URLs du Jour

2007-09-04

  • I took a jaunt onto campus this afternoon. In preparation for tomorrow night's debate, Fox News has parked their satellite truck in front of the Dairy Bar, and their banners now embellish the front of the Whittemore Center Arena.

    Not that it matters. Just wanted to use the word "embellish."

    In preparation, I have studied Jennifer Rubin's Ten Things You WON'T Hear at the GOP Debate. Favorite:

    2. I'd rather be on Jay Leno too.

  • I enjoy (for a sufficiently elastic definition of "enjoy") looking at Congressional voting record report cards. Shorn of all political rhetoric, votes are (literally) what count.

    But you might not want to bother with The Top Ten Worst Tax Votes over at the Club for Growth, which ranks your state's Senators and mine. It doesn't show much other than straight party-line (and, I suspect, largely symbolic) votes; only three senators (Maine's Snowe and Collins, Nebraska's Nelson) fell in the broad range between 21% and 88%. One anomalous Republican (Voinovich of Ohio) scored 10%. But unless you live in Ohio, Nebraska, or Maine, it doesn't say much besides: Republicans pretty much vote like Republicans, Democrats like Democrats.

  • John Tierney announces the results of his Talk-to-the-Prime-Designer Contest.

  • I was recently reminded of one of my favorite poems …
    Space is deep
    Space is dark
    It's hard to find
    A place to park
    Burma Shave
    (Via BBSpot.)

  • By the way, if you'd like some humbling perspective on the above link: Voyager 1 is coming up on its 30-year anniversary tomorrow, launched on September 5, 1977. It has been winding its way out of our solar system since then. It's currently (as far as we know) the most distant artificial object from Earth, about 9.6 billion miles away, or 103.77 Astronomical Units. That sounds like a long way, but works out to be merely 0.00164 light years, extremely negligible in comparison to interstellar distances.

    Something to remember when those candidates promise "universal" health care: the universe is a real big place.


Last Modified 2017-12-05 12:19 PM EDT