What do you do when your city government mismanages its finances? Put the burden of recovery on the taxpayer. Pittsburgh has been in financial trouble for a long time. And now, a state task force has presented its solution. The worst of it: * A $120 occupation tax (up from $10). * An increase in […]
Posted on May 26th, 2004 by admin
Filed under: Politics | Comments Off on A City on the Brink
The FIA decided today to exclude both Peugeots from the Rally Cyprus after concluding that the 307s were using non-standard water pumps. The rally was awarded to second place driver Sebastien Loeb, and everyone else in the standings moved up one place. The “win” moves Loeb into first place in the driver’s championship (giving him […]
Posted on May 26th, 2004 by admin
Filed under: World Rally Championship | Comments Off on Rally Cyprus Update
I came across this today on Salon: James Dobson, chairman of the Colorado Springs-based Christian group Focus on the Family, offered a grave assessment of the jubilant same-sex couples flocking to court houses in New England. “We will look back 20, 30, 50 years from now and recall this as the day marriage ceased to […]
Posted on May 19th, 2004 by admin
Filed under: Politics | Comments Off on The Death of Marriage is Greatly Exaggerated
It’s been a few days coming, but here’s the wrapup of the WRC action from last weekend… As expected, it was a rough rally for all the factory teams. The biggest victim was Subaru’s Petter Solberg. Solberg started the rally well, and held the lead through the opening stages. Then, a minor incident that bent […]
Posted on May 19th, 2004 by admin
Filed under: World Rally Championship | Comments Off on Rally Cyprus Review
The boy discovers the joy of cake.
Posted on May 14th, 2004 by admin
Filed under: Life, and How to Live It | Comments Off on Cake
The championship picks up again tomorrow morning on the rough and twisty roads around the island of Cyprus. This is the first of three very tough events to start the summer, with this rally quickly followed by Turkey and the Acropolis. This means a lot of damaged cars and many retirements. All of the teams […]
Posted on May 13th, 2004 by admin
Filed under: World Rally Championship | Comments Off on Rally Cyprus Preview
Slate has an interesting Chatterbox article about who (or what) is to blame for the military debacle at Abu Ghrarib. I’d like to respond to a couple of the people who were quoted in the article: Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission: Can I ask that you take […]
Posted on May 13th, 2004 by admin
Filed under: Politics | Comments Off on Who’s To Blame
Sebastien turned one year old today. Wow. One year. Jen put together a nice collage of month-by-month photos. A couple of things we noticed when looking at the pics lined up like that: 1) We thought he was a cute baby. Not a chance. He’s much cuter now. 2) We thought he had a lot […]
Posted on May 12th, 2004 by admin
Filed under: Life, and How to Live It | Comments Off on One Year Older
While I like talking about politics as much as the next arm chair pundit, I am very tired of hearing about the (insert the political idealogy)’s control of the national media. According to the Right, the Left has hopelessly brainwashed the national media, skewing everything to the Left. And according to the Left (see the […]
Posted on May 11th, 2004 by admin
Filed under: Politics | Comments Off on Windbags
Perhaps it’s my previous life as an endurance athlete, or my love of bicycles, but I find this event (the Raid Calfornie-Oregon) to be incredibly interesting. It’s described (quite fittingly) by its creator as the crash between a traditional brevet and an alleycat. Basically, the event was a race from San Francisco to Portland, with […]
Posted on May 8th, 2004 by admin
Filed under: Bicyles | Comments Off on Sick Fascination