Sleep Spent

It’s just a matter of time before we get a space elevator! C’mon, George: if you’re going to spend my money, at least spend it on something cool and useful.

Now that Bush has officially called for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between one man and one woman, perhaps it’s time to look at what that will mean. The New Republic has an article exposing how radical the FMA really is.

The biggest problem with the President’s address is that he assumes that since this is the way it’s always been, this is the way it should be. Not necessarily so. When he says that “[m]arriage cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening the good influence of society,” what does that even mean? There’s no severing going on here, and in this country the legal recognition of marriage has nothing whatsoever to do with religion. This is why people get a marriage license before the special day. Stable, long-term same-sex couples are already providing that good influence to society the President mentions. All they’re asking for now is an official recognition of that fact.

And then there’s the “marriage is for procreation” argument. Which, of course, logically invalidates the marriages of couples who cannot have children for any of a myriad of reasons. But that’s not why they were able to get married in the first place. They were able to get married because they were of opposite genders.

What it comes down to is that people don’t like what they’re not used to. It’s been mentioned all over the place that 94% of Americans were in favor of miscegenation laws nine years before they were overturned by the Supreme Court. Some people think civil unions are the answer, but what’s the difference between a civil union and a marriage? If there are substantive differences (e.g. hospital visitation rights, inheritance, child custody), I think many people would agree that this needs to be fixed. And if there aren’t any differences other than gender, then civil unions are exposed as a “seperate but equal” compromise that does nothing but stigmatize gay couples.

The funniest part of this whole thing is how reactionary the Conservatives are being. We are not the first nation to deal with this issue. I haven’t heard any reports of polygamy or incest being bolstered by extending recognition to gay and lesbian couples. To suggest so without evidence is conjecture, and intolerant conjecture at that.

The overreaction is mind boggling. Let’s hope people can see that soon before this bigotry is coded into our country’s most basic document.

Many months ago, I put a $250 deposit down towards my London Study trip. It was so long ago that I had completely forgotten about it. In fact, I thought the money had been incorporated into the program fee.

Not so! I just received a $250 check in the mail!

Jordan’s advice: “don’t spend it all in one place.” With two major and many more minor expenses over the next month and a half vying for attention, that should be the least of my problems. :-)

(Of course, I gave the program $250 when the dollar was at about $1.5/£ and I’m getting it back at $1.9/£, so they made roughly $52 on the transaction. Oh, well.)

Safari is the best browser on any platform. I am very secure in that statement. That’s why I use it every day.

Two tiny things I love about it:

1. You can type Cmd-Return in the URL bar to open the URL in a new tab. I use this when I chop off the end of a URL to move up a few levels, but want to keep the same page open. I remove the end, type Cmd-Return, Cmd-Shift-Right Arrow, and there I have my new page. The old one is still in place, and I can read them both.
2. The other thing also has to do with the URL bar. If you clear the field and then tab out of the it, it’s repopulated. That’s a smart-a address-a bar!

Of course, I still don’t like the fact that reloading a page where you’ve changed the URL in the URL bar loads the new URL instead, but you can’t win them all. (Apparently Steve himself said it should be this way. As such, it’s not likely to change any time soon.)

I found this (somewhat dated) Christian Science Monitor piece and it started me thinking.

Europe spoiled me. London’s Underground, while hardly perfect, is more wide-ranging and efficient than anything we have in the States (with the exception of the New York subway system). International rail travel in Belelux and France was easy, cheap and fast. Even Italy offered (mostly) nice trains that were cheaper and faster overall than a plane.

Everywhere I went, I was able to easily get around by rail, underground or otherwise. When I did fly, I got between the airport to the center of town by train (Rome, Paris, and Amsterdam). But it’s one thing to spend three hours on a train and quite another to spend four days on one. I had pretty well written off interstate rail travel in the United States given the massive distances the system needed to cover. And yet, we do have an interstate rail system: Amtrak .

Amtrak isn’t my first thought for long-distance travel in the continental United States, but it does operate about 20 long-distance lines. And some of them are really long-distance.

Common sense told me that long-distance trains don’t seem to fit with the typical fast-paced American lifestyle. So when I saw that Amtrak had proposed cutting 18 long-distance routes, it sounded like a good idea to me. If people aren’t riding them, why keep the routes in service?

But the Christian Science Monitor’s special changed my mind. People are riding the trains, and there is some evidence that cutting the long-distance routes will actually hurt Amtrak financially. Not just that, but cutting the trains will remove a vital link between the otherwise-isolated Midwest and the major population centers on the coasts.

In 2002, CSM listed three proposed solutions to Amtrak’s money problems, one of which sounds frighteningly like the privatization that distmantled British Rail and ultimately ruined Britain’s passenger rail system.

Two years later, Amtrak hasn’t cut all 18 of its long-distance lines. It is still in the red, however. It will be interesting to see what happens to the organization in the coming years.

I’ve been trying to get a job for the last month. Unfortunately, the sort of job I’d be competent at, a technical support or programming position, is not the sort of job that’s easy to get around these parts. :-/

But on Friday, I finally secured a position. I’m going to be working for another arm of the ITS support staff.

It’s time for a pros and cons list.

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s things like this that make me so dearly love the Brits!

I miss England.

I cannot believe how much of a hoo-hah there is over this Janet Jackson breast thing. Only in America!

(For the record, I didn’t see the Suprbowl. I have seen a large number of pictures of the incident in question, though. Some of them cropped very exactly. ;-)

This is a non-issue, and the fact that my money is being spent to “investigate” it is such a giant ball of crap, I can’t properly express it in words.

At least someone in this puritanical country agrees with me!