, but the Evens' music doesn't even remotely work in an amphitheatre-type setting. Ted Leo came on next and I enjoyed his performance, though I was sad that he didn't play a couple of my favorite songs. After Ted Leo's set Lauren and I walked around (as the anti-Israel rant began). Most of the information booths were vacated, but it was fun to see all the antiwar and anti-Bush signs and t-shirts. Examples follow; the sign on the right is especially brilliant:

     

Sadly, many of Bush's supporters think the "pull out" method is a viable form of birth control.

Lauren and I went to the JW Marriott Hotel Pennsylvania Avenue and got drinks at the hotel's nice lounge, 1331. We returned to the Mall to hear much of Thievery Corporation's fun set. Antiwar sentiment and free music. What could be better? The attendees having showered, that's what. It was pretty rough at times, though the crazies doing gymnastics and forming weird group pyramids in front of us I guess made up for the slight stench.

Today I had to go to work for a couple hours to wrap up some issues involving the major panel that we hosted this week. The bus driver accidentally turned on Columbia Pike, an error that added about five minutes to the already-late bus ride. I arrived at my Ballston office as workers set up for Blocktober Fest. I always find it sort of eerie to walk around carnival booths when no one is around. I had a similar feeling last month while walking around the empty Minnesota State Fair grounds. I left work shortly after the event began. From the top floor of my building I could hear and see a band playing for about fifteen people. I guess being in a band is a hobby to many people, but I think that I would be depressed to the point of breaking up if I were ever to perform in front of a nonexistent crowd. Watching briefly from the top floor reminded me of an image I have of Europeans popping open their windows and watching from their homes plays and concerts taking place in the town square. One town Pearl Jam played several years ago was like this. While waiting for the bus I noticed that the people going to the $20 event were mostly young, white, and probably middle-class. The demographics might have been similar, but I'm sure had I ridden the Metro I would have been able to differentiate the Blocktober Fest attendees from the anti-war marchers going downtown.

I loved riding the 1B bus for two reasons. One, because the route was new to me; and two, because it was a brand new vehicle, so the smell was overwhelming, the ride comfortable, and, like a little child, I enjoyed touching the plush unspoiled seat fabric, the lustrous seats, and the hard plastic walls. I rode a new University of Maryland bus recently and that one and this Metro bus were designed in a similar manner, with a minimal number of seats parallel to the motion of the bus. The typical Metro bus has about ten or fifteen seats in the front that face each other. When I started heavily riding the bus this year I kept sitting in that section, enjoying the ample legroom. But soon I tired of being thrown left, right, forward, and back whenever the bus made a hard turn or was stopped on a steep incline (as always happened at the intersection of Carlin Springs Road and Leesburg Pike). I guess my complaint is a universal one so I'll generalize and assume that all new buses have only enough of those seats to accommodate travelers in wheelchairs (the seats are folded up to create space for the wheelchair). Good work, Metro!

I had to transfer from the 1B to a 28 bus to get close to my destination. I waited for a while but eventually gave up on the bus and walked the mile and a half. While waiting I shared the bus stop near the Seven Corners Shopping Center with a Latina. I was trying to read and kept getting startled by cars passing and honking. At first I didn't make the connection but then realized that they were honking at her. I have mixed feelings about the practice. I understand the idea that it is a degrading male practice, but I also realize that I can't expect everyone to act in ways familiar to me as a WASP. In sexual harassment training a couple years ago at the University of Maryland, I remember one woman said that she enjoyed receiving catcalls but the vast majority of the participants abhorred the practice and felt uncomfortable when on the receiving end of sexually charged howls. I think with time and education many immigrant Hispanic Americans will abandon the practice, though of course there are plenty of white and black men who still engage in the practice. (Maybe the Catholic Church should go after howlers, not gay priests.) Do you remember the Coke commercial with the women essentially doing the same thing to a male construction worker? It wasn't clear whether the commercial was totally ironic or if the creators thought that reversing the involved genders made the practice all right.

Walking on Leesburg Pike to my destination was highly treacherous. For such a heavily used thoroughfare with apartment complexes on both sides of the road, it is unacceptable that there was no sidewalk for many stretches, particularly because many residents in the immigrant area do not have easy access to cars. Getting to a bus stop or crossing a street to get to the median and then to the other side is really a life or death gamble. Fortunately I saw two smiley Mormons biking along the road so I knew that I'd be all right.

It was fun to walk through the heavily Latino neighborhood on the way to the library. Many kids and adults were out walking and playing. I picture that this is how early 20^th suburbia was until the car and the television completely altered things and now middle-class WASPy American adults only go outside to walk their animals and only allow the kids out when it's fully sunny and bright. Ah, the irony of longing for "the good old days," which never really existed.

After picking up books (the sixth Harry Potter and a history of the KKK) I set off to my apartment. Again on Leesburg Pike I was witness to the after effects of a car crash and emergency vehicles blocking traffic. A homeless man accosted me and then spewed off incoherent ramblings when I refused to give him money. Fortunately, my bus came right away, though of course it was about half an hour off its schedule. At the apartment I heated up frozen spinach, grated some cheese on top, and covered toast with my concoction. What a fine day, only to get better when I head to the anti-war concert in a couple hours. And this now completes a snapshot of any given Saturday.

Yay! This is the 100^th post on this blog. I am a huge fan of special numbers, of which humans pointlessly give special importance. I'm very sad that I wasn't alive for the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence, though it was at a low-point in our nation's history. I was living overseas for the bicentennial of the Constitution and at ten-years-old I don't remember much of the quincentennial celebrations of Columbus' voyage to the New World. Fortunately, recently I have been able to enjoy the fuss over the bicentennial of Lewis and Clark's adventure and I am looking forward to Virginia's quadricentennial celebration of the Jamestown settlement, the first English settlement in America. For a while the state license plates (and the state quarter) have been hyping Jamestown 2007, which begins in May 2006, and I believe that it will showcase this great state to the entire nation. Maryland and other states like to brag that they have everything from oceans to mountains. Virginia has the same, plus possibly the most interesting history of any state. There is so much to do: visit the homes of presidents (more of whom came from Virginia than any other state); visit the prototypical Edge City, Tysons Corner; hike the beautiful Appalachian Mountains or travel Skyline Drive; awe at the military might on display in the Hampton Roads area; visit the capital of the Confederacy; see the wild horses of Chincoteague; marvel at the world's largest office building, the Pentagon; and partake of the state's most infamous crop, tobacco; etc. The merit of the last two items is debatable, but otherwise this is such a brilliant state.

It's unclear why everyone picks on hippies, though I have a distaste for anyone who willingly doesn't wash themselves on a regular basis. (Hmmmm, maybe that is an unfair stereotype, for I know plenty of non-hippies who don't shower but have the means to. They're gross people.) But I enjoyed this from a Daily Kos diary entitled "Do's and Dont's for Anti-War Rally This Saturday":

Don't have a hippy drum circle:

There are few things more annoying and irrelevant than a bunch of dreadlocked Boulderites banging on drums while dancing around with erect nipples under their hemp shirts.

Of course, given that it is Daily Kos, many people took offense to the statement and a great debate ensued. But I have to agree with the advice. It is indeed a good thing to have a diversity of opinion, dress, etc. at a rally, but I believe that everything at the rally should be focused solely on the issue at hand. I plan to go to the anti-war concert tonight and while I'll enjoy hearing anti-war speeches, if people start going off on anti-Israel or anti-globalization rants I'll be highly annoyed. There is a time and place for these other protests, but protesters are more easily marginalized when issues before more broad. Read right-wing blogs and it's all "these protesters are out of the mainstream because, look!, that one over there has a 'Free Mumia' or 'Bushitler' sign." It's highly annoying.

Dear Friend,

We're sending you this message as a registered member of SmoothieKing.com. We're glad you're a part of our Smoothie King extended family.

As you might know, New Orleans is Smoothie King's birthplace and corporate home. We've seen firsthand the devastation Hurricane Katrina brought with her.

At Smoothie King locations you can make a donation to the Salvation Army and other relief organizations. And you can donate to the Salvation Army online via www.SmoothieKing.com.

Please give. Any amount will help bring food, water and clothing and begin returning these communities to full health.

Thank you for being good to others.

I received this email several weeks ago. Weirdly, Smoothie King is the only thing that ties me to New Orleans. I never recall meeting anyone from Louisiana and I know virtually nothing about the place, including knowledge of any corporate headquarters in the area. New Orleans meant Mardi Gras, the French Quarter, and Girls Gone Wild videos. And given Hurricane Rita, as of today New Orleans means more flooding. Such a disastrous situation. So my thoughts are with the evacuees, the returnees, the businesspeople, the unemployed, and certainly with Smoothie King. Hopefully someday I can enjoy a 20-ounce Angel Food smoothie in your rebuilt city.

Blogger John Cole pointed me in the direction of a neat political ideology test. According to the test I am a social (78% permissive) and economic (38% permissive) liberal. I am best described as a Democrat and I "exhibit a very well-developed sense of Right and Wrong and believe in economic fairness."

In my dream world I would be sufficiently capitalistic to be in the Libertarian category, but modern reality makes libertarian tendencies too self-serving. Alas.

Man, when I started working at the National Science Foundation in April 2004 the privately owned vehicle reimbursement rate was 37.5 cents per mile. So if you drove one hundred miles on official work business, you would be reimbursed $37.50. The figure seemed outlandish to me, but apparently it controls for vehicle maintenance and other costs, as well as the price of gasoline. Earlier this year the rate was increased to 40.5 cents per mile. And now this email at work:

The General Services Administration has announced an increase of 8 cents per mile in the reimbursement rate for official POV mileage, beginning September 1, 2005. The rate is increased from 40.5 cents per mile to 48.5 cents per mile and is retroactive to September 1.

A chart of historic rates is on this GSA site. It's pretty amazing, really. Starting January 1, 2004, the rate, incorrectly assuming that there are daily increases, increased at 0.019% a day for the next 400 days. Over the following 209 days, until the September 1, 2005 massive increase, the rate increased at 0.086% a day. Sure, Hurricane Katrina had a lot to do with this increase, but yikes, I hope that the price of using a car doesn't further increase in such a dramatic fashion. People always asked, "Why don't you have a car?" The answer seems more and more obvious. If my calculations are correct, at the first rate $1.00 would be worth $0.93 next year. At the second rate, $1.00 would be worth $0.73 in a year. I would rather invest my money someplace other than in a car while I can help it.

I'm really enjoying three songs at the moment. I give credit to Kathy for introducing me, on our Midwest trip last week, to two older songs, Ted Leo's "Timorous Me" (the hand claps are key) and Outkast's "Gasoline Dreams." Yesterday Andy played for me Kayne West's "Diamonds From Sierra Leone" remix featuring Jay-Z. Top quality certainly. I like the political lyrics near the beginning:

Good Morning, this ain't Vietnam still
People lose hands, legs, arms for real
Little was known of Sierra Leone
And how it connect to the diamonds we own
When I speak of Diamonds in this song
I ain't talkin bout the ones that be glown
I'm talkin bout Rocafella, my home, my chain
These ain't conflict diamonds, is they Jacob? don't lie to me mayne
See, a part of me sayin' keep shinin',
How? when I know of the blood diamonds
Though it's thousands of miles away
Sierra Leone connect to what we go through today
Over here, its a drug trade, we die from drugs
Over there, they die from what we buy from drugs
The diamonds, the chains, the bracelets, the charmses
I thought my Jesus Piece was so harmless
'til I seen a picture of a shorty armless
And here's the conflict
It's in a black person's soul to rock that gold
Spend ya whole life tryna get that ice
On a polar rugby it look so nice
How could somethin' so wrong make me feel so right, right?
'fore I beat myself up like Ike
You could still throw ya Rocafella diamond tonight, 'cause
Diamonds are forever...

I stole that text from one of those crazy popup-heavy lyrics websites, but they seem pretty accurate. Heavy stuff for sure, though the phrase "Jesus Piece" makes me laugh.

Here's something that's not heavy and meaningful. I'm sad that I just spent a couple minutes of my life watching "sizemore2.mp4." If you find out why Tom Sizemore is in the news you'll be disappointed by the fact that I was watching the video. If you watch it you'll be terribly embarrassed by Sizemore's immature performance. Uh, as a clue to what I'm talking about, know that Kathy also introduced me to Lil' Jon's "Get Low." Mmmmm skeet. Apparently.

Obviously I added the bolded italics for emphasis:

September 20, 2005

SUBJECT: Best Places to Work in the Federal Government

We are proud to announce that NSF has once again been ranked the second best place to work in the Federal Government by the Partnership for Public Service and the American University’s Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation. The rankings are based on the results of the 2004 Federal Human Capital Survey conducted by the Office of Personnel Management.

The rankings were announced on September 14, and, on behalf of NSF, Dr. Mary Clutter accepted our award at a formal ceremony honoring the 10 top-ranked agencies. Dr. Clutter led an NSF delegation at the award ceremony that included Richard Buckius, Joe Burt, Lloyd Douglas, Rosemary Haggett, Angie Harris, Greg Martin, and Gail Williams. A plaque commemorating our ranking is now displayed in the reception area in room 1205. Please stop by to see it. More information about the Best Places to Work is available at www.bestplacestowork.org.

The sponsors of the award describe the NSF staff and the staffs of the other top-ranked agencies as, “the future of the federal civil service: highly-engaged and highly-skilled workers performing critical tasks with a professionalism and efficiency that rivals their private sector counterparts.” We couldn’t agree more. It is your dedication and effort that sustain and develop our organization on a daily basis and make NSF a great place to work. We hope you are also proud of NSF’s tremendous contribution to our nation and the world, because it is only possible through your great work.

Arden L. Bement, Jr.
Director

Kathie L. Olsen
Deputy Director

A colleague made the great point that number two is actually a nice place to be in that you don't have to deal with the pressure of being number one, the honor bestowed upon the Office of Management and Budget. The pressure is that there really is only one direction that the number one agency can move: down. (In fact, NASA, the previous number one, dropped to number six.) So I guess I'll settle with being number two. Certainly my feelings towards NSF are very strong and I think this rating is wholly deserved.

This is a picture of me at work today. I lightened it a bit in Photoshop and it now looks like I'm wearing shiny pants. Somewhat unfortunately, that isn't the case. Anyway, at work the past couple days we have hosted a group of top scientists who are evaluating one of our funding programs. I normally don't wear a tie to work but figured that the occasion merited dressing up. So my appearance is all and well, save for my hand. Nothing says "young professional" like a club stamp visible the day after a concert.

My roommate and I went to the Black Cat last night for the second-to-last Q And Not U show. The show tonight, also for a hometown audience, was something I really wanted to see but tickets sold out too soon. Oh well. The back-story to getting to the concert last night is slightly interesting. On Wednesday I was at work until 11:30 pm. I arrived at work yesterday at 7:00 am, worked until about 6:00 pm, went to my Northern Virginia Community College class at 7:30 pm to take a test (which I barely had time to study for and thus probably failed), and then skipped out of the latter part of class and went to the concert. It goes without saying that I was a bit exhausted at the show.

I really enjoyed the opener, Supersystem, partly because I hadn't been to a club show in a while and the club's atmospheric sound was great but also because the band was awesomely funky. I'm sad that I never checked out El Guapo, the ancestor of Supersystem, despite my best intentions to go to their Fort Reno free show.

The Black Cat was technically sold out but my roommate wasn't able to unload his extra ticket. The club also didn't seem as packed as it sometimes does. I think the Thursday night, and cheap concert ticket ($10), meant that many attendees felt that they could miss the show. I think tonight will be different. Needless to say, the absent concertgoers missed a quality show. I have previously recounted the story of my discovery of the band and my first show two years ago. I am somewhat amazed that yesterday marked by ninth show.

A fond memory of my first show is of the band, or Chris and Harris at least, marching from the back of the club to the front, through the crowd, playing wind instruments. I have fond memories of all the shows, but the August 2004 show at First Trinity Lutheran Church certainly stands out as the most unique. Andy and I played the hilarious Mid-Life Crisis board game while sitting through bands that we didn't fall in love with, such as Food For Animals, before the mighty Q And Not U came on and performed a great set, throwing in the future awesome song "Wet Work" during the (as I recall) jamming that has made "A Line In The Sand" legendary. The "venue," a church basement, was so different from my normal concert venues.

The last show was good. The band played some earlier numbers that weren't part of the recent setlist rotation. I was happy to hear many of my favorites: "District Night Prayer," "End The Washington Monument (Blinks) Goodnight," "Wet Work," "So Many Animal Calls," "Soft Pyramids," and others that I can no longer recall. Chris drew attention to tomorrow's antiwar march on the Mall and the concert that is part of the event, which I plan to attend. He then said that it appeared Mother Nature was punishing the red states for voting in Bush by sending hurricanes to Louisiana and now Texas (plus Mississippi and Alabama). I felt bad for Chris because as soon as he said the words he realized the callousness of his statement and apologized profusely for the next several minutes. Way to ruin your second-to-last show! Heh. But anyway, the Washington crowd couldn't care less about (not truly intended) Bush bashing, but we did soak up the praise for the city that Chris heaped on us, essentially calling DC the fourth member of the band (of course, at one point the band actually had four members).

The band closed, not surprisingly, but to my great satisfaction, with "A Line In The Sand." During the great jam, some friends came from backstage and danced on stage by the band, soon joined by people hopping onstage from the crowd. In good nearly-final-show fashion, the stage was soon packed and I could no longer see the band. In a way the mob was quite awkward. People allowed onstage are often beauties who enjoy dancing (provocatively) for the crowd. The hipsters and whoever else at last night's show didn't quite know what to do while under the heat of the stage lights. Some faced the crowd, others faced away from it looking at who knows what, and others looked sideways at the empty DJ booth. But the end of the show was fitting, as the DC crowd swallowed up the band and reduced the mighty members of the Washington music scene to just three people in a crowd. Three people who have accomplished so much.

I'll miss you, Q And Not U. Have a great final show tonight.

ChipotleFan.com is such a great idea, particularly the Chipotle Nutrition Calculator. I was very busy today and needed to buy some splurge food to take my mind off work (mmmm comfort foods). At Chipotle I alway purchase the same thing, a steak fajita topped with the tomato mixture, hot salsa, cheese, and sour cream. According to this site I need about 2500 calories a day, but that burrito surely filled me up and rendered me uninterested in dinner. The fat content of the burrito pretty much takes care of my recommended daily intake, and the sodium exceeds it by a huge margin. But, so tasty, how can one resist?

Lewis and Clark: The Journey has been removed from your Queue. We no longer have enough copies of the DVD to satisfy customer demand. Unfortunately, we are unable to purchase more of this movie and will no longer offer it for rental.

We realize this is disappointing and want to reassure you that we remove movies from our web site only in unusual circumstances.

We apologize for the inconvenience and hope you find many other movies to enjoy at Netflix.

This is terribly sad, of course, because for so long I have waited anxiously as it appeared as "Very Long Wait" on my queue. I do love Netflix and am highly appreciative of their business model, but unless this documentary DVD really is no longer for sale, I see no reason why they can't purchase any copies for their huge national customer base.

The real flaw is that there is no major motion picture about the Lewis and Clark adventure. I bet a film could have done quite well now while many states are celebrating the bicentennial of the journey. Every high school history class would also purchase the film. It would have been a surefire hit for there is action, "savagery," disease, love, hardships, intense emotional and physical coping, etc. And to please the cultural conservatives, the director could have eliminated scenes of the many times when soldiers cavorted with Native American women. As I recall, the tribal men wanted their wives to have sex with the white men for they thought some of the white man's power would then be transferred to themselves the next time they had sex with their wives. Maybe I'll have the resources to put up the money for a film for the 250^th anniversary of the trip, though by then with pollution and the degradation of our environment, the whole film will have to be shot in front of a blue screen and the scenery computer generated.

Would any of you like to pitch in for a $20 toaster oven from Hechts for the 12th floor kitchen? OLPA folks are pitching in.

Am I wealthier than the average American or do I just not understand something? Why would someone send out an email soliciting $20? The way this work colleague phrased the email, it sounds like the toaster oven in whole costs $20. I would understand if she wanted OIA—my office's—share to be $20, but when OLPA has a staff of 37 and $20 divided by 37 is $0.54, I don't see the need to trouble with mass email solicitations involving a office that the email sender is not part of. If it were me I would pay for the whole toaster oven myself, which would give me satisfaction whenever I saw someone using it. Though in practice I wouldn't buy one, for I've only used a toaster one once in my life. It happened to be this February at a friend's apartment in Missouri. I'll pointlessly assume that toaster ovens are a Midwestern thing.

A Hecht's search tells me that they have toaster ovens for around $20, so really: Is fifty-four cents a person too much to ask of your own office that you have to beg of mine?

Aha, I knew it all along. Pointless “let’s talk about our relationship” nonsense is detrimental to a couple’s health, or at least that’s how I’d like to read into this passage from Barry Schwartz’s “The Paradox of Choice”:

In a final example, college couples were recruited to participate in a study of the effects of romantic relationships on the college experience. After an initial session in the laboratory, participants filled out a questionnaire about their relationship each week, for four weeks. In the laboratory session, half of the people were asked to fill up a page analyzing the reasons why their relationship with their dating partner was the way it was. The other half filled up a page explaining why they had chosen their major. As you can probably guess, writing about their relationship changed people’s attitudes towards it. For some, attitudes became more positive; for others, they became more negative. But they changed. Again, the likely explanation is that what is most easily put into words in not necessarily what is most important. But once aspects of a relationship are put into words, their importance to the verbalizer takes on added significance.

A more optimistic view of this last result is that the process of analyzing a relationship actually produces insight, so that we better understand the true nature of our relationship. But the evidence suggests otherwise. When students who had been asked to analyze their relationships were compared to students not asked to do so, the researchers found that unanalyzed attitudes about the relationship were a better predictor of whether the relationship would still be intact months later than analyzed attitudes. Those who were asked to supply reasons and expressed positive feelings about their relationship were not necessarily still in the relationship six months later. As in the poster study, being asked to give reasons can make unimportant considerations salient temporarily and produce a less, not a more, accurate assessment of how people really feel.

Schwartz is referring to T.D. Wilson and D. Kraft, “Why Do I Love Thee? Effects of Repeated Introspections About a Dating Relationship on Attitudes Toward the Relationship,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 1993, 19, 409-418.

I keep a ridiculous number of statistics about various aspects of my life these days. This chart is sort of interesting:

One line charts some investments that I made back in February. The other line tracks my weight starting on the same day. (Both lines are continuous but I recorded data points discretely.) The scale for both lines is different. Each y-axis line signifies both ten pounds and about $560. You can guess which line is which, though I'll give you a hint by saying that I'm happy about the direction of each.

September 11 sort of crept up on me this year. I want to draw attention to a piece that I wrote last year about my experience on that day in 2001. Today I went to the National Cathedral to attend the "Consultation of Religious Leaders on Global Poverty." It was an enjoyable event and I was amazed at the number of clergy from across the world that showed up for the service of music and prayer. During the day I heard from, amongst others, three famous Americans:

• Jeffrey Sachs: "An American economist known for his work as an economic advisor to governments in Latin America, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Asia, and Africa. He is also known for his work with international agencies on problems of poverty reduction, debt cancellation, and disease control—especially HIV/AIDS, for the developing world."
• Madeleine Albright: "Was the first female Secretary of State [under Bill Clinton], which in turn made her the highest ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government."
• Frank Griswold: "Is the Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America." He has been in the news quite a bit in the past years due to the confirmation of Gene Robinson, an openly gay bishop, to the Episcopal Church.

Some might consider these C-list celebrities, but I feel that anyone living in the Washington area must get quite excited when Madeleine Albright walks five feet from them!

By now Kanye West's "George Bush doesn't care about black people" comment has become quite infamous. I watched about ten minutes of that Katrina benefit show last week and, fortunately, I saw that part. I had to log into Daily Kos soon after to verify that my ears had heard the man correctly. Hilarious.

I certainly doubt that George Bush doesn't care about black people. He doesn't care about poor people as he should (remember that his favorite philosopher is Jesus), but Kanye's comment is the kind of hyperbole that's necessary to stir our complacent nation into a dialogue about race and class. Needless to say, sometimes I hate white people, by which I mean the rich. Why is it that, as I drove to the library today, I was held up in a traffic jam on Old Dominion Drive in McLean? Oh yes, because people were waiting to get their cars washed by underpaid Latinos (who might have had to take two buses to get to the job). The parking lot couldn't accommodate the people waiting in their expensive cars for a clean wash so the cars spilled out into the street, blocking the road. The non-rich middle-class types were down the road at the Old Firehouse getting their cars washed by young girls in tight outfits (crotchety much?) raising money for one of their high school sports teams. How about raising money for the hurricane victims rather than for color guard flags or whatever you were doing?

Yesterday at the Jack Johnson show in Columbia, Maryland it was just as bad. Before the concert I was in an American Eagle store, full of only white people, of course, and I felt so awkward. Then at the show I was surrounded by a mass of people that can only be described as young, white, and stupidly drunk. A couple to my left was ignoring the music and nearly having sex at the show. The guy was slowly pulling the girl's shirt up until the dirty stares of everyone around them stopped the high schoolers from stripping. But of course their hands remained on each other, all over each other, for the remainder of the show. And then there was the dumb white girl peeing twenty feet from me and the idiot whites who thought that trampling all over our blanket and belongings would somehow be acceptable and cool. Yes I know, none of this had to due with these people being white, but poverty also isn't a condition destined for blacks.

My work environment is very diverse and I'm a minority on the bus to work and in the neighborhood around my apartment, so it's weird to go to places where a heterogeneous population could exist but doesn't. I wouldn't go to go Salt Lake City expecting to find a diverse population, but why did I only see about five non-whites during my whole evening yesterday? It's pitiful.

One would think that these truths would be self-evident. Apparently not:

Dear Residents:

Recently we have noticed that trash bags are being placed on the floor of the trash room instead of being thrown down the wall trash chute. Please put your trash down the trash chute located on the wall. Throwing your bagged trash on the floor smells bad and attracts bugs and rodents.

Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.

Management

I was annoyed the other day. Someone was throwing out a huge collection of books, some of which looked quite interesting (a multi-volume collection on American history). Of course the person had to put the books outside the trash room on the filthy floor. Suddenly the knowledge in the books became worthless, as one won't find me touching anything that's come within twenty feet of that room.

Here's one more reason that I love the Internet: I can connect to servers in hospitals or whore houses or dungy prisons but in all cases the content comes to my computer clean and clear.

My roommate always tries to force songs upon me, telling me how great the lyrics are. Unfortunately, bad music with good lyrics doesn't equal a good song, while great music with shoddy lyrics does equal a good song. So lyrics are incidental and songwriters should focus on the backing music and melody. (Think of all the classic songs that have sweet melodies, and you'll be singing along at a show and then realize that you're singing junk lyrics. Doesn't matter, it's still a great song.) So yesterday he tried to get me to listen to a song, and I was fortunate enough to provide the punch line for the comic he drew for today:

It's not visible on the resized version I put here but the girl is reading Cosmopolitan. I'll point out that I was reading the fifth Harry Potter book and, indeed, if I loved good lyrics I'd be reading "Leaves of Grass" or something. Another funny comic on his site by his friend Laura Beth Brandt:

I saved this Washington Post article many weeks ago for comment but only now got around to it. About blogs:

The supply of raw material for these creations is virtually infinite. The Internet contains billions -- trillions? -- of discrete tiles of information, from which a diligent network of bloggers can create any mosaic they choose. Somewhere, there's sure to be a quotation from Goebbels or Goering to cast a dark tinge over the latest from Bush. And you can count on the left blogosphere to find it. Just as surely, there will be an equally apposite quote from Lincoln or Churchill with which the right bloggers can respond.

So true. The article also refers to the great number of people who start blogs and eventually give up (or simply create a new one under a new name) their pursuit of literary expression:

The [Wall Street] Journal found that only about one in 10 of [the blogs listed on Technorati] has been updated in the past 30 days. People run out of energy, or run out of things to say, or run out of time in which to say them.

I sympathize with the scholars of the future who choose to use primary sources for their research. They will have such an absolutely overwhelming amount of material to plow through that, while their research might be quite robust, it'll take them years and years to read every viewpoint of every issue spun every possible way. I think given that option we'll see a resurgence of research on ancient—and limited— texts.

Following up on my last post, I looked up my zip code in the Virginia Sex Offender Registry. It's interesting that, of the five buildings that make up Southern Towers, all of the sexual offenders are in my building. Granted, that number is only two, but still. One guy lives three floors below me. He's in for forcible sodomy committed in New Jersey. (Forcible sodomy seems to be a frequent offense amongst these men.) The other guy lives down the hall and he's in for a case of aggravated sexual battery committed last year. I'm all for rehabilitation, but I'll be wary of these guys. Actually who am I kidding? Both my roommate and I are wary of everybody that lives in the building. We pound the "Door Close" button as soon as we get in the elevator, hoping to have a solitary ride. What actually bothers me more than riding the elevator with convicted sexual offenders is riding with posses of obnoxious children on their way to school, all loud and joking and obnoxious. Bah!

UPDATE [4:40 pm Saturday, September 10, 2005]: Walking around my apartment complex I realized that part of the place is in the 5000 block of Seminary Road, so these numbers aren’t quite accurate and they lowball the number of sexual offenders in the area.

Ooh neat! The Alexandria Police Department makes it really easy to search for crime reports. I queried crime reports reported for my apartment's block. Since January 15, when I moved in, there have been 46 incidents, as follows:

• (4) Assault Offenses
• (1) Bad Checks
• (6) Burglary/Breaking & Entering
• (4) Destruction/Damage/Vandalism of Property
• (3) Drunkenness
• (2) Embezzlement
• (1) Fraud Offenses
• (6) Larceny/Theft Offenses
• (4) Motor Vehicle Theft
• (1) Robbery
• (2) Trespass of Real Property
• (12) All Other Offenses

Meh, course be worse, I suppose, though I bet there is a lot of underreporting, especially in such a heavily immigrant area as this. What's bad is that only 28% percent of the cases ended in arrest; the rest are either open or pending. Oh well, I'm only here for four more months.

UPDATE [4:39 pm Saturday, September 10, 2005]: Walking around my apartment complex I realized that part of the place is in the 5000 block of Seminary Road, so these numbers aren’t quite accurate and they lowball the number of crimes in the area.

I hope that this guy isn't serious:

The US authorities were also castigated by British bus driver Ged Scott, from Wallasey, Merseyside, who was on holiday in the New Orleans area.

He told the Liverpool Daily Post: "I couldn't describe how bad the authorities were. Just little things like taking photographs of us, as we are standing on the roof waving for help, for their own little snapshot albums.

"At one point, there were a load of girls on the roof of the hotel saying 'Can you help us?' and the policemen said 'Show us what you've got' and made signs for them to lift their T-shirts. When the girls refused, they said 'Fine' and motored off down the road in their boat."

The Mardi Gras spirit lives on, apparently.

I was going to write an entry about my horrible experience with the metro during the past two days, but I think I'll save that for when I wake up. Anyway, Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist died Saturday. It will be interesting to see what happens regarding the Court, as the John Roberts hearings were to begin this Tuesday. Given Bush's history, I suppose that we can expect the incompetent FEMA director Michael Brown to get the nod for Chief Justice. After all, as Bush said, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

Though I found this informative on the insanely far-right blog Little Green Footballs, it's still interesting. Describing the 1900 hurricane that devastated Galveston, Texas:

Looters found despoiling the dead were summarily executed by the militia - stood against the nearest wall or pile of debris and shot without the hindrance of a trial. The same brutal justice was delivered to amateur photographers. "Word received from Galveston today indicates that Kodak fiends are being shot down like thieves. Two, it is stated, were killed yesterday while taking pictures of nude female bodies."

- Dallas News, September 14, 1900.

The Little Green Footballs types are giggling with glee about the idea of shooting, without a trial, the New Orleans looters. You need food, water, and diapers? Sorry, you're about to be shot. Not cool, these right-wingers. But I liked this newspaper excerpt as it proves that society was just as "morally corrupt" a century ago. The "homosexual agenda" didn't induce these two photographers' necrophilia. Neither did Roe v. Wade; pornography on demand; immigrants; the coarsening of mass communication; etc. And people using cell phone cameras to take upskirt shots or shots of people changing or showering in locker rooms is not an indication that Bill Clinton turned our nation into a moral cesspool. This stuff has been going on forever. Human nature, my friends, is a beautiful thing!

In May I wrote:

I wish the poor were recognizably poor, particularly in urban areas, so that the other classes couldn't say, "out of sight, out of mind," or, "we won the War on Poverty," despite the fact that they are interacting with the poor every day.

After Hurricane Katrina, no one can ignore the poor any longer. September 11 apparently "changed everything," and I likewise believe that Katrina will change everything, though her effects will be solely on domestic politics and policies. The media seems to have woken up to the fact that we shouldn't be spending hundreds of millions for bridges to nowhere in Alaska when our densely populated urban areas aren't safe, from both manmade and natural terrorism.

I recently finished reading William Julius Wilson's "The Truly Disadvantaged." The book was written in the 1980s, but the literature review chapter wasn't outdated and was fascinating. I had no idea that President Kennedy was planning to use poverty as an issue in the 1964 election. As an election issue! What a contrast to now, when the poor are neglected and sometimes criticized as being poor due to their laziness and dependencies.

President Johnson continued Kennedy's plans with the War on Poverty. Of course, in the 1960s the economy was booming and economists were warning of trouble if the government continued to accumulate budget surpluses, so spending money on social science ideas, which were all the rage at the time, was a logical move. Also, Kennedy might have spotlighted Appalachian poverty rather than black poverty as a more winning political strategy. But still, it's amazing that with progress we've forgotten about the underclasses, and I think that Katrina might change that. I hope that it does.

I'm proud of the title of this post, so I must draw attention to it. If you're unclear what it refers to, know that in twenty years I'm sure that there will be universal health care in the United States. All trends point to it. (And yes, I know that Hillary Clinton spells her name with two Ls.) Anyway, despite the issues I've had with Hilary Duff recently (primarily her dating the Good Charlotte fool but also now her either dieting to the extreme or maybe just shedding a lot of "childhood fat," which I guess she can't be faulted for), this is great, from the Associated Press:

LOS ANGELES - Hilary Duff has pledged to donate $250,000 to help Hurricane Katrina victims on the Gulf Coast.

The 17-year-old singer-actress will give $200,000 to the American Red Cross and $50,000 to USA Harvest, which is supplying food to shelters, according to a statement released Thursday by publicist Cece Yorke. The latter donation will amount to more than 300,000 cans of food being provided to victims.

"It's heartbreaking to see the devastation on TV. People are missing family members, and they have absolutely nothing left, not even food and water," she said in the statement. Duff encouraged fans to bring canned food donations to her concerts and to give money to charities.

I donated before she urged me to, but it's still great to see her leading the call for giving from the younger generation of celebrities. If anyone is curious, I gave to the Mennonite Disaster Service, which my dad highly recommended.

Yesterday I picked up the fifth Harry Potter novel from the library and there were two pieces of "memorabilia" left in the book. Tucked in the plastic protective wrapping (that you only see on library books) was the hold slip for a previous person who had the book: Ruth Ellen Attebury. It has her phone number as well as when she picked up the book from the library. I should call her and inquire about the quality of the book. I've heard mixed reviews, though a majority seem to agree that the book is one of the weakest in the series (along with the second). I'm only reading it to prepare me for the sixth one, though I'm higher than 500 on the library hold queue for that book.

The other item left in the book is a bookmark. "Guides to Progress From the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous (Third Edition, 1976)." Curious. My theory for why an AA member might be reading the novel is that it weighs about the same as two full pints of beer (some alcoholics double-fist, after all). Plus, as far as I know, there are no references to alcohol in it, so it's a pretty clean book. However, it's unclear why a potentially twenty-nine-year-old bookmark would be tucked in its pages. More reason for me to call Ruth Ellen?

On the back of the bookmark is a listing of "Slogans, Mottoes, And Precepts" and the page numbers of the AA book on which they can be found. I might have to check out the AA book, as I'm really interested in a few of the slogans: "Cunning, Baffling, Powerful"; "Fourth Dimension of Existence"; "The Great Fact"; and "Trudge The Road Of Happy Destiny."

Actually, I don't have to check out the Big Book as I just found the it online (hosted by recovery-man.com). This is the context for the final slogan, which appears as the final text of the book:

Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit your faults to Him and to your fellows. Clear away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you find and join us. We shall be with you in the Fellowship of the Spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the Road of Happy Destiny.

May God bless you and keep you—until then.

Well, Ruth Ellen, you accomplished more than you imagined by leaving that bookmark in "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." Not only did I write up this pointless post, but I also acquainted myself with a well-known saying. I only wish that the AA book strove for more optimism and got rid of that word "trudge." We should skip down the Road of Happy Destiny!

Two interesting graphic items from the July/August 2005 issue of Foreign Policy:

This data doesn't surprise me, and if other countries produced as many films as do Hollywood and Bollywood, then I'm sure that their domestic box office share would increase, as we see now see happening in China. I was thinking though, is a country more cultured if it watches more foreign films? On the one hand it's an appealing thought—the country is open to diversity—but maybe it just means that the country's domestic movie industry is shoddy and unable to appeal to the interests of the population.

This graphic is much more fascinating. It shows the number of minutes the average worker in various countries must work to afford a movie ticket in their country. I'm absolutely appalled by the countries on the right side of the graphic. Bulgarians should not have to work a minute for every minute of the movie that they watch. What I wonder is whether films are expensive in these countries because there aren't many domestic films (though I doubt that importing films is prohibitively expensive), or due to the lack of competition among cinemas? I suppose a more informative, though less interesting, figure would be, say, the ratio of a movie ticket to a gallon of milk. That would incorporate a minimal cost of living figure into the equation. After all, maybe everything in Bulgaria is expensive and people cope by mostly relying on subsistence farming and making their own clothing. Somehow I doubt that though, so why the huge price/wage difference?

During my recent trip I visited North Dakota State University. It appeared that classes were soon to start, for when I went to the Memorial Union many students were purchasing books and other supplies. When I packed for the trip I stuffed a backpack full of all kinds of belongings, but its too-small size meant that I couldn't pack a sweatshirt that I needed. When people told me about the temperatures that I would face at Glacier National Park, it became an urgent priority to purchase one, and I was lucky that NDSU had an awesome selection (their mascot is the bison). So I purchased a green hoodie and fell in love with it during my trip, handily using it when I took a picture with the North Dakota state sign. When the trip ended, I had reservations about washing the thing. Of course I had to, but the constant complaint is that sweatshirts are never the "same" once you've washed them. That is, the once amazing comfort level slightly decreases. I received a University of Maryland sweatshirt as a gift from my CAs upon graduation and it took me quite a while—freakishly long for me, Mr. Cleanly—to throw the thing in the wash. And indeed, the pocket pouch where you can store your hands just never was as smooth and comfortable. Fortunately though, I can report that the NDSU sweatshirt held up in the wash. Not only does it still look and feel great, it smells excellent, which brings me to my next story.

A friend is soon leaving for graduate school and we wanted to get together one final time before she departed. The midway point between us happened to be the University of Maryland, where we both went to school. We grabbed dinner and then walked around campus, mostly talking about the future but also reminiscing about our undergraduate experience in response to things we saw (even though a surprising amount of the campus has changed in the two years since I graduated). We walked past Ellicott Hall, where both of us had lived, and I forced her to come inside with me. Walking up on our old floor, the sixth, was interesting. I chatted with a girl who seemed so wowed by the fact that I had lived in the dorm five—so long!—years ago. We couldn't visit our old rooms since the doors of both were closed, but I did the second best thing reminiscent thing: I washed my hands.

Going in the bathroom wasn't a pleasant experience, as the smells wafting from the toilet festered in the un-air-conditioned dorm. But the soap, oh the soap. So wonderful. It's a white Kimberly-Clark industrial soap that has been used since my days there. Washing my hands brought back an amazing number of memories, mostly of moving in. Once I lived in the dorm for a while I got used to the smell, but the first many hand washing upon moving in always provided an aromatic adventure for my nostrils. Memories returned of late August 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003, and late January 2001, 2002, and 2003. So wonderful it was, sort of like how steaks on a barbecue remind me of good eating experiences with my family.

So washing can bring back memories of long ago and it can destroy the (literal) fabric of our future. After watching coverage of the squalid aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I have a new appreciation for water and cleansing, and not only do I wish that the people trapped in New Orleans and elsewhere get a hot meal, dry clothing, and shelter, but that they are able to take a nice hot shower and wash away the terrors of this week.

From the August 25, 2005 issue of Rolling Stone:

What's the ring tone on your cell phone?

Some corny ring that's built into it.

I thought that all true playas had their phones on vibrate.

First of all, if you're depending on a ring tone or a vibration to prove you're a playa, then believe me brotha, you are not a playa — you hustlin' backward.

Funny, even if it comes from an accused pedophile. Eh, innocent until proven guilty, though videographic evidence often allows for preemptive justice.