The US military is getting Iraqi presses to print waht is basically propaganda. Sounds like a smart move, and something every army in history has done a bit of. But here comes the LA Times, blasting Bush for only providing half the story and omitting anything that might make the US look bad. Umm.... Isn't that the point of propaganda, similar to how the LA Times will only print stuff that makes Bush look bad? The difference is that the LA Times is supposed to be objective and unbiased, whereas a propaganda campaign sort of misses the point if it's not biased.

And here's another reason you can mock liberals who bash Bush's economic record. OUr eocnomy is about as good as it could possibly be, and moving along better than at almost any other time in U.S. history, this despite Katrina and Iraq and oil problems. And this time there's no tech bubble causing illusions. What is different? Maybe those tax cuts that werre supposed to destroy the world. They did what we were told they would do, they helped to fund growth and expansion of businesses, new rounds of hiring, and lowered costs all around.

I know I keep harping on this point, but I'm just constantly amazed at how much good TV is on these days. I've been trying to keep myself from having too many shows, because even with a DVR, it's still hard to find time to watch stuff. There are several shows I'm sure I'd like that I just decided to stay away from. It's just great how great TV is now. Since the old way of doing business as a TV network is slowly becoming seriously anachronistic (with DVRs, downloadable episodes, and lots of people just waiting for the DVD to come out so they don't have to watch commercials or wait a week to find out what happens next), they are having to become more experimental and their shows are, too. Do you think Lost would have even gotten on the air 10 years ago? Maybe, but only if someone with a "name" like David Lynch was attached, which is how an ahead of it's time show like Twin Peaks got on air. Anyway, shows like Lost are not only breaking new ground as series, but as narratives. They switch point of view, storylines, and characters like pros (that makes sense, since they are pros), changing the method in which the story unravels from episode to episode, and keeping us wanting more even though we know the final payoff is at least a couple of years down the road. Veronica Mars has taken the concept of a season long arc and turned it in to the greatest stories ever on TV. House started out as a pretty standard and formulaic medical procedural and has somehow managed to become so much more, while still just a procedural from first glance. Las Vegas is ingenious in its use of the surreal, Nip/Tuck makes me nauseous both from the surgery scenes and the actions of the depraved characters, Monk might be the best mystery of the week show ever, and while Battlestar Galactica might occur in space, the storylines and character development are as high quality as any drama that has ever been on TV, no matter the setting.

It's a great time to be a TV nut. Too bad I have so much less time for it than I used to. Probably a good thing :)

I did not see the initial report, but from what I've read, Democratic leader Harry Reid said in a TV interview that Osama bin Laden died in the Pakistan earthquake. What I've read made it seem like he was saying this was a certainty rather than jsut speculation. If it's a certainty, then it hadn't been revealed to the public for a reason, I'm sure, and Reid just revealed classified information. If he was just speculating, well I can't complain about that. I'd like to see the transcript to see if he ws obviously speculating, or if he was reciting speculation as if it were fact.

Moveon.org made a new TV ad in the usual vein of "support your troops by making sure they know how you hate Bush, hate the military, and hate everything they do" commercials. This one focuses on how the war is keeping families apart on Thanksgiving (no mention of how it's keeping lots more people from being blown apart on Thanksgiving). At one point they show a bunch of troops gathered around a serving table getting turkey, all wearing combat fatigues. Very poignant. There's just one problem. They aren't American soldiers, they're British.

When I started playing online, I had no idea what rakeback was. Then I found out and felt left out. I considered creating a new FTP account, but decided to be honest first. I wrote support and asked for an affiliate code to be added to my existing account. Despite thinking I would get a no, they responded positively and said they would add it.

A month and a half of poker playing went by, and I hadn't heard from my affiliate. I wrote to ask where my rake was, and he looked in to it and discovered that FTP had never added the code to my account, and FTP then said they would not add an affiliate code to an existing account.

They lied to me, and not just that, but the money I would have earned from rakeback since October 19th was stolen from me by Full Tilt. Had they not lied to me, it would be in my account, not in theirs. I wrote them about this, and they said they would make an exception and add the affiliate code to my account, but that I was basically S.O.L on the money they stole from me. I wrote back and said that was unacceptable and I would like to be put in contact with a manager. They did neglected to respond further, so I am putting the story up for public consumption.

FTP has had a lot of knocks about their customer service, but I had thought things had improved. Apparantely they now train employees to lie and steal.

Do you know exactly what the Kyoto Accord was all about? Basically it said that signers had to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by a certain percentage by a certain date or be fined. Bush has been blasted again and again for not signing Kyoto, both by Americans and the world. Canadians were expecially vehement in their condemnation of Bush for ignoring Kyoto.

Here's the rub.... Since the Accords were signed, Canada'a greenhosue emission have gone up, while the United States' have gone down slightly. I read this as an aside in an article somewhere, and have no links or other proof to back it up, but it rings true to me.

The worst part is the hypocrisy. The US Conference of Governors decided to say they were going to take measures to cut greenhouse gasses. It made the masses happy and got them some votes. What would it take to actually do something about emissions? You'd have to close plants (layoffs!), or ration electricity (the children are cold now, what about the children?!), or do other things that will piss off those same people that are so in love with Kyoto. This is where idealism and reality intersect, and not smoothly. It's great to say we should cut gas emissions, but actually doing it would cause too many inconveniences, and cause the politicians who institute such measures to be voted out of office. Oh well, we can just blame Bush anyway.

EDIT: I looked and found more data on emissions. The US has not gone down, but it has risen only slightly, whereas many of the Kyoto countries, ESPECIALLY the European countries, have risen in much larger amounts. Italy was up like 46%.

What do you think is going to happen in 10-15 years when my generation hits its 40's and realizes that like half their earnings go to support old people who are still capable of working, but thanks to nice union deals, or perhaps social security or whatever short-sighted program they depend on, they have retired to enjoy the slacker life. Will there be a revolt of some sort? A war between generations? Of course we know the old folks will have the money, but they won't be strong enough to hold the guns. It's going to be interesting. Of course a lot of it could be headed off, but the left won't allow Bush the chance to try to reform our current system in any way. They may wait until he's out of office and then suddenly discover the problem, and push for the some of the same solutions Bush pushed for, and then take credit as if Bush had ignored his responsibilities.

I just read that deer season is starting and an estimated 900,000 Americans will be out hunting this. That's almost a million people who have rifles and know how to use them. If we ever get invaded, we've got a pretty good militia ready to go.

Remember when so many people were upset about John Bolton's nomination to the United States' U.N. seat? Well the other day the U.N. was discussing the passage of an act concemning a terrorist bombing or somesuch thing, and because of objections from Syria, they initially removed any mention of Hizbullah from the statement. Before it acutally passed, Hizbullah was put back in the statement of condemnation for acts of hate. When asked what changed over those few days, one official said, "John Bolton."

If getting the U.N. to recognize that a terrorist group is a terrorist group is a bad thing, then we need a lot more bad people like John Bolton involved in government affairs. I guess the objection to Bolton from the left must have been mae because they were worried he would be too effective and make Bush look good.

I just took my microeconomics final. I finished much quicker than I had thought I would, and looked around the room and noticed that most people were only about halfway through. This surprised me as I hadn't felt confident in my grasp of some of the material going in, but the stuff I wasn't sure about was barely covered in the exam. Overall it was EASY. I won't get a 100 because the prof is really picky and will take off points for not labeling a graph correctly and stuff like that.

OH MY GOD! The latest from the left side of Congress is that we need to train Iraq's security forces so that our armed forces can "sit down as the Iraqis standup." And they follow up by saying this will allow us to remove ourselves honorably from the region as soon as the Iraqis can defend themselves.

Bush has been saying this is our strategy from day 1. So now, three years later, the Dems have finally come to the same conclusion, and they act like it's some great new thing. And the media let's them do it, and refuses to point out that this has been the strategy all along.

What else are the Dems doing? Well everything the GOP tries to relieve gas prices and help our energy situation (by building more refineries, drilling more, using more natural gas, usuing nuclear power) the Dems veto on the floor of congress. And you can bet your bottom dollar that as soon as the rollup to the next Presidential election begins, they will start shouting about high gas prices and lack of energy and how the GOP didn't do anything about it. And the media will let them do this, and will neglect to mention that the Dems blocked every idea the GOP had to try to alleviate our problems. And they're going to do the same with social security when that shit hits the fan in a decade or so. They are going to blame it all on the GOP, even though the GOP and Bush did their damndest to do something about the problem, and again were bloacked at every turn by the Dems, whose only platform seems to be to block Bush from getting anything done, and if he does get something good done, ignore it and hope the people will ignore it, too.

I've decided I've been a bit of a hermit lately, and need to get out more. The problems with this are two-fold. One, I'm near broke and that's not going to change until I finish grad school, and two, I've got a final today, two project due next week, and another final the week after. And maybe then I'll have time to go out and have fun.

Powerline mentioned something I hadn't heard before, which is a cliche that "news is the rough draft of history." As Powerline further pointed out, this isn't so true anymore, if it ever was. Just look at the Plame scandal that dominated the news for soweeks at a time at various points over the last year or two. Unless it turns out that George Bush himself leaked the information, this story has no importance in the long run, and will probably never be mentioned in a history textbook. It shouldn't be anyway. On the other hand there were bunches of things happening in the world that will be mentioned in history books but were virtually ignored in the mainstream media. Anytime something good happens in Iraq, it gets ignored, but in the end, when Iraq is a free and peaceful country, the textbooks will focus on the good stuff, and probably not talk much about the problems, like Bush's "lies" that weren't lies and such. The history is the war, who won it and why it happened. That Democrats and the media have decided to ignore the actual definition of the word "lie" may be news, but it's not history. At least it's not history that gives much valuable insight in to the war, except that future generations will know how adolescent many on the left acted during this period when they didn't get their way.

In my MBA program, I haven't yet had any coursework regarding how to deal with and relate to people you are managing, but it's still something AI think aboutas a part of whatever else I'm doing. I also pay attention to the actions of various higer-ups here at work, and think how their policies and decisions affect their employees. Today the management staff of my department did something resentment and lack of productivity, and I'm going to bitch about it on here.

Often when we have a holiday or somesuch day off, they'll call a meeting, tell us if we all get done with our daily work, we'll be able to leave early. They've said up to three hours before, but in reality we've never left more than an hour and a half early. That's fine, it still feels like a much shorter day. Today they called a meeting for the same purpose, saying an hour and a half early.

I need to back up a bit. My department is really two departments in one that are closely related, so we'll call them dept. A (mine) and dept. B. Everytime they do the meeting to mention that we might be able to leave early, they also say that we ALL have to be done, and that's pretty standard and makes sense. Except it's annoying because dept. A is almost always done first, as we have less work (but dept. A's work takes more thought and more diverse knowledge), so we sit around waiting. One time they did this leaving early thing, dept. A was actually behind because of some problem, so they let B go early and made us stay (and the problem was not mine, btw). This seemed completely unfair, and did not go unnoticed by the people of dept. A, and created resentment.

Fast forward to today. Dept. B, as usual, was not done by 3, but dept. A was. Were they fair, did they let A go? Not at all. Not only did they decide not to correct their previous injustice by balancing the books, but they told us to try to get done by 3, so for the last hour we've all been done and ahve been twiddling our thumbs waiting for dept. B to finish so we can leave. An hour and a half od people staring at their monitors or chatting with their coworkers. Way to push for productivity, management!!

I just simply don't see any positive value in this decision, and I don't think it's appropriate to get your employees hopes up and then only meet the words half the time, and never to the extent originally discussed. None of the people at my level actually like working in dept. A or B, and crap like this doesn't help matters.

Phil Gordon, host of the ever-popular Celebrity Poker Showdown, and a well regarded pro poker player, has mde the big time. He got quoted in the AJC today....

And more TV talk. Lost and Veronica Mars were incredible once again. Veronica Mars, as good as it wa this week, still couldn't touch the week before, which had to be one of the all-time greatest hours of TV ever.

Daniel Pipes made a great point about the Palestinians. A lot of their defenders like to talk about how they just want peace, that it's not about driving Israel in to the sea, and all that jazz. Well assume for a second that the Palestinians suddenly decide that they are at war, total war with Israel, with the land being the spoils. How would their behavior change with the new mind-set?

It wouldn't change a bit. What they are doing right now is exactly what they would do if they were following a "destroy Israel" program. When your "peace" is indistinguishable from your war, then you aren't at peace at all. Someday people on the left will realize that the Palestinians tell you just what you want to hear, and not the truth.

I was just reading Andrew Sullivan whine about the use of torture. He thinks that dunking someone in cold water to lower their body temperature during an interrogation is horrible horrible torture and used the fact that the Nazi's used to do it in their medical experiments to show how evil Americans are.

One, dunking someone in water over and over again may cross the line to torture, but it's ahrdly the same as cutting off fingers or making someone watch their daughter be raped or whatever. Two, the Nazi's did it for fun as part of inhumane experiments, in this case to see how low you can get someone's temperature before they die. If motive is important, and previous discussions on crime ahve shown that people think it is, then there is a HUGE gap between deadly experiments on the human body, and non-injury related interrogations techniques used to extract information to save lives.

In what way are abortion and HOV lanes related? This way.

It seems a pregnant woman was pulled over for driving in an HOV lane where she was the only person visible in her car. She told the cop she was pregnant, so there were two people in the car. The case is going to court.

It's pretty simple to relate to abortion. If that fetus counts as a person for HOV status, then abortion is murder. If the fetus doesn't count, then abortion isn't murder. You have to be consistent, and those are the only two options that are consistent in the law.

You know what one fo the biggest problems we have here in the United States with terrorists and acts of terrorism from Muslims? The left thinks all terrorists are liars. Think about. The Palestinians, under the leadership of Arafat and now Abbas, both of whom are, or were, terrorists, have violated their duties according to Oslo, Oslo II, and now the Raod Map. Arafat even said that the various accords were just trojan horses to buy more time to detroy Israel. Was he believed? No, not at all. He was excused, as Abbas has been, with statements about how tough it is to control militants and how the Israeli's are holding them back, and how if the US hadn't invaded Iraq, it would all be peachy keen.

And look at Al Queda. They may say they want to destroy the West and make everyone live under sharia law, but we all know they're lying, right? They may talk death and destruction, but all they want it a fair job at a fair wage, and to stop being exploited by Americans. They may be mass murdering thugs who like to cut people's heads off, but deep down they're just a bunch of nice guys who like to fly planes.

I just saw an inane letter to the editor in the AJC. Someone wrote in to say that the Pilgrims were immigrants who stubbornly refused to learn the local language or adopt local customs. For one thing, that's not quite true. Plenty of Pilgrims leanred to speak Indian languages, and they also adopted some Indian customs. The main point, however, is that the Pilgrims were 400 years ago, way before the United States was formed. If a boatload of immigrants comes to the US now and decides to start a new country and slaughter Americans, should we let them, just because the Pilgrims did it centuries ago? I don't think so.

There's nothing wrong with using history to make a point about contemporary times, just make sure the comparison makes sense. It's one thing to say that the people who wrote the Constitution said they meant such and such in a specific line, but it's quite another to say that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree, thus we should all chop down cherry trees.

Say what you will about the Patriot Act but it did work here. Ironically it's the only case anyone ever seems to be able to cite when they whine about our civil liberties being taken away and I ask them to name even one instance. If they can, then it's always Padilla, and his imprisonment had little to do with the Patriot Act. Well he finally got his day in court, and, thanks to the Patriot Act, he's being indicted. Should he, a US citizen, have been held with no charges and no lawyer? No. Is he guilty of being a terrorist? Well I don't think even he denied going to an Al Queda training camp. Unfortunately they weren't able to gather enough evidence to indict him, except through the new avenues of investigation opened up through the Patriot Act. You know, the same act that is decried as evil even though no one has yet been able to tell me what was so evil about it.

Turns out that Sony's DRM that has caused so much fuss int he last few weeks can be defeated with a simple piece of tape applied to the outer edge of the CD itself, causing session 2 to be unreadable, adn the rest of the CD will be treated as a normal CD by players. Of course any decent hacker could ahve gotten around the DRM pretty easily already, so the draconian and invasive copy-protection scheme Sony has used to block consumers from doing whatever they want with their purchase (effectively making it so you're actually renting from Sony, not buying) do absolutely nothing to stop pirates and hackers from doing their thing. Five years of trying to defeat pirates have resulted not in stemming piracy, but in pissing off their customers. Remember, this isn't just Sony, it's the whole content creating industry. Every single thing they have done to stop piracy has failed miserably and has done more to piss off good customers than hurt pirates. The question is, Will Sony learn, or will they try again with something else? Next time they may destroy themselves by pushing their customer base over the line.

I just read a hilariously depressing story, though I cannot vouch for the veracity of it. Anyway, this guy's house was destroyed in Katrina, so he and his wife have been living in his mom's house in Maryland. The three of them went out to dinner and got a call from a a neighbor that the Mom's house was on fire and 911 had balled. Of course they rushed back only to find the house was basically destroyed, and their dog had fried. About the only intact items were a pipe and a completely unharmed bag of marijuana, which is why the guy is now in jail. Talk about a bad couple of months.

How did African-Americans get to where they are today? Well they were slaves, until the Republicans freed them. They were separate and unequal until the Republicans, with fierce resistance from the Democrats, made the 14th, 15th and 16th ammendments. And now? They've been hitched to the Democratic aprty since the 60's, and in that time they have seen a huge increase in single parent families, a rise in black on black crime, a huge rise in the percentage of young black men in jail, and a larger income gap from back to white. What does logic tell you? Every time that African-Americans have teamed with Republicans they have seen huge successes, and when they've gone with the Democrats they have been utterly demolished.

The GOP here in Georgia sure loves to hurt it's own causes. For those who don't know, a center of controversy here in the ATL is the proposed voter ID law, which will require a driver's license or other form of government issued picture ID in order to vote. Seems reasonable to me, but it's being couched as a racist poll tax. In making such an accusation, the accuser is saying that they don't think black people are as capable of getting a driver's license as white people, which strikes me as pretty racist (this is Georgia, it's all black and white, no one bothers to mention the hispanics and others). Anyway, some retard Georgia Republican state senator said soemthign really dumb, along the lines of, "Black people only vote when they're paid." Great, you had the moral highground, but you decided you preferred to come from behind, so you made sure everyone knows that you are just as racist as the people who don't think black people can driver's licenses.

For the record, I think the proposed bill is a good one, as long as the state does more to make sure that it's easy to get a driver's license.

Read this. A French philosopher discusses the recent troubles in France. And we all know that French philosophers are the best, right?

College sports fans are a fickle group, ready to turn on you at the drop of a hat. CHan Gailey, Georgia Tech's football coach, has had to hear the calls for firing for yeas, and after all the scandals of the last week, those calls have been gaining strength (and backers with influence).

Then it all changed. Tech beat #3 Miami in Miami's home stadium, and suddenly Gailey is untouchable.

I've said, like many others, that it doesn't seem like Gailey will ever get our team better than medicore. With a huge road win over Auburn at the beginning of the season to complement the trouncing of Miami, Gailey has shown he can do it. I think he's also shown that he has the integrity to coach at a school with such high academic standards, something that's not easy to deal with.

I was wrong about Gailey, for now anyway. If they lsoe to Duke next year, people will want to fire him again. But for the present, Go Gailey, and Go Jackets!!!

Thomas Sowell does a much job explaining why price controls don't work, especially in regards to pharmaceuticals. Among other things, he mentions that while Canada may have cheaper drugs than us do government intereference, they might not have nearly as many drugs if the huge profits made by US drug companies weren't then being funneled into R&D, which is ridiculously expensive. Sure, we could have price controls here in the U.S., but then there would be no incentive for drug companies to make new drugs.

I had to read an article on innovation for a class last night, and one thign that was mentioned was taking advantage of incongruities. For years the process of removing cataracts had been nearly automated, except for one step, cutting the ligament. Eye doctors had to do that the old fashioned way. Alcon noticed this anachronism, realized there was money to be made, and they developed an enzyme that dissolves the ligament, making them a load of money, and making the cataract removal less risky. Both sides won. What if Alcon had to deal with price controls to the point where they would make no profit on this enzyme? They wouldn't have developed it in the first place.

It's funny how the two sides of the political aisle argue. The left has been harping on the Bush lied thing forever now. The right can only really respond by saying, "It's not true. The facts are right there in black and white. You can't lie if you believe what you are saying is true." Then, when there's nothing else to say on the issue from the right because it's a completely baseless accusation, the right moves on to other issues. Then the left says the right is trying to distract the people from what's really important, whether or not Bush lied. Well I'm sorry, but there's nothing else to say on the issue. According to the dictionary, he did not lie, and every bipartisan panel set up ever since to study the issue agrees. So freankin' moveon.org.

Whether or not you want to think Iraq had WMDs, you should read this interview with one of the people involved in trying to find them.

My days of being a "computer genius" are long gone, so when I read up on some stuff, I'm often very confused. It seems that Sony has put some sort of digital rights management code on all their BMG CDs. It doesn't affect anything if you use it on a normal CD or DVD player, but if you try to play a BMG CD on your computer, the DRM software automatically installs and creates sever vulnerabilities in your system. DRM is stupid to start off with, of course. Once I've paid for content, there should be no restrictions on my use of that content, but DRM software, in an effort to stem piracy, goes much further and actually takes control of something you've paid for. Sony has made it so you think you are buying a CD, but in fact all you are doing is renting some music for as long as Sony deems it ok for you to have it. Anyway, Sony finally backed down and said they won't put this particular DRM on CDs anymore, and you can use their uninstaller to uninstall it. This creates further problems, however, as the uninstaller leaves you even more open to hackers than the DRM itself did.

If anyone out there has Comcast in the Atlanta area, do me a favor and call 404-266-2278 and ask them to get UPN in HD.

Thanks!

More new and not very exciting news on the Plame case. Bob Woodward has now testified that he was told by an administration official (who is neither Libby nor Rove) that Plame (or maybe he was told Wilson's wife) worked for the CIA about a month before Scooter Libby was supposedly the first person to tell a reporter, which means that neither Rove or Lbby could have been the initial leakers. It also means that Libby will probably be cleared of his indictment, because not only is it hard to prove that he lied rather than just forgot a detail, but whether or not he lied becomes less and less important to the "important" issue, who leaked the info, as more information comes forward.

And then you have people like Andrea Mitchell, who once said that Plame' working for the CIA was generally known by D.C. press before all this, and is now backpedaling and saying no one had a clue. Is she lying?

Also, why after two years and ample chances and the indictment of one person and the jailing of someone else, did Fitzgerald never get Woodward on the stand. The guy doesn't sound like he was hiding under a rock, but it does seem like Fitzy is a crappy detective. I'd like to know the truth at this point. The whole scandal is meaningless and a waste of time, but I've wasted so much time arguing about it, that I want to know the answer.

This is about the ANWR debate. It reveals some key points. One, drilling would take about 2k acres out of millions. Two, the people of Alaska want it. Three, caribou herds actual increased by large amounts after the drilling on the North Slope, and four, the beautiful pictures you see of ANWR are nothing like the area they want to drill in, which is a flat, icy wasteland.

Torture has been in the news a lot lately, and it's a touchy subject with a lot of people. One argument against the use of torture by the CIA or whomever to get information from prisoners is that torture doesn't work. I keep hearing this from people, "Experts say torture doesn't work." What experts? Have these experts ever actually been involved in an interrogation? Do you think Saddam Hussein, able to do whatever he wanted, was unable to use torture to get information? And what is torture, exactly?

My understanding is that effective torture involves same pain or bodily harm, combined with the realistic threat of much more pain and/or bodily harm. Give them a sample of what might happen if they don't cooperate. Well what happens when you're walking down an alley and someone pulls a gun on you and demands your wallet? Most of the time you hand it right over for fear of being shot. The mugger just used torture succesfully to get you to do what he wants you to do. Torture works, pure and simple. I'm not saying it's something that should be used lightly, but that old conundrum about whether you should torture someone who has information that could save millions of lives seems instructive to me. Save the lives!

I'd imagine any US senator, put in a position to decide between torturing a captured terrorist to get information, or doing nothing and allowing millions to die in a nuclear bombing, would go for the torture. There's some sort of disconnect if they care more about the terrorist than the citizens they were elected to serve (and protect), yet they are passing the McCain anti-torture bill. One of the guys at Powerline speculates that this is the kind of law they pass to look good, but when it gets to the nitty-gritty, they expect law enforcement to do what it takes to save lives, and ignore the law, much like the "wall" between law enforcement and intelligence. Do you really think that any Senator would really have wanted an intelligence group like Able Danger, allegedly discovering a credible threat to blow up a skyscraper, to not share it with the FBI and save a lot of lives? The Senate probably expected that in certain situations the law would be ignored. The problem is that we're talking about beauracracies here, and they tend to follow laws and regulations, no matter how dumb.

I'm headed to towards finals and have a rather large load of work to do. Most of it is writing, which is good for me. I got to do another 10 pages or so on beer for a rough draft due Friday (I hate having to do a rough draft, having seen previous A papers for this project, I'm certina my rough draft is good enough for an A already), then a take-home essay test for the final for the same class. Five essays, I guess a page or so each. Then 5-10 pages on various business principles related to the online poker industry (should be easy, I've found a TON of research materials), and then study a buttload for the final for that class (an at-home final where the questions will be posted online and I have to email it to my prof 3 hours after I can get the questions). Wish me luck!

This is interesting, but brief. I'd be curious to see more research along the same lines.

According to this report, the higher the government expenditures are in a country, the less happy and satisfied the people will be. The converse is also true. The less government, the happier the people. This fits right in with libertarian views that people do best when left to their own devices, which is why capitalist America has given far more to the world in terms of technology and wealth than any other country, almost all of which spend far more per person than we do (but spend less on their better education systems).

Some have even equated the French riots in this manner. The cops didn't really go in to these parts of France, so the people were left to their devices, and a large crime industry emerged. Now the police are going in to those areas, and the employees of the local industry are striking against government interference in their jobs.

So it goes without saying on the left that Bush lied. It's also obvious to all but the most rabid right wing reactionaries that Bush is a moron. This begs the question, why are so many Democratic congressmen now saying that Bush withheld intelligence, and that he basically pulled the wool over their eyes to convince them to vote for the use of force against Iraq? It would take a REALLY dumb person to fall for such a charade by someone who just plain dumb. That means that either Democrats are REALLY dumb, or Bush did not lie, they know it, and they are lying about it themselves.

Heck, even if Bush is a pretty smart guy (which he is), how sad is it that there are so many congressmen out there who fell for his lies regarding such an important issue? The fact is, there aren't that many really dumb people in congress. I may think a lot of them are creeps who lack integrity and care only for personal gain, but they ain't dumb, which leaves only one option. Bush did not lie, and the Dems know it and are lying about it for partisan reasons. That means one side has put partisan gain higher in importance than the lives of our soldiers, and that side is the left.

I don't want to be a Republican or a one party kind of guy. I'd like to be able to look at two basically equal parties (equal in terms of leadership, ability to plan, etc.), and make my decisions based on the minor things that divide them. Instead I have two parties that want to spend us in to bankruptcy, one party that lies and refuses to come up with any realistic plans for anything, and the other that says it's policies are thing, but actually acts in a different way.

Sometimes I really hate answering machines/voicemail. Not for the usual reasons, but for the extra robotic voice we get to hear all the time now. What happened to, "Hi, this is so and so, leave a message after the beep." Then there would be a beep, and you would leave your message. Now there is five minutes of "Press 1 to leave a message, press 2 to not leave a message, press 3 to page, press 4 to listen to the answering message again, and hang the fuck up if you don't want to leave a message." When I check voice mail for my cell phone, and mind you, I'm talking about picking up my cellphone and pressing "check voice mail," I get to hear, after I've out in my password, "You have X unheard messages.... Unheard messages will follow.... First unheard messaage." Then I get to hear the message. Why can't I just type in my pw, and then hear the message and if I want more than I can find out what buttons to press AFTER I hear the message. There's no logic to the way they do this stuff anymore. EVERYONE knows to leave a message after the beep, so we don't need a robot telling us after the human has already told us something we already know. I could maybe understand it if there was product placement. "Press one to hear the Coca-Cola 'A Coke and Smile' unheard message. Press two to hear the McDonald's Chicken Selects skipped messages.. There is no product placement, however. Maybe there should be.

There was a book fair held in the Atlanta Fed today. Seeing as it involved books, I decided to check it out, despite previous bad experiences with Fed book fairs. This one took the cake for bad, however. Whoever planned it must have sat around with the New York Times Worstselling list and picked out only books that guaranteed a lack of interest and of sales. There was not one single book in that place that I would ever pay a cent for, and I've paid cash for some pretty ridiculous books before. It was pitiful, and though I applaud efforts to make the Fed employees feel like a part of a family or community or whatever, wasting our time with crap like this shows contempt for our time, just like the computer security test that we are required to take every year. I don't think I am allowed to mention specific questions, but let's just say the whole thing was riddled with nonsensical answers, questions without the complete information one needs to pick the answer, and a lot of bad grammar. I get to waste 15 minutes taking it, the least they could do is find someone with an IQ over 80 to spend five minutes making the test logical.

And just so you know, I did write a rather harsh, exhaustive, and detailed analysis of the test last year and sent my findings to the people in charge. Needless to say, I did not hear back from them. I can only assume they didn't want to admit that they are being paid tens of thousands of dollars a year solely to create a retarded test. I could do better with my eyes closed, but without several years of experience, it's hard to get transferred to one of the jobs that requires no mental ability.

"Over the past 25 years, according to the Tax Foundation, oil companies paid state and federal taxes of more than $2.2 trillion (in inflation-adjusted dollars). During the same period, the companies' profits totaled $630 billion — less than a third of the government's take. Government revenue from gasoline taxes alone has exceeded oil industry profits in 22 of the past 25 years."

Exxon earns about $0.10/dollar of revenue, which is far less than Coca-Cola, Intel, and many other large corporations. Ar e we asking for Coke to pay higher taxes? No. Heck, the government makes a higher profit per dollar of revenue, as well. Maybe they should tax themselves? Anyway, the fight against oil company profits shows a dissappointing lack of economic understanding. Too bad the people who run our country know little about economics, or they wouldn't be so upset with Exxon.

I got these high-tech space-age pants that are wrinkle and stain resistant, and water just rolls right off of them. This creates a big problem, however. Man, as you may know, have to shake a bit after urinating so we don't drip all over the place. Even after a vigorous shaking there's usually a drop or so of urine that will color our underwear, but it's not really a problem because it soaks in. Well the problem is if it misses the underwear and falls down to your pants. Now instead of soaking in, it rolls all the way down and then you walk around with urine rubbing against your leg, which is kind of yucky. I don't know what the solution is, but I'm going to start avoiding waterproof pants for this reason.

Here is a nice roundup debunking the Bush lied meme. In this article you will discover that if Bush lied, so did just about every D.C. politician from John Kerry to Nancy Pelosi to Bill Clinton. If Bush lied, then the intelligence agencies of Israel, Germany, France, the U.K, and Russia, among others, were all in on it. If Bush lied, then so did the hea dof the CIA when he said the WMD case was a slam dunk. If Bush lied, then he is the smartest, most meticulous liar in the history of the world. Considering how the left wing in this country likes to call Bsuh a moron, they sure are giving him a lot of credit here. The most likely answer, however, is that Bush did not lie, he was merely wrong like most of the world. Actually the most likely answer is that he was absolutely right, and the WMD's have not yet been discovered, and may never be since it doesn't take a lot of space to store them and they could be just about anywhere in the middle east, a rather large region. Anyway, I'm sick of hearing how Bush lied. We have on the record that Joseph Wilson lied, but no one seems to care. Bush lied? Well like I said, if he lied so did everyone else, and the most despicable are the ones who are now lying to say that they never agreed with Bush, despite quotes to the contrary. Those are the opportunistic politicians who just want votes and couldn't care less about doing the right thing or having integrity. Half the Democratic members of Congress are doing this now. You can see their quotes from 2002 and 2003 (and earlier), and compare them to what they are saying now. Directly opposite, and they know the mainstream media won't call them on their lying and flip-flopping. Thankfully we have the blogosphere to do that now.

Today I faced a horrible drive home. Normally I get off of class at 7, so rush hour isn't a big worry. Today we were let out at 6, and traffic was insane. I tried taking some backroads and such to avoid things, and every choice I made out me in a worse state than before. 50 minutes for a drive that normally takes 15, and 10 late at night. An hour early off from class, and I got home 25 minutes earlier than normal.

I've always been lucky with commutes, rarely being stuck in a situation where I had no choice but to face bumer to bumer traffic every day. Now that my car stereo has vanished, I have little entertainment but to smoke or talk to myself. Now the driver's side window is completely screwed up, and, for all intents and purposes (ever heard anyone say "intensive purposes?), stuck in the closed position. I won't smoke if I can't have the window open, because then the smoke adversely affects the car's permanent smell to a much higher degree. I was left with talking to myself. I won't go in to details, but I'd be very embarassed if someone had recorded me.

Most of you probably had no idea, but the New York Times recently started charging for people to read their columnists online, calling it "TimesSelect." They've come in for a lot of ridicule for this on the blogosphere, and deservedly so. The latest? The number of people who signed up for it times the cost of a membership comes out to about $6.1 million. Well-known blogger Mickey Kaus asked, "If someone had come to the NYT a year ago and offered them $6.1 million to vastly decrease their online reach, would they have done it?" I think the answer to that is a resounding no, and yet another online media outlet discovers that charging for membership is dumb, because we can get most of the same information for free many other places.

I'm thinking about spltting my blog into three seperate entities. The Daily Dose would become the outlet for personal stuff and poker, then I would start a new blog for politics/history/current events and other academic thoughts, and a third for my food blogging. For some reason I doubt my current audience (small though it may be) has a lot of interest in my fast food entries, but I do. And I really think some fast food executive might see it and get some ideas. After all, not many people as smart as I are stupid enough to eat that much crap.

Of course this is all predicated upon me finding a server and actually doing it.

Tvguide.com has a daily column called the watercooler where one of their paid couch-potatos waxes on about all the big shows from the night before. I'm assuming they all come armed with TiVo sicne they tend to review every decent show, even ones in the same timeslot. Anyway, my favorite day of the watercool is Thursday when they review the Wednesday night shows, and any TV fan worth the title knows that Wednesday night means Lost and Veronica Mars. Well they also have a little poll, "What was the best show you watched last night?" and every show on the major networks, and some not (like Nip/Tuck and other cable goodies), is included. Most days the top show garners maybe 20% of the vote and several others are around 5-10%. Not so on Thursday mornings. Lost has 52%, and Veronica Mars is holding steady at 30% or so, and no other show has over 2%. Guess others agree with me.

I also heard that the Lost people have an answer to everyone who whines about wanting the various mysteries solved quicker and want more payoff- Watch Veronica Mars instead. I can't help but think that Rob Thomas would love to say right back, "If you want your mysteries to unfold more slowly than on Veronia Mars, watch Lost." The people involved in creating each show ahve to be TV fans, or there's jsut no way they could have produced such perfection, so it's a safe assumption that they have a heavy dose of respect for one another.

According to this, Plame's employment was not at all a closely held secret, not by her, and not by her husband. Is it true that both of them had told plenty of people that she worked for the CIA? Perhaps. I'm reluctant to trust the word of WorldNetDaily, but Andrea Mitchell even says that msot fo the journalistic community knew it, and Mitchell is mainstream media, and we all know they never lie, right? She certainly wouldn't lie to help Bush, and the fact that Plame was not a secret certainly helps Bush.

Of course us right wing nutcases have been saying this whole thing was fishy since day one. If her employment was such a big secret that was essential to national security, why did they allow her to parade herself on the cover of Vanity Fair? She obviouly wasn't worried about her safety. And why send her husband on a very visible trip to Niger and let him make the talk show circuit? If you want to keep your wife's employment a secret, hogging the spotlight is not the way to do it. It is, however, a good way to then be able to accuse others of outing your wife when the truth becomes even more wiudely known than it already was. THis whole thing is a joke, and it's ridiculous how much energy people (including myself) have put in to it.

Fast Food #5

I went to Chick-fil-a last night, and got chicken strips. There's really not a lot to say about that place. If they were open on Sundays, they'd be the best, but even closed one day a week, their service is above and beyond other fast food joints, and the food always tastes good.

Ok, one thing to say. Their honey mustard sucks, and their buffalo sauce is the worst I've ever had.

I want to temper my thoughts from France yesterday. I think it would destroy France as we know it if they decide to allow somewhat autonomous rule in the poor areas, but they also can't just bring in force and make everything ok. The actions of the rioters may have been wrong, and there's a decent chance some religious extremist may turn it in to a Muslim war, but at this point it seems like they have legitimate grievences against the state. What France really needs to do is revamp their economy so that it creates jobs, whereas the current system is totally focused on protecting jobs. That does not make for a healthy growing economy where poor people might have some hope. They have, using policies championed by the left wing everywhere including the U.S., created a depressing, shrinking, hopeless economy, and now it's biting them in the ass. The problem is that no one on the left will learn from this. They will make excuse after excuse on why France (and Germany, and the USSR, and China, and Cuba, the list goes on and on) was an exception to the rule that all left wing economic policies will create peace and happiness for all! You know when an idea has failed over and over again, and has not worked anywhere even once on a long term scale, you'd think people would give up on it.

Fast Food Blogging #4

I didn't skip #3, I just wrote #2 on two different entries. Anyway, I don't normally get fast food quite this often. I eat it more than most people, but not every night! It's just been my enthusiasm for this new project (and laziness, and I keep putting off going to the grocery store). Anyway, last night I went to Wendy's, the one that's on the triangle between Monroe Drive and Piedmont Ave. They're having this newfangled promotion where you collect cups (only medium sized and larger), and if you get like 32 cups then you earn a one way domestic flight on AirTran. 64 is either 2 one ways or a round trip. Smiley has started saving for two round trip flights, 128 cups, so I thought if I was going for fast food, I might as well hit Wendy's and help him out. I got the number 2 meal, which is a double. Wendy's ALWAYS asks if you want to upsize, which is fine.

What REALLY annoys me is this new thing where they say, "See you tomorrow" when you're about to pull away. It makes me paranoid, like they recognize me and fully expect to see me tomorrow. Which they won't. Not ever again will I go to Wendy's two days in a row because of this. They've actually lost my business. No one wants to go to a fast food restaurant knowing they'll just be back the again the next day. It makes me feel guilty when I hear them say that, because I know it's a possibility and that I should be eating healthier, so I try to make sure it does not become true. So I go to McDonald's the next day instead :)

The burger was strange, to say the least. I guess they must have run out of quarter pound patties, so it was one quarter pound patty and two of the smaller kind that they put on the double stacks, which made for a burger with actual terrain on the top bun. I started imagining little sesame seeds hanging out on the plateau above the two double stack patties, and then skiing down the slop to the quarter pound patty while telling their friends, "See you tomorrow." Of course this little fantasy died the moment I tried to pick it up off the wrapper and the patties all slid around, with the new terrain resembling a much more chaotic and greasy wonderland. No skiing anymore, but I bet it would be great for capture the flag.

Fries were good, coke was great! They almost always have a good syrup to soda water ratio at Wendy's. Unfortunately my coke got in my stomach too fast, but then Smiley went to the gas station to buy a 12 pack. No ciagrettes even though there ws only oneleft in the apartment. He doesn't think ahead too well.

I think I may order in tonight since it's Lost and Veronica Mars night. Not wings, though, I'm having those for lunch at work. Or maybe I'll hit Quizno's. Does that count as fast food? It's pretty fast, but pretty hgih quality, too.

Did you hear the one about the secret CIA detention centers? Me, too. Not much of a secret anymore. What does this mean? There's a leak! This time it's a real, honest-to-god leak of something that could endanger national security, unlike the Plame thing, which, leak or not, didn't hurt anyone except Patrick Fitzgerald's kids (does he have kids?). This new leak involved things that are happening right now, not a CIA agent who hasn't gone undercover, or even out of the country, in years. How much vigor will the press go after this leak with? Probably not much, because this time the information from the leak is damaging to the Administration, whereas before the leak itself was damaging to the Administration. Notice the difference? The press only acts when it hurts the President, and they remain basically silent when action might help the President. And there's no liberal bias in the newsroom...

By the way, all this torture stuff..... Though I have not read his exact words, I think Cheney's objection to the new anti-torture bill is based upon what torture is. To me, torture is beating someone up, causing pain and bodily harm to extract information. Pouring fake menstruel blood on someone, or making a Muslim see a naked woman, or keeping the heat turned up high are not torture in my mind. They are useful interrogation techniques, and far better treatment than most fraternity pledges get. That should be the line, if it's worse than frat boy hazing, it's torture, and even Abu Gharib had a long way to go.

I was watching the Daily Show last night and Jon Stewart was talking about torture. He made the point, "We keep hearing in the news all the time that torture is not a good interrogation technique, so why is it still used?" The key here is "on the news." He should know that the media will just interview "experts" that fit their ideological agenda. Sure, plenty of experts might say torture doesn't work, but there are probably just as many CIA interrogators that would heartily disagree (and probably Muslim dudes working for Bin Laden would also say torture works).

At this point I believe the riots in France are merely a violent expression of disgruntlement from the disaffected, and not a Muslim uprising. However, and this is a big however, Islamist extremists are not stupid, and plenty of them live in France. The riots could very easily be pushed into a far greater conflict if the right Imam or terrorist can take advantage, and then these riots become a problem for all of Europe and the whole western world, not just France. That's what we have to hope to avoid, and only a responsible and assertive reaction from the French government will have a chance of helping. The worst thing they can do is try to "have a dialogue" and "solve the root causes" of the conflict peacefully. Appeasement, as we have seen with Muslim terrorists, is not seen as a sign of strength by Islam as it is here in the western world.

Back to what I wrote about abortion the other day, and the fact that men have NO rights when it comes to their unborn children, but all the responsibility.... You may remember a story a while back about a girl who was four months pregnant with twins and decided that she could not have them. For whatever reason she could not get a real abortion, so she had her boyfriend stand on her stomach. He's now serving life in jail, and she got off scot-free because of a woman's right to an abortion. Apparantely when he was sentenced she was standing next to him in court bawling, asking why this was happening when she was the one to convince him to do it. Why? Because when it comes to their children, men have no rights but all the responsibility.

Ever heard of Jimmy Massey? Check this out. Massey, among other things, has been traveling around with Cindy Sheehan peddling his lies. He's an anti-war guy who makes a lot of claims about his own experiences and about atrocities in Iraq. The problem is that the details seem to change depending on when you hear him tell a particular story, and the other problem is that no one that was with him in Iraq can verify any of his stories. Makes you wonder why the AP, and other news organizations, ran his story without verification. Actually it doesn't make me wonder, I already know. It's because the AP and so many other houses of journalism are biased left. If someone has a good anti-war story to tell, who cares if it's true? They'll fact check your ass if you have a story that supports our good work in Iraq, though. The media is practically begging America to distrust all mainstream media, and more and more of us are listening.

Fast Food Blogging #2

Last night I stopped by my favorite, McDonald's, on the way home from class. I went to the one on Peachtree in Brookehaven, right across from the MARTA station. For those of you who aren't familiar with my strange, yet predictable, eating habits, I like to get the #3 with only mayo and ketchup. In laymen's terms, that means two quarter pound burgers with two slices of american cheese, one sesame seed bun, a squirt each of may and ketchup, and a healthy dose of grease. Fries and a soda are included.

This particular McDonald's has a 24 hour drive-thru, but runs out of monopoly pieces way too fast. And when they do have them, they tend to conveniently mess up your order so you don't get as many pieces as you were supposed to. I ordered the chicken selects value meal large sized once, which is supposed to net you 6 pieces. After waiting like 5 minutes so they could cook the chicken, they tried to foist a medium fry on me, saying I had oreder only the drink large. WHy the hell I would take a smaller fry when I've paid the same as for a large fry is beyond me. This is like the time I was charged like $4.11, so I gave the lady $5.11, and she gave me $0.99 back. I looked at her like she was nuts and asked for a dollar. She said I never gave her the extra penny, which was total BS, but even if I hadn't, isn't it logical at the point to ask me for a penny? I obviously wanted a whole dollar, or I would have just given her a five dollar bill.

The other thing that's different about this McDonald's is the drive-thru setup itself. Ever since Dave Thomas put a drive-thru in a Wendy's, fast food chains have realized they can utilize the technique to raise sales and lower costs. Now McD's has decided to try some double drive thrus. I've been to two locations with doubles, one in serial, one in parallel. I ahven't figured out the point to either. When it's parallel (two seperate order lines that merge to one past the microphones), they tend to get confused about which car ordered what, which seems like a pretty obvious reason not to set it up like that in the first place. When it's serial there two order boxes in the same line, so your car and the one behind can both be ordering at the same time, except for another obvious problem: There's only one person taking the orders one the other end, and they can't listen to two different orders at once! They may do it different when it's really busy, but as yet I've never seen the serial system actually being used.

My food last night was pretty good. Well the burger (double quarter with cheese, of course) was good, even though the patties were offset from each other instead of centered on each other and the bun. I'd like to hope that's because they slid around in transit, but maybe the burger maker couldn't stack well. My fries were slightly undercooked, but mostly just cold. Oh well. The burger is the most important part anyway. And the drive thru? Nowhere close too fast, but still way faster than the last time I went to that McDonald's and they comitted the cardinal sin of fast food. They decided to wait until they were completely out of cooked fries and my order was all ready to go except for the fries before they put more in the fryer, so I had to wait first for my burger to be completely made, and only then did the timer begin on the fries being cooked. I think it takes between 3 and 4 minutes to fry a bag of those things. In the long run that's not much time, but when you'r sitting in car without a radio, and you're really hungry, it seems like forever. I'd think that someone could have noticed they were about to run out of fries and done something about it before they were completely out and needed more, but I guess that's too much to ask.

I've got more insight in to fast food, garnered from years of experience, but I don't want to give up all my secrets yet! Someday soon I will have an interview with my friend Aron Katz, a former McDonald's employee who shares both my love and knowledge of the franchise.

Fast Food Blogging #2
This is really an addendum to yesterday's Taco Bell discussion. They serve Pepsi products only, and were out of Pepsi. Normally that means root beer for me, but that was not a choice. All the drinks besides Pepsi were strange ones like Mountain Dew:Code Red and a bunch of junk I'd never heard of, and Dr. Pepper. I ended up with Dr. Pepper despite not being a fan.

I think that is fast food places won't let you not get a drink with a meal, then they ought to offer bottled water for the same price as a soda.

The riots in France continue, and are beginning to spread to more European countries. This is bad stuff, but so far it's not apocalyptic. Despite my disdain for the French, I don't want to see their country destroyed by this. What I'm really wondering is whether this turns into a general Muslim uprising all over Europe, or if it stabilizes as a bunch of disgruntled immigrants that the French have neglected. For all the tlaking smack they did against the US during the Rodney King riots, saying how we're a racist society and all that, the feeling I've been getting reading up on France is they are generally disdainful of their Muslim immigrants, wanting them to "clean the toilets and stay out of site." Not a good way to assimilate a new group of people. I hope that the French government is able to find a solution to this, perhaps by shrinking the welfare state so that actual jobs are created. There are definitely two factors that led to this, the welfare state, which creates high unemployment and little hope for a better future, and the disdain of the immigrants, which will, of course, create simmering resentment, which seems to have boiled over. These are both things that Americans who value free market capitalism and low levels of government regulation of the economy have been warning about for years. Now the chickens have come to roost and we have reason number 1 billion why cradle to the grave security won't work.

I wonder if this is true. I know worldnetdaily is pretty biased to the right, but that doesn't mean this isn't true. Basically they are saying that Joe Wilson had no problem telling people his wife worked for the CIA even before Novak mentioned her in his infamous column. Is anyone going to bust Wilson for revealing national security secrets? I doubt it because knowing that Plame worked at the CIA is in no way damaging to national security. This whole thing has been a waste of resources from day one. The only stuff that really ticks me off is that a lot of people seem to think Wilson is a hero, when he's really just a tired, biased opportunist. He's done nothing to deserve anything good to come out of this.

I had a wedding this weekend, and not just any wedding, but a family wedding at which I was the best man. Michael Skott married Corinne Seltzer and now we have a fourth Mrs. Skott (even though my sister kept the name Skott, I'm not sure if she counts or not). Congrats to the happy couple who are now on their way to Aruba! They deserve some rest after the whole fleeing New Orleans thing.

Friday night was the rehearsal dinner (first was the rehearsal for the ceremony, which people negelected to mention to me, thankfully I figured out how to walk up the aisle all by myself!) at The Clubhouse at Lenox. I've never been there before, but I did have a new shirt to wear. I went to K&G and bought a dress shirt, a blue one with a white collar and cuffs (french cuffs, of course) so I could look powerful or something. New cufflinks, too. The food was excellent. There was a choice of prime rib or something else, but who cares what the other choice is when you can have Prime Rib! Turns out it was about the best prime rib I've ever had, juicy, tender and flavorful, and not overcooked. Then I had to give my speech!

I got to follow Corinne's sister Amy. Here's my speech, or as much as I can remember....

"I wrote a nice little speech. It's sitting at home on my printer, so I will try to reconstitute as much as I can. First off, thanks to everyone for being here. I know you were all told the wrong city initially, but at least they got the date right [pause for laughter {this was supposed to be in New Orleans... the wedding, I mean, the laughter can happen in any state but Utah}] My earliest memories of Mike are usually from when our families would get together for dinner. We would go off and play, and invariably one of us would end up crying. Thankfully we both grew out of that a couple of years ago. [pause for laughter, or so I imagined] We didn't talk too much in high school, but became much closer in college. I had gotten to watch MIke grow up from a somewhat hyperactive pest into a confident, outgoing man. I first heard of Corinne when Mike was telling me about this great girl he met in Athens. The second time I heard of her was a few months later when a friend who goes to UGA was telling me that my cousin was annoying some girl a lot. The third time was when Mike introduced her to me as his girlfriend. I don't know what happened in between, but I think it involved bl