Aside

You’re watching the Lakers fall pretty flat against the Pistons in Game 3 and they interrupt the broadcast for a tornado warning. Well, I’m in Chicago until Sunday with my Iranian grandmother, brother and parents for the AIA 2004 National Conference where my Dad is getting a fellowship tomorrow night. And then there’s a black tie dinner on Saturday (Alex, my bro, says it’s $180 a plate?!?!?) Taking the El in from Southside, we headed up the Sears Tower (I’ve…

You rock.

Well, in almost exactly two months I will be starting out at J-school. Our class schedule came out today. We don’t get a lot of choice in what we get to take first semester, with the exception of RWII (Reporting & Writing II), which include classes like “International Reporting,” “Covering Regional Conflicts,” “Social Impact of Mass Media,” “Economics and Financial Reporting I,” “The Art of the Profile,” “Opinion Writing” and many others. My favorite thus far is “Covering Regional Conflicts,”…

Alexandra Polier says that all that nonsense about her having an affair with John Kerry is wrong in today’s Guardian. I met Kerry for the first time in January 2001, in Davos, Switzerland. I was living in Manhattan, stop-gapping at a public-relations firm and wondering if my application to the Columbia University graduate school of journalism was going to be accepted. At heart, I was a politics junkie. I would scour the Economist, cutting out articles for my “current affairs”…

Ed: Well, my Tales of a Toubaab catching up didn’t really happen at the pace that I had hoped. But hopefully I’ll fill out all the stories that didn’t make it into writing yet this summer. This is Part IV of the Mali trip, continued from here. This episode describes the arrival into Bamako and our first day. Takes Place: March 31 2003 Written: January 15 2004 & June 3 2004 Bamako. The final destination on the fabled railway that…

Today after going to do an interview in the Mission district today I had lunch at a Mexican restaurant on 18th/Mission. I almost didn’t go in, because I saw it was so crowded, but then I realized that everyone was watching a Mexican soccer match on TV and thought that it would be interesting to watch with them. I sat down and observed. It was Guadalajara vs. Toluca (I looked it up, it was a semifinal match — Toluca won…

So the Chinese bus lines really do exist. Comprehensive list FAQ for Fung Wah (unofficial) (Round-trips) NYC-DC – $20 Hartford-Boston/NYC – $30 NYC-Philly – $20 NYC-Albany – $40

Things are pretty quiet, given that both Boyk is in LA and Rachel 40 miles to the south. Yesterday I went to a lunch at Buck’s in Woodside with Scoble and Dan Gillmor and some other geeks. Definitely interesting, although Scoble’s son seemed completely bored out of his mind the whole time. Following that, I had a 3 hour battle with Katie Hafner’s computers and trying to install Panther and MS Office 2004, I settled with one copy of MS…

I got an A- on my thesis.

Now this is a tax that I could really get behind. We would adopt a 50-cents-a-gallon gasoline tax, the Patriot Tax (along with my wife’s proposal: free public parking anywhere in America for any hybrid or other car getting more than 35 m.p.g.). A Patriot Tax would help pay for the Afghan and Iraq wars and help finance a Manhattan project to speed the development of a hydrogen economy, enabling the public to make a contribution to the war effort…