The War Keeps Growing
"In his State of the Union speech, President Bush stapled terrorism and proliferation together by declaring that our "goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction." Which is like saying that you want to stop child molesters from robbing banks."

Bush to Promote Marriage, Job Aid
During the campaign, Bush was constantly criticizing Al Gore's targeted tax cuts for being meant to encourage certain behaviors, such as going to college. He said his tax cut was better because you got money no matter what, and could spend it as you please. So now he turns around and implements incentives to get poor people to get married.

I feel like my brain has been overactive lately. Like it's trying to suck in all the learning it can in these last few months at Colgate, from whatever source it can. I spent an hour reading a book about terrorism that Ryan had left in the Maroon-News office because my brain felt I could learn more efficiently that way than by reading anything that was relevant to any class I'm taking. I randomly read a post in william's blog, and had to restrain myself from following his links to learn more about Mormonism.

I can probably chalk it up to the law of diminishing returns. To a certain extent, the more you know about a topic, the more work it takes to increase that knowledge -- to find something new or make some new connection. So when I come across something like Mormonism that I know squat about, I can very easily learn more, whereas I have to dig to find new knowledge about agricultural failure in the Aral Sea basin.

I woke up a little bit ago because I had a profound breakthrough about statistics, of all things. Well, not so much a profound breakthrough as a sudden understanding of a concept that I had known was true but never quite grasped why.

I need to stop talking in my religion class. Today Prof. Vecsey was so excessively impressed with some point I made that he said he was going to start calling me "mini-Claude."

My blog looks real weird in Japanese. It's real weird how it translates "Stentor" but not "Danielson." And Marty's blog becomes "Gegenw?rtigkeit." Darn Japanese and their inability to handle umlauts.

Urgh. Two-hour lecture bad. Writing two articles about two-hour lecture bad. AIDS crisis in Africa very very very bad. Splashdown good.

I needed to look at a copy of the State of the Union address while I was writing my commentary. Yahoo News, which I usually use to search for commentary material, told me I'd have to pay a dollar for it. Then I did a quick Google search and found that whitehouse.gov was giving the transcript away for free. Yay government handouts.

I told myself I wasn't going to post any more doo-dah headlines, but then I saw this on today's Washington Post:



Granted, you have to mess with the accents on the words a bit, but it's three nearly-doo-dah headlines in a row.

This is some of my favorite weather.

How Much Metal Should Be In A Medal Of Honor?
"It would probably come as a shock to most Americans to learn that the Medal of Honor � the nation's highest military award � is made of brass and costs only $29.98."
And this is a top story from the Washington Times? I don't see why the price of the medal is such an issue. The point is the recognition and honor of getting it, not the market value of the gold it's made from. It's not like the honorees are going to go sell their medals (and even if they did, I think that the fact that it's a Medal of Honor would be much more important in setting the price than what it's made out of).

The Super Bowl really could have been the script from a sports movie. You have the Patriots, who are huge underdogs, with few stars on their team, playing the Rams, who outdid the Patriots in every category during the season and boast start after star. The Patriots make the sentimental choice to introduce themselves as a team, rather than individuals. They're behind early, but then step up and shatter people's expectations by taking a big lead. They look like they're going to put it away when they stop the Rams in the red zone and run a fumble back for a touchdown that would seal their victory, but it's called back on a holding penalty, and the Rams score. Then the Rams score again, evening things up. Finally, at literally the last second of the game, they kick the game winning field goal. And for weeks afterward people will be pointing out the inadvertant symbolism in the Patriots winning the first Super Bowl after September 11.

Flordia Town Bans Satan
"Although some commissioners support the mayor, others acknowledge that using city stationery went too far. But all are emphatically pro-God, anti-Satan, a crucial campaign position here."