The Fourth of July weekend isn’t usually thought of as a time-marker, like New Years Day or Thanksgiving, but it’s become that for me. Last year at this time I had an accident on my bike, briefly described here, which turned out to be more serious than I’d thought, and which left me oddly discombobulated with thought of my own mortality and insignificance. Maybe because of that — or maybe […]
Reports suggest that the Pac-10 Conference is on the cusp of inviting four Big 12 schools (Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma State) to join the Pac-10. This follows the announcements yesterday that Nebraska was leaving the Big-12 to join the Big-10, and that Colorado was leaving the Big-12 to join the Pac-10. I can rationalize the Nebraska move into the Big Ten. Nebraska fits in geographically (it’s almost Midwestern) […]
Apologies to my friend Randy Boyd for this, but I chafe at the hypocritical pounding BP is taking from the media and the public about the oil spill in Gulf of Mexico, for two reasons. First, this was an accident. Does anyone really believe BP wanted this to happen? It’s going to lose billions and billions of dollars out of pocket, and God knows how much more in public goodwill. […]
I have an unusual background for someone in the public sector, having worked for a number of years in the private sector not just as a consultant, but actually in a private enterprise. In the private sector, it is a gospel fact that government in California is bloated at all levels — too many employees doing too little work. But like many gospel facts, it turns out that this one […]
There is a woman here in Sonoma County who transmits on Twitter various and sundry pieces of information and gossip (much of it presumably unconfirmed) about the local political scene. Tweeting under the name “SRPolitics,” she has chosen to conceal her true name, taking as her on-line identity a photo of John F. Kennedy, for reasons that aren’t clear to me. My initial reaction to this was irritation. Dealing in rumors […]
In light of the fact that from the beginning of this Congressional term Senate Republicans have been threatening to filibuster everything they object to, no matter how routine or minor (the latest being a nomination to the National Labor Relations Board), why haven’t the Democrats called their bluff? What Democrats have been doing is this — if the Republicans threaten to filibuster and the Democrats don’t have 60 votes, they throw […]
Frequently the most difficult legal issues arise at the intersection of two separate and distinct areas of the law. The Supreme Court’s recent much-criticized First Amendment/campaign finance decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is a good example of this. On its face, given the facts of the particular case in front of it, the decision seems to me to be entirely correct. A conservative non-profit corporation, formed for […]
My laptop died during my trip to the ACWA conference in San Diego in early December. It wouldn’t boot up, and the hard drive icon didn’t light up, suggesting that the hard drive was dead. So the day before yesterday, while I was in Best Buy to get my son a graphics card for our main computer (which didn’t end up working), I bought an inexpensive replacement hard drive in […]
Today was my first day back on my bike riding in the “real world,” as opposed to riding inside on the trainer, since my accident on July 3. For a long time, I couldn’t ride without risking hurting my arm if I fell, but lately I’ve been putting off riding out of what I now understand was just pure fear. An odd fear, not one that I was even conscious […]
I’ve had my new Droid phone now for a little over a week, so being a somewhat tech guy I decided to post a short review. The bottom line: 8 (maybe even 8.5) out of 10. I really like it. The positives first. The Google Android 2.0 operating system on the phone is very, very good. It’s simple, straightforward, and fast. It integrates smoothly with GMail, my business email, and […]