Musings of a Drunken Monk: Individual Entry Archive

Please be sure to put up another sound file when your voice has completely returned to normal, eh.

For those of us who know only your "written" voice. : )

hey justin, to continue our conversation from before... another reason why japan > usa, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/opinion/11sun1.html?incamp=article_popular

Could you summarize what's there? Not everybody wants to sign up, eh.

(BTW, am I reading correctly and ">" is to be given its usual mathematical value of "is greater than"?)

The article just decries how despite numerous promises by the Bush administration, little is being done to restore the devastated area. My point is that the U.S. is spending billions to clean up the mess it made in the Gulf while it pinches pennies when the need comes to rebuild its own state.

The debate was kind of a silly one in general though, and yea the > does mean greater than.

Also, I heard this yesterday. There's a saying that men are like ships and women are like ports. After sailing the seven seas, a ship can always return to home to port to rest, repair, and get supplies.

Well, given the government's slow initial response and the previous years of spending cuts which are thought to have exacerbated the disaster, I'd be surprised if we were seeing anything else as far as rebuilding.

Debates of the sort "Country A > Country B" are generally kind of silly, anyway; doesn't mean they're not fun sometimes, though! : )

One thing I think it is important to remember is that the government is NOT the country; this is particularly true at present when the administration has been elected by a bare majority. "Of the people...and by the people" are nice catchy traditional PR phrases, but they don't really mean all that much, do they? And the whole point here is that "for the people" is an obvious falsehood.

I used to have a Japanese girlfriend who was always telling me, "Men are like buses; wait ten minutes and another one will come along." So one day I gave her 120 yen and left her on the corner.

haha, the bus analogy was funny. The ship one was meant to illustrate the potential benefits of a 'homemaker' wife, but I think the image of sailing the seven seas caught my attention more than anything as something interesting and cool.

I think those catchy PR phrases do have a use, despite their being false, as attempts to deliver a message, i.e. in the aftermath of Katrina, to instill order where there was none. The perception of how good a president you are these days comes down to how well you can sell yourself to the public. Bill Clinton is a great example, as he still is a political superstar because of his incredible charisma.

I think you're right about the for the people thing, but I would extend it to, 'for the people who vote'.