Month: June 2004

I love this, and I’m not sure why: NPR’s ombudsman scolding NPR for producing and airing music commentary that’s too “hipper-than-thou.” The ombudsman (Jeffrey Dvorkin, whose last major public acts were to criticize those who got their information about NPR from blogs and to assert that NPR would continue to ask permission from people seeking…

Would we ever move back to California? Sometimes I fantasize about it, I admit it, despite being in complete agreement with Steve that there is much more room to breathe here in Michigan. I think of places I love in California, like the Bay Area, parts of Los Angeles County, the desert area around Palm…

We took a little drive to Saline, where we noted that the Dairy Queen is much nicer than the ones in Ann Arbor. We then went over to Curtiss Park and sat by the river for awhile. It was most pleasant … the nicest stretch of weather I’ve seen in quite some time. I tend…

I’m making progress on getting all the various pieces of AirBeagle working with new layouts. I added the new photo galleries portal page today as well as a new gallery. Here’s what works from the nav menu at left: Bike – Adventures in the bike lane Dayley – The return of the Dayley Bayley Fly…

It was a beautiful day and would have been perfect for riding, if only my first bike wasn’t still in San Francisco and the new one wasn’t still in the store, unpurchased. The nice man at the UPS store here in Ann Arbor tells me it will cost roughly $150 to ship my Bianchi from…

From the movie Born Yesterday, starring William Holden: ‘The whole history of the world is the story of the struggle between the selfish and the unselfish … all that’s bad around us is bred by selfishness … sometimes selfishness can even get to be a cause, an organized force, even a government, and that’s called…

It’s been a very nice, temperate few days in southeastern Michigan. The high humidity of a week or so ago seems to have abated for the moment. No rain in the past few days. The highs have been mild, in the low to mid-70s. The sky has been a perfect shade of bold azure. The…

So, let’s see if we’ve got this straight. Virgin USA has its corporate headquarters in New York, but its flight ops headquarters will be clear across the country in San Francisco. They need to hire 3,000 people from pilots to baggage handlers in the next year and start running ‘low-cost’ operations to compete with JetBlue…

From the Jack Ryan 2004 Website: ‘Jack Ryan on the Defense of Marriage: ‘I believe that marriage can only be defined as that union between one man and one woman. I am opposed to same-sex marriages, civil unions, and registries. I believe that we are all equal before God and should be before the law….

A group of right-wing ‘bloggers, responding to President Gore referring to them as ‘Brown Shirts,’ have proudly donned the mantle and are featuring a logo on their sites which has a photo of Sturmabteilung leader Ernst Roehm on it. A swastika was on there as well, but was removed because it was ‘offensive to some.’…

I honor his accomplishments, but for god’s sake can we shut up about Lance Armstrong already?

Since I’m starting grad school and parking and transportation around central campus is a pain, I decided to start biking it. Only problem: My very good and nice and fabulous Bianchi Lynx bike is still in San Francisco because I had problems attaching it to the Jeep securely enough for a 3,000-mile trip to Michigan…

This appears on the front cover of the hyped-to-death Karen Joy Fowler novel The Jane Austen Book Club (Miss Austen would be most amused by her post-mortem fan club; or maybe mortified). What does this even mean? “If I could eat this novel, I would.” — Alice Sebold

Reading it so you don’t have to ….. A full-page ad hawking Toni Morrison’s new line of handsome paperback editions of her novels “with deeply personal forewords reflecting on each work.” (I’ve never been able to finish the first chapter of a Toni Morrison novel. Maybe it’s just me.) An ad for a new book…

The man who exposed serious security flaws in airport security was « sentenced to probation this week »: ‘A college student who says he hid box cutters on airplanes to expose weaknesses in security was sentenced Thursday to two years supervised probation and fined $500. Nathaniel Heatwole also must serve 100 hours of community service and reimburse…

United is reporting that « it lost $94 million in May alone »: ‘United Airlines said in a bankruptcy court filing Thursday that it posted a net loss of $93 million in May its efforts to return to profitability complicated by near-record jet fuel costs. The nation’s No. 2 carrier, which is seeking an additional $500 million…

So after all the wrangling and expense, not to mention the Republicans’ largest expansion of the federal government in American history, « airport screening is being returned to the private sector » by the Transportation Sicherheits Dienst: ‘Airports that want to replace government security screeners with privately employed workers can do so by early next summer, the…

Just when I thought I’d never agree with anything Dale Peck said, he goes and says this in an interview with Ellen Heltzel: Why does literature have to be so boring? And why, when it is funny, does it have to be so juvenile? Dave Eggers does the post-modern, “I’m talking about the book that…

It’s somewhat amusing to see that John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, a novel that was on Stanford’s Summer Reading List for incoming freshmen when I was getting ready to enter college, is still a fixture—this year it’s on the UC Berkeley Summer Reading List. (Oddly, Stanford doesn’t seem to have its reading list—if…

An Okie brings new meaning to the term ‘Activist Judge:’ ‘While seated on the bench, an Oklahoma judge used a male enhancement pump, shaved and oiled his nether region, and pleasured himself, state officials charged yesterday in a petition to remove the jurist. According to the below complaint filed by the Oklahoma Attorney General, Donald…

I’d never really listened to the lyrics of Sheryl Crow’s “Soak up the Sun” before (it was playing in the Village Apothecary when I went in yesterday afternoon). Not bad for a pop song, but what unbelievably irritating lyrics: “I’m gonna soak up the sun/Gonna tell everyone/To lighten up.” God, the combination of Pollyanna-ish reverie…

Lollapalooza 2004 has been cancelled this year due to crappy ticket sales. Perry Farrell, in a message posted on the festival’s official site, wrote, “It is with heart gripped despair that I inform you of Lollapalooza’s disbandment for the summer of 2004.” Yes, well. It seems that unless you’re a crowd-pleasing baby-boom act like The…

People like to refer to places like San Francisco, Austin, Ann Arbor, Madison and Berkeley, etc., et al, as leftist bubbles … Ann Arbor is often described as something like ‘50 square miles surrounded by reality,’ or some such nonsense. Sometimes, it appears there might just be something behind it, I must admit. Case in…

June is much busier in ASquared than May, I’ve noticed. Besides the usual skateboarders and bike riders and summer students, there is now also an abundance of elderly polyester-wearing gawkers making their way through the arches and along the pathways of central campus. The immigrant cab drivers are now waiting for fares outside Michigan Union…

It’s a gorgeous, temperate evening. The beagle and I walked down the street and just sat on the lawn for quite awhile, watching things go by. In the distance, you can clearly hear the UM band blasting away at Hail to the Victors at the practice field. The summer is starting off beautifully.

So how do you like our new clothes? Much better, I hope. Here are some notes about the new design/location: You might not have noticed, but our URL is now asquared.airbeagle.NET; thanks to our new Textdrive hosts, I can finally, without extra cost, use the .net domain I’ve been paying for for two years. Since…

Bill Clinton: ‘I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinski.’ George W. Bush: ‘I have never ordered torture. I will never order torture.’

Pardon the mess around here, but we’re getting very close to finishing this one off. As of today, you can read the main posts, but other things may be wonkiy or not work. I still have to work on archives and comments. But I’m getting there! Thanks for hanging in there with me.

Yesterday, I left work and it was raining, and it was even approaching cold out. Glad I wore a long-sleeved shirt. Today, on the way to work, it was back to high 70s and high humidity. Glad I got my hair cut today because longer hair and humidity don’t go so well together. Oh, well….

Re the recent cicada infestation, the eminent arbiters of the New York Times have pontifically decreed that it was all a huge hypefest: This article is based on the latest available scientific information, which is: If you haven’t seen your Brood X cicadas by now, you probably aren’t going to for another 17 years. Complaints…

Fair warning after visiting two Targets in two days and being fed up: Next time I’m in a store and I hear some fool idiot shouting on her cell phone screaming, ‘Can you hear me now?’ I shall do violence to that cell phone. Ain’t nobody gonna be able to hear nobody now after I…

A nice day (again). Perfect for a drive out to Matthaei Botanical Gardens, where, as you can see in the photos in the previous post, I finally got my cicada fix. We saw tons of cicada wings littering the pathways, a couple of dead cicadas, and we encountered one actual live cicada sitting on a…

An incredibly beautiful day ….. and surprisingly temperate given the last several days of high humidity. The most amazing thing I saw today was outside the kitchen window, along with the usual array of unidentifiable birds hopping around in the grass: a bright red cardinal on the telephone wire, standing out against the slate-blue sky….

Reading it so you don’t have to ….. Laura Miller thinks I’m OK – You’re OK and Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships, which were on 85% of the bookshelves in California in the 1970s, were “brainy and challenging … by contemporary standards.” (Relevance? The former is being reissued in paperback next month.)…

Very humid today (though not that hot). But I have a feeling this is just the beginning. The real pressure-cooker heat days haven’t even started yet. It’s days like this that places like Juneau start looking attractive.

I think we’re finally getting a handle on this TextDrive/TextPattern thing and it’s beyond cool, once they get the jams kicked out. Now that TextPattern is working again for the most part and the servers are reasonably stable (momentary e-mail hiccup was tonight’s problem), I was able to add the other airbeagle domains that I’ve…

I was wrong when I wrote a while back “Nothing in Washtenaw.” Apparently the cicadas are all over Superior Township. Weird.

There’s a thread over at LISNews about Bloomsbury and James Joyce and Ulysses and the whole hundred-year mark thing. I’m greatly enjoying the history. It’s a nice break from non-stop Reagan worship and electioneering news. But I have to say that, although I had a brief moment a week or so ago when I thought…

We’re back, it seems. Thanks to some hard effort by David in San Francisco and advice from Jason at TextDrive, the Beagle is back. Did you miss us?

A hot, humid, sauna-like day is just turning interesting … they announced a tornado warning for Washtenaw County and blew the storm sirens in Ann Arbor. Radar indicates a possible tornado 14 miles west of Chelsea, moving east at 35 mph. I tried to call Frank at work, but the UM Libraries are evacuating staff…

There will be some sorta higgledy-piggledyness on airbeagle.com today and maybe into tomorrow; I’m switching the site to a more sane and less snarky, less corporate hosting provider. Had enough of LunarPages … their trashing of my Movable Type installation and subsequent arrogance about it, plus their ‘maybe Textpattern is okay and maybe it’s not’…

There will be some sorta higgledy-piggledyness on airbeagle.com today and maybe into tomorrow; I’m switching the site to a more sane and less snarky, less corporate hosting provider. Had enough of LunarPages … their trashing of my Movable Type installation and subsequent arrogance about it, plus their ‘maybe Textpattern is okay and maybe it’s not’…

The funny thing is that the Ann Arbor News ran an article today indicating that the first Washtenaw cicada sightings have occurred: The emergence of the periodical cicada in the past week in northeast Ann Arbor and Ann Arbor Township is the first sighting in the state, according to Michigan State University entomology professor Howard…

From the ‘Sorry we tortured your uncle, raped your wife, blew your kid’s legs off and destroyed your home and livelihood, but at least we’re giving you cheap gas!’ Department: We’re paying $2.09 in Ann Arbor for a gallon of gas this week. Meanwhile, « Baghdad drivers are paying 5 CENTS a gallon, » thanks…

No cicadas in Philadelphia this year. The Philadelphia Inquirer theorizes that it’s possible that an increase in concrete in areas where cicadas may have laid their eggs in the past 17 years may account for the absence, but an entomologist at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia says that the outbreaks of cicadas were…

The hagiography being written (presumably with an eye to sainthood and a spot on Rushmore, as well as his name on everything that will sit still and some things that won’t) claims the dearly departed had the highest approval ratings and was the most beloved president of modern times.’ Facts: The highest approval ratings recorded…