Surreptitious Opinionation

Theme for the weekend, work punctuated by brief bursts of slack

Short list of things I want:

drying rack for dishes
kitchen trash can
Toaster or toaster oven
blender that will last more than 4 months
steamer or rice cooker
decent knife set (say sabatier, like my last one)
cutting board
small saucepan
good sized pot for soups, stews, and pasta for several.
food processor
grater/zester
juicer
muffin pan

Okay, so maybe the last two were comparatively frivilous. But I still want them. =)

frontrunners

I know it from Willy Wonka, but it’s originally from Willy Shakespeare. All I’m saying is I could use a little something shining into my day.

Unneccessary proof that the vast majority of people are freaking out without thinking or analyzing.

Google search string	Hit count
“terrorist attacks on the united states”	about 52,800
“terrorist attacks” “united states”	about 1,080,000
“incidence of terrorist attacks”	about 177
“history of terrorist attacks”	about 420
context “terrorist attacks” “united states”	about 179,000

All of this because I was trying to find something which spelled out how many terrorist attacks we’ve suffered in our history, or how many people were lost to terrorist attacks in our history. So much for that thought.

(it’s for a paper for class. We’re trying to argue that a national id system would have a ridiculous false positive rate. It’d be nice to know what a reasonable positive rate to expect would be.)

Went out for some drinks with my fellow polwonks in the making. I think a highlight of amusement for me was when one of the second years said he was the official slacker for the mpp program. Doing the minimum to scrape by, never reading, etc. And when asked how he did it, he said “It’s easy when you’re smart, I have an IQ of 150, and you can bullshit.” I was so proud of myself for not saying something to the effect of “150? Oh, how darling, you must be quite precocious.” I was so tempted. The straight chicks dig the idea of a gay swim team. That amuses me somehow. And everyone asking “do you guys really swim?” also amuses me. Maybe at some point that’ll get on my nerves, but not at present.

It’s tempting to say something like “No, actually, we just sit in a hot tub and suck one another off,” just to see how they’d react, but instead I brag for ‘s near olympic trial qualifying time. Athleticism by association. =)

people are weird.

Been feeling a little isolated today. The culmination of 2 group projects due next week? You’d think groupwork would make me feel _less_ isolated. Sadly, for my policy analysis paper, I feel totally behind in my research. And my stakeholder id & analysis paper, or at least my portion of it, feels rather cobbled together. I feel like I’m a disappointment to my teams. I could see how that would be isolating.

Maybe going on the bus instead of biking into school would have helped with feeling isolated. (too late for that now. if I want to get in before noon, it’s bike). I also spent this morning fixing my cranky laptop display. It seems none of the screws ancoring the panel to the back cover were in place. No wonder the squeezing action of the back cover and the panel wasn’t keeping the connection tight. Yay for fiddling with electronics in my underwear. Also biking is going to suck. Somehow, while working my upper body, I messed up my right hamstring a bit. *sigh*

Ah well, off to school.

ciao.

I want to show the Stewart on Crossfire thing to everyone at the Humphrey. So, I had the idea of commandeering a classroom, using the AV equipment, and putting it up on screen. Then I had the idea of having people talk about the role of media in the political process afterwards: what it can be, what it should be, and what it is. An interesting sidenote would be to see how many people started talking over one another in the process.

I’m going to propose it to our student org for the humphrey and see how well it is received.

from www.electoral-vote.com:

Are the voters stupid? It is not considered politically correct to point out that an awful lot of voters don’t have a clue what they are talking about. A recent poll from Middle Tennessee State University sheds some light on the subject. For example, when asked which candidate wants to roll back the tax cuts for people making over $200,000 a year, a quarter thought it was Bush and a quarter didn’t know. And it goes down hill from there. When asked which candidate supports specific positions on various issues, the results were no better than chance. While this poll was in Tennessee, I strongly suspect a similar poll in other states would get similar results. I find it dismaying that many people will vote for Bush because they want to tax the rich (which he opposes) or vote for Kerry because they want school vouchers for religious schools (which he opposes).

Fri, Nov. 12, 2004
Sun Country
Departure: Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota at 8:30 PM
Arrival: San Francisco, California at 10:35 PM
Flight SY397 (4hr 5m) Coach Class, Boeing 737-800

Sun, Nov. 14, 2004
Sun Country
Departure: San Francisco, California at 11:35 PM
Arrival: Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota at 5:00 AM
Flight SY398 (3hr 25m) Coach Class, Boeing 737-800