Not so long ago, I would have written about the US election, at length, repeatedly, foaming at the mouth. These days, I just flag a few things that I run across in my Google Shared Items. I feel vindicated in everything I’ve thought about the US, when I lived there in the 80’s and since…
Catégorie : Blowin’ off steam
USSSBBL
I know this blog has quieted down quite a bit since I stopped ranting about the downward spiral of the US. I haven’t been compelled to comment, except through my Google shared items. And there’s always frogblog. But you have to wonder. Rep. Kucinich introduced 35 articles of impeachment against George Bush yesterday. I would…
V*agra and Penis Enlargers nearly killed my blog
If you’ve tried to access sknoblog in the last few days, you were either met with an error page, or with the blog peppered with lines of error messages… My ISP offers free Web hosting, but they have adopted rather radical measures recently. Basically, when a database table grows too big, too fast, it triggers…
Ingenuity: Dustpan with built-in vacuum (and US military expenditures)
Two seemingly unrelated tidbits of information I came across today: One, in my ongoing Ingenuity series, is the dustpan with built-in vacuum, as seen on Boing Boing. Two is this little thought experiment on the Boston Globe: If the Bush administration succeeds in its latest request for funding for the war in Iraq, the total…
Acceptance
I’ve written and ranted at length about the decline of the U.S., like here, here, here, here, here, or here (or just click on my Blowing off steam category). I have nearly an album’s worth of songs on the subject [Update: access the Bye Bye Murka album here]. It might include the following track list:…
Youthful naiveté
Growing up during the cold war in Europe, I, like most of the people I knew, felt stuck between a rock and a hard place. To the east was, well, the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union. Even the leftiest among us thought they had betrayed the potentially positive aspects of real socialism. We knew…
Surfin' in Santa Monica
One of the reasons I haven’t been blogging much, is that the Internet connection here, at my mother’s house in Santa Monica, California, is terrible. It’s so slow it feels like dial-up. Of course, I’m spoiled. Back home in Paris, my connection is blazingly fast. It’s also quite fast in the family home in Normandy,…
Playground, revisited
Pamela just posted a great little piece on frogblog about the Playground of the Baby Giants, where we are staying for another two weeks. Interestingly, I came up with the Baby Giants metaphor because I was struck by how L.A. looks so fake and architecturally simplistic, as if kids had made a town out of…
Majority of Republicans Doubt Theory of Evolution
According to this Gallup poll, a « majority of Republicans Doubt Theory of Evolution. » That’s how Gallup presents its findings. But before you start mocking those cretinous, obscurantist Republicans, consider this: Yes, 68% of Republicans doubt evolution, but so do 40% of Democrats and 37% of Independents. Gallup should therefore have said that a majority of…