Sunday, February 12, 2006

The Trust Gap The Trust Gap - New York Times We can't think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers — and just trust him. We also can't think of a president who has deserved that trust less. This has been a central flaw of Mr. Bush's presidency for a long time. But last week produced a flood of evidence that vividly drove home the point. (Via onegoodmove.) 10:29:56 PM    comment []

The Trust Gap The Trust Gap - New York Times We can't think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers — and just trust him. We also can't think of a president who has deserved that trust less. This has been a central flaw of Mr. Bush's presidency for a long time. But last week produced a flood of evidence that vividly drove home the point. (Via onegoodmove.) 9:10:33 PM    comment []

Atheists Join Cartoon Protests (Via onegoodmove.) 9:10:21 PM    comment []

WITHDRAW FROM IRAQ? WHY ON EARTH WOULD WE WANT TO... WITHDRAW FROM IRAQ? WHY ON EARTH WOULD WE WANT TO DO THAT? The profits for the top six military contractors were awesome last year! (Source: New York Times.) (Via No More Mister Nice Blog.) And whose money is it? It's yours and mine. Or rather, since it's all deficit spending, it's our kids and grandkids money. It's a big income distribution scheme: income from the future to the military-industrial complex of today. 9:09:50 PM    comment []

Gung Hay Overweight Choy Late yesterday afternoon, we went to the city to do two fun things, and ended up doing three. First was a stop at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art on the street no one has ever heard of. My son's been working there off and on, setting up the new displays. It's a small but entertaining museum, well worth a look. Then it was to the Metreon, where we saw Roving Mars, a documenatary about Spirit and Opportunity on Mars. It was a good documentary, with lots of real footage of Mars and some terrific animations. I wanted more, especially the travelog stuff. The really big screen is great for that. When we came out of that, it was really a great evening to be out in San Francisco. It was very warm, and there were -- literally -- thousands of people on the street. For, unwittingly, we had come the night of the Chinese New Year parade. We made our way down Market a bit, and found a good place where we got to see almost all the parade. There was a mass of people, but it kind of thinned out where we were. I've been in the Bay Area over 25 years, and don't think I've seen this parade more than once. It was really a lot of fun, very colorful. I imagine over in Chinatown it was really exciting. We were by the Palace Hotel, so it was early on the route. But what a fun evening -- this is the oldest and largest Chinese New Year parade in the US, and being out there in the evening with so many excited people really made me appreciate where we are. 7:53:11 PM    comment []

Cool animated gif of Titan (small-partial) [more p ... Cool animated gif of Titan (small-partial)[more pix] (Via robot wisdom weblog.) 7:38:02 PM    comment []

Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted): Happy Birthday to Charles Darwin Today is the anniversary of Charles Darwin's 197th birthday. Besides the fact that Darwin was a gentleman naturalist, he was also a prodigious writer and was quite popular in his day due to his travel books. But it was not until he was 50 when his most influential book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, was published. This was a seminal work that formally describes the theory of evolution and was followed by several more books by Darwin that further developed his ideas of how evolution occurred. (Via ScienceBlogs : Combined Feed.) 7:24:57 PM    comment []

Cheney shoots man with shotgun If we can't trust Cheney with a shotgun, how can we trust him with a country? The answer, of course, is that we can't. We now know he's as accurate with a shotgun as he is in every word he speaks. These Dylan lines are stuckin my head, as they so often are: "Have you heard the news?" he said, with a grin, "The Vice-President's gone mad!" "Where?" "Downtown." "When?" "Last night." "Hmm, say, that's too bad!" "Well, there's nothin' we can do about it," said the neighbor, "It's just somethin' we're gonna have to forget." "Yes, I guess so," said Ma, Then she asked me if the clothes was still wet. 6:55:14 PM    comment []

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