"Desert Caution: Once 'Stormin' Norman,' Gen. Schwarzkopf Is Skeptical About U.S. Action in Iraq"

[via Daypop Top 40]

Get ready for the big show tonight with the "State of the Union drinking game"

[via Daypop Top 40]

Yesterday, when she got back to her hotel room in New Orleans, Terri watched the original version of Bedazzled, which features Dudley Moore and Eleanor Bron. Earlier that day, back home in Cambridge, I had watched Doctor Zhivago, which features Tom Courtenay and Julie Christie. I suppose that's only amusing if you're familiar with the Yo La Tengo song, Tom Courtenay. Terri claims that she thought of the line from the song when she saw Eleanor Bron, too, but she still associates her more with the Beatles' movie Help! (which is of course also the reason that she appears in the YLT song). I can say no more.

Speaking of "No Child Left Behind"... if anyone wants to read more about it, let me know. The new edition of one of the book's I'm working on, American Education by Joel Spring, offers an informative critique of the policy. Just because legislation focuses on education reform, that doesn't make it good. There are a lot of different kinds of reforms, and these are not necessarily good ones. Whether or not this kind of policy even "worked" in Texas is debatable at best.

Rant rant.

We have been doing a lot of work on the site, and new stuff is coming really soon, I swear!

We hung out with Chek today. He's in town because his friend was in Boston for a science fiction convention, and he decided to come along for the ride/mini-vacation. It was good to see him and catch up. We now have a good reason to go to upstate New York more!

We are working on improvements to the web site, and just ordered food from Bombay Club.

Go Howard Dean.

Dean criticized the president's education plan, called the ''no child left behind" act, by calling it the ''no school board left standing" act.

I have a new Aubrey Beardsley calendar here at work and it's helping to satisfy my ongoing need for art in my life. I am surrounded by art postcards and things here in my cube. Occasionally refreshing them is very good for me.

On the reading front, I haven't yet finished Think... or Death on the Installment Plan (though it seems like I was getting the idea with the Celine...), but have gone ahead and started A Wild Sheep Chase, the Murakami book I got for Christmas. His books are reliably decent, and I'm enjoying it. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is still the best, hands down, with Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World coming in a respectable second.

It snowed again a little bit here today... a nice surprise after constantly hearing that we're going to get snow and then not getting any. Today they said we'd be lucky if we got flurries, and we ended up with a new coating to an inch on the ground.

I am working on our honeymoon scrapbook and I think it's coming out nicely. It's hard to get napkins and relatively flimsy things like that to stay snugly in the photo corners, but I just can't bring myself to destroy our precious artifacts with glue or tape.

We made soup last night using our new cookbook (a Christmas present from Ezra's family). It came out all right, but I think we should have used more beans. We may add a can or two to the leftovers and see how that goes. It's got lots of garlic in it--5 cloves all together. I think my fingers still smell a bit like garlic!

We're in the middle of watching Cradle Will Rock. We saw the first 1/2 last night and will watch the rest tonight. I've been wondering about this movie for a long time, given its impressive cast and 1930's setting. Much as I suspected, it seems like it's mostly panorama and not much plot. But, much as I expected, the cast is impressive (as billed), and it's visually fun (for me). It's a bit reckless, which can be both good and bad. I sort of admire that, but it doesn't necessarily make it good. We're having a little bit of a festival with Bill Murray these days, and he's one of the fun parts of the movie. Suddenly it seems like he's cropping up in a heap of good movies (well, we're discovering them--they were already there).

Reading The Godfather. It's kind of pulp but I can't put it down. Schmaltzy and no great style, but the story really hits some buttons emotionally, and physically. In the chapter where Michael kills of Solozzo, I felt an adrenaline rush.

In the New Year's spirit of taking stock of where we were and where we are going, here's Vannevar Bush's 1945 article "As We May Think," which predicts, among other things, the PC and hypertext. 

I find its optimism is a bit giddy, even though I am generally a technophile. I wonder how many of today's "visionaries" will be as correct in 50 years. I certainly can think of none of their visions which I actually think I want to see come about in 50 years. I can think of none who have such a humanistic outlook; everyone these days is hung up on different ways to fundamentally alter what humanity is, that I can think of no one who even tries to prescribe what a good life might be.

Maybe I'm fishing for a counterexample.

Orgnet. Interesting.