Lies!

Filthy, filthy lies.

For Kyle and Julie

As I had mentioned on twitter, I was going to see Julie's hatred of Arby's and Kyle's unfamiliarity of Arby's by going there myself.

It was delicious.

I also went to the B&N next door, where I found a "this book is too cheap not to buy, plus I really don't have any books that qualify as humor that I'm reading right now."

You know, just in case

What are you doing, bear? You're not a ninja!

Oh...um...never mind then.

Martin Gardner died

It is a sad day on my bookshelves (and also whereever the two missing books are currently living).

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Yes (3)

Because the best strategy is certainly flying first class to San Francisco, waiting around for an hour and a half, and then flying back next door.  I'd suspect that's a good plan, except for the fact that the return trip is 24 times shorter.

Yes (2)

Because if I'm going to Austin, I want to bike my way there.

Yes

Because if I'm looking for grocery stores in Honolulu, I'm also certain to be wondering about grocery stores in New York City.

Still no animals

via

Cynical political theory

While waiting for some test code to run today, I ran across this editorial about the right-ward shift in the Republican party.  The bit that struck me was the note at the end about a paper (which I wasn't able to actually read since it looks to be stuck behind a paywall that I don't seem to have access to) that notes that economic recessions tend to lead to an increased vote for right-wing political parties.

This would be easy to ignore, if it weren't for the fact that conservative economic policy is widely considered by most sane and honest economists as a ploy to divert wealth to the already-wealthy benefactors of the conservative movement.  The past decade has largely shown that these policies do not work to the benefit of regular people, create "jobless recoveries," and basically fuck over the fiscal well-being of the country.

Now, given these two points, it would be possible to create a very cynical reason why these discredited economic policies have stuck around: not only do you enrich your cronies, but you trash the economy enough to prompt the rightward shift in the political climate.  This is certainly a short- to moderate- term solution, as in the long run, you loot too much out of the working class to favor a wealthy elite, which could cause economic collapse.  One would expect this to be a deterrant, but I would offer the recent Goldman-Sachs/Wall Street debacle as an example of people completely ignoring a catastrophic long-term effect for short-term gain.

In any case, it struck me as an interesting point to consider.

Slow down!

You're driving like a maniac! Are you trying to kill us?

Oh, Batman