Aside

From foreign to economic to social policy, Bush’s record is a lesson in the limits and perils of conviction. He’s too confident to consult a map. He’s too strong to heed warnings and too steady to turn the wheel when the road bends. He’s too certain to admit error, even after plowing through ditches and telephone poles. He’s too preoccupied with principle to understand that principle isn’t enough. Watching the stars instead of the road, he has wrecked the budget…

Weekend’s been pretty chill thus far. Today I strolled around Berkeley with Giselle and Rachel after hearing Firoozeh Dumas do a reading/signing about Funny in Farsi which was cool. I was happy that it was 70 degrees today for the first time in awhile, and I could meander about like a true Californian in my shorts, t-shirt, sandals, and shades. I bought ST:TNG Season 2 from Rasputin’s on Friday night, which was great. I’m going to watch an episode or…

After work, I went and picked up Giselle at SFO. It’s her first time in California! She seemed pretty astounded to see “hills” — I guess they don’t have those in Canada/Philly. I had parked my car at Millbrae BART for the day and CalTrained into the city. However, I discovered that I’d inadvertandly left my lights on when I returned to my car, a half hour before I was supposed to pick up Giselle. I called AAA, but they…

Well, I got in my third chapter of my thesis draft in this afternoon. Read all 63 pages of its working draft glory here if you’re really interested. I had a great lunch with today in the City, at a place called Henry’s Hunan, just off 2nd, in the SoMa district. That was fun and I ate a lot. And it was spicy, too. 🙂 As Drezner points out, there’s some problems going down in the EU: Less than two…

I was accepted to University of Virginia and the London School of Economics today.

David [talking about his Irish history paper]: It used the word “cleavage” in the first paragraph. And it wasn’t talking about anatomy. Me: Did it talk about cross-cutting cleavages? David: No, and nor was it talking about Kriss-Kross. Me: Right, because those are . . . completely unrelated. David: Yeah, but at least they’ll make you “Jump Jump.”

I would post more, but I have to finish copying out this Farsi essay and it’s late. Cake was fun. Too short, but their new album sounds promising. Sacto seems like a cool place. True Love Coffeehouse rocks. I’m going to be going to NY while I’m in Hartford, and the j-school is paying for it, covering something having to do with the War on Terror, for my J298 class. More on this as details become available. Full thesis action…

No further news from the grad school front. In other randomness, though, I ran into David P. Jacob on campus today walking out of Barrows Hall. He was dealing with some bureaucratic stuff about graduating, even though he’s not actually walking (he’ll be in Germany). He, and his Persian girlfriend Maryam and I had lunch at Ruen Pair, a great Thai restaurant in Albany. It’s always good to run into old friends. I’ve finally finished my rough Farsi translation of…

I got into LaFollette School of Public Affairs (UW-Madison), but not into North Gate.

So confirming what I heard on NPR this morning, The Eyeranian says that the Iranian state news has reported that bin Laden has been captured for awhile now, even though the US and Pakistan deny it. As he says: I would normally ignore this, however it is hard to forget how the same source reported on the arrest of Saddam way ahead of all other news agencies. Besides, with the U.S. abandoning everything in Afghanistan outside of Kabul to tribal…