I’m having trouble finishing things these days. Some of you may be saying *tsk tsk* since the Rallye Monte Carlo started today, and I’ve gotten one team preview out. I’ve got two half-completed previews, and a rally preview. In case anyone cares, Sebastien Loeb is leading the rally, with Francois Duval and Marcus Gronholm close behind.
So, instead of being profound, I’ll just link to some other profound people. First, Slate has several interesting reactions to George Bush’s inargural address:
His Latest Mission from God: Democracy
Freedom on a Budget
Fred Kaplan points out a problem with Bush’s view of America’s purpose and ideals:
In his speech today, President Bush constructed a syllogism: (A) Spreading liberty reduces resentment, hatred, and violence in the world. (B) Resentment, hatred, and violence threaten our vital interests. Therefore, (C), as he puts it, “America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one.” But this is a clever evasion. If it wasn’t, then Bush would have cut off relations with a dozen or so governments, including all three of those mentioned above (China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan). He’s not doing that because he and the people around him know that the gesture would harm U.S. interests much more than it helped those countries’ dissidents, if in fact it helped them at all. At least since 1945, American statesmen have grappled with the dilemma between our interests and our ideals. To pretend that we’ve vanquished the dilemma?that our ideals and interests are monolithic and identical?is at best a delusion and at worst a hindrance to devising smart policies.
The Burkean Canuck also has a few things to say.
Posted on 21 January 2005
First, I survived the commute yesterday. The right combination of clothes makes everything better.
Slate’s Chris Suellentrop outlines what the Social Security debate should be about.
Today’s Post-Gazette has an interesting piece on Pittsburgh’s third places.
Posted on 18 January 2005
There are mornings when I just don’t look forward to riding to work. This morning is one of them. I don’t even want to check the weather, because there’s no good news there. I suspect the temperature is hovering just about zero, minus the wind chill. At least the city made the rounds on the streets last night and there will be a minimal amount of snow on the road. On mornings like this I have to find a bit of motivation before I hit the road.
Posted on 17 January 2005
Slashdot has a good discussion going on about this article about former virus writer Marek Strihavka. Strihavka apparently ran with a gang of Russian programmers (known collectively as 29A), but has reformed himself and now works for an internet security firm. He claims he did not distribute the virii he wrote and his work was merely research oriented — he wrote the virii to see what could be done about them. First problem — someone had to distribute the code. If it wasn’t Strihavka, it had to be one of his cohorts. If he was working as some sort of guardian angel, trying to make the internet a better place, why wasn’t he at a university or AV company from the start?
Posted on 15 January 2005
On paper, there isn’t a better roster: Two-time world champion Marcus Gronholm and up and coming star Markko Martin (who finished third in the championship last season). Peugeot has been here before with great results — in 2002 the team lured world champion Richard Burns from Subaru and Gronholm won the title and Peugeot won the maker’s championship. The honeymoon was over quickly however, as the introduction of the 307 WRC brought the team nothing but bad luck. The 2004 season was only slightly better, with Gronholm bringing the team its first win with 307.
There are three variables in the team’s success this year:
1. The car. The 307 showed promise during the latter part of the 2004 season. Can the team squeeze more performance from the car? Have they worked out the gremlins that haunted it in 2003 and 2004?
2. The team. PSA (Peugeot’s parent company) has announced that it would pull both Peugeot and Citroen from the WRC after 2005. The management will not be interested in making long-term commitments to the 307.
3. Markko Martin. Richard Burns never felt at in the 206, and his results reflected that. Martin has toed the party line after his first round of testing, but only competition time will tell if Martin can come to grips with the car.
Even if Peugeot can’t find the speed to win rallies, they shouldn’t have much trouble winning the manufacturer’s title. Citroen lost Carlos Sainz to retirement, and as fast as Francois Duval can be, he’s also inconsistent enough to hurt Citroen’s chances for a repeat. As long as the 307 holds up reasonably well, Gronholm or Martin should be in the top 5 in nearly every event. If the team has worked the gremlins out of the car, well, Martin or Gronholm should be in the hunt for a win on nearly every rally.
Posted on 14 January 2005
The season-opening Rallye Monte Carlo is a little over a week away. I’ll be putting together my annual team by team reviews shortly. I’m sure all five of you can’t wait.
Posted on 13 January 2005
Mother nature is currently throwing the kitchen sink at me, trying to get me to relent and take the bus. The local paper noted that during the first eleven days of the new year, we had eight days of rain. This week has been generally rainy, with terrible conditions yesterday (constant rain and temperatures in the 30s). Today, the jet stream brought us temperatures in the 60s (!) and even a few glimpses of the fiery red orb in the sky I’ve seen in books. We won’t get off that easily, however, as meteorologists predict warm weather, with loads of rain and my personal favorite, high winds. This storm front will then bring us some colder, albeit calmer, weather for the weekend. I’ll take temperatures in the low 20s if it means the sun will come out.
Posted on 12 January 2005
is open for business.
Posted on 11 January 2005
Jen and I don’t frequent Mimi Smartypant‘s weblog much anymore (for various reasons), but I happened to look at her site the other day and came upon this astute observation:
Things are kind of hard right now. I feel a dreadful split (oh great, now I am the one being all Lord Byron/heavy metal dramatic. Dude. Get over myself.) between two goals: Keep Life Humming Along and Big Picture. Sometimes they intersect; obviously all this working and health-insurance-having and fiscal responsibility is kind of Big Picture-ish. But more often they don’t, quite, exactly, such as when you work all day and then come home to a tired toddler and a frazzled husband, and everyone has to eat and small girl has to bathe and be played with and put to bed, and somewhere in there we are supposed to be teaching her values and demonstrating our love and affection and developing her rapidly growing brain and oh, also having fun. It is not really the work/home divide that I am bitching about: LT and I have each stayed home with Nora all day, many days, and the same difficulty exists vis-?-vis the split between keeping her alive, fed, changed, healthy and teaching her everything she needs to know. I know (believe me, I know) that children are learning all the time—that they learn love, relationships, emotions, and attitudes about work and leisure and discipline and frustration just by observing their parents actually perform all that mundane stuff. BUT ****, THAT IS EVEN SCARIER. Because you can’t just take time out from mundane frustration to teach your toddler about life; she will learn that just by watching you cope with the mundane frustration. Which means that you have to work on being a better person. All the time. IT’S NOT ENOUGH TO JUST GET DINNER ON THE TABLE ANYMORE, YO. Am I making too much of this? Probably.
I actually don’t think she’s making too much of this. In fact, she’s probably not making enough of it. We can be wonderful parents, spending lots of time with our kids, reading to them, and playing with them, but if we can’t lead by example the entire time, we’re still failing our kids to some degree. Of course, we aren’t perfect, so we will screw up some of time, allowing the frustrations of life to override our good sense of parents. We set a bad example. But all that’s left to do after that is pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and do a better job next time. Our kids learn from that too.
Posted on 9 January 2005