July 2006

Gobbledygook.

July 30, 2006

On Thursday I went to the doctor’s office for my pre-employment physical, which is always an unnecessarily unnerving experience. I walked in and immediately noticed several large model dinosaur skeletons to my left. And I mean large; they were roughly two-thirds the size of real dinosaur skeletons. The stegosaurus and the triceratops were the most interesting [...]

Read the full article →

Man versus Bear.

July 24, 2006

Today I sat with a few commiserators—I mean, coworkers for eight hours just inside Paxon’s front entrance, handing out schedules and various other forms. No problem, except that it was hot and humid and the doors kept opening and closing, repeatedly sucking any semblance of cool air out of the hall. These afternoon thunderstorms are [...]

Read the full article →

Sleep well this eve.

July 20, 2006

Back in April, “Iranian officials” claimed that if we were to attack Iran’s nuclear weapons program, 40,000 suicide bombers would retaliate against American, British and Israeli interests. Then, on Tuesday, we received this wisdom from Mojataba Bigdeli of Iran’s Hezbollah on Tuesday: We have 2,000 volunteers who have registered since last year… They have been trained and they can become fully [...]

Read the full article →

Causation.

July 18, 2006

A study cited in today’s Chicago Sun-Times suggests that premature death is tied to a dearth of grocery stores. Thank you, Jewel-Osco, Dominick’s and Aldi’s. Sure, I enjoyed the convenience of living less than five minutes drive away from any of these fine groceries, but little did I know that all that time you were shielding me from [...]

Read the full article →

FORZA AZZURRI! Au revoir, Zidane.

July 10, 2006

As I predicted (“…I’m picking… Italy…”), the Azzurri won the whole shebang. I was thrilled to see them win, but truth be told it was an ugly game. It had everything that was bad about soccer: dives, bad calls, make-up calls, taunting, head-butting, exhaustion, and a dreaded penalty shootout—in short, it was the most exciting World [...]

Read the full article →

On SDI.

July 6, 2006

In the wake of North Korea’s ballistic missile tests, Japan has announced that they “want to work with the United States to build an interception mechanism as soon as possible.” Before I left Wheaton, someone called into a radio show and said that we were being too aggressive and undiplomatic towards North Korea, and besides, the North Korean tests [...]

Read the full article →

World Cup Germany 2006, Part… Six? Five? I lost track.

July 4, 2006

While today is the Fourth of July, I will be wearing as much Italy gear as possible in the hopes that they defeat Germany. With Brazil and Argentina out, Germany is probably the favorite to win the whole shebang. Anyhow, for the semifinals: I hope Italy beats Germany, but Italy needs to score some goals. They have nine in five games so far, but they haven’t been against really [...]

Read the full article →

Fourth of July.

July 4, 2006

Happy 230th Birthday to the United States of America! Here’s a patriotic Dinesh D’Souza article, condensed from his 2002 book What’s So Great About America. He says it better than I could (I would have simply written “America rules, every other country sucks”), so why try to reinvent the wheel?

Read the full article →